Orlando furioso....: Tutto ricorretto, & di nuove figure adornato....

Venice: Gli heredi di Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1580. Very Good. Large quarto (27 cm); [16], 654, [32] pages. Final blank present. Title within elaborate architectural border, with caryatids, putti, caduceus,grotesques, and portrait of Ariosto within an oval between allegorical figures, 51 full-page woodcuts at the opening of each Canto, probably by Dosso Dossi, woodcut initials and headpieces. Printer's device also appears as title vignette on page [533] as a separate title page to "I cinque canti." In contemporary Venetian red calf decorated with arabesques in gilt within gilt rules on both boards, spine in 5 compartments with gilt decorations, elegant gauffered edges. Joints a little tender, spine ends restored.

References: EDIT 16, 2796; BM Italian, page 40; Gamba, 56 (1556 ed); Mortimer, Harvard Italian 29 (1562 edition); Brunet, I, 436 ("Édition recherchée"); Hofer, "Illustrated editions of Orlando furioso" in Fragonard's Drawings for Ariosto, 27-40 (1556 ed.); ( ‘The illustrations are amazingly complex, and have considerable animation […] They are narrative in style and attempt to show all the important episodes of each canto in a series of scenes on receding planes. There is even occasionally humor").

The very prolific Vincenzo Valgrisi published over 350 titles in his career, owned bookstores in at least eight cities, and produced with his wife Eugenia 17 children, two of which took over the business when Valgrisi died in 1573. The firm's 1556 edition of Ariosto's great Orlando furioso was and is generally recognized to be among Valgrisi's finest work, printed on quality paper, with attention paid to the material product as well as to the giant text, presented with apparatus including illustrations, commentary, and an exhaustive index--just in case the reader has any trouble following the massive and multi-faceted story line. The illustrations were epoch-making, consisting of full-page visual summaries of the subsequent canto. They represent various events occurring within each canto with the figures diminishing in size to mark spatial and temporal boundaries.. The book was so good that Valgrisi had it reprinted several times, and after he died, the heirs continued to produce it. What we have here is a 1580 printing, still holding up every material standard of the earliest Valgrisi edition, with its remarkable title page and 51 full-page designs, in what may have been its first binding, an excellent copy.