[Title in Greek] Erotopaegnion.

Florence: Filippo Giunta, 1512. First edition. About fine.. Octavo (17cm); [80] pages. Italic type. In 18th-century polished red morocco, both boards double-ruled in gold with triple-ruled panel mitered at corners with fleurons. Gold-tooled spine in six panels, title stamped in gold. Gold edges and turn ins. Decorated "carta dorata" endleaves.

References: EDIT 16,CNCE 1881; Camerini, Giunti tipografi editori di Firenze, I:2, p. 246, # 3; BM Italian, p. 30. Not in Renouard or Adams (Adams cites only the later Naples edition).

Provenance: Armorial bookplate of Baron John Rolle of Stevenstone (1750-1842) on front pastedown; later armorial bookplate of Federico Lobetti Bodoni, and one other.

Last leaf backed early on. Two bibliographical notes in pencil on front blank.



Girolamo Angeriano was one of Giovanni Pontano's youngest students, joining Academy before 1495. Guided by Pontano, he soaked up the culture of Renaissance Naples, based in a classical yet lively and vibrant Latinity. Mario Santoro wrote, "the great debt that European culture owes to the Latin literature of Naples ... has only been partially and episodically recognized." Indeed, Angeriano's little book of erotically charge love poems in elegiac couplets was frequently reprinted in Italy and France, was imitated by Joachim du Bellay, admired by Ronsard, and effectively translated by Guillaume Guéroult. (Portions were translated into English by Giles Fletcher in 1593.) When the influential anthology of Neo-Latin poetry, Poetae tres elegantissimi, was published in Paris in 1582, it featured Johannes Secundus, Michele Marullo, and Angeriano.

The poems of the Erotopaignion (Game of Love) participate in the lively and playful tradition of Neo-Latin poetry established in the mid-1400s by Panormita and Pontano (drawing from the classical elegiac poets). Most of the poems are dedicated to one Caelia, a compelling lover whose sexuality is frank and proud. In contrast, there are several introspective and self-critical meditations, a departure, I think, from classical models.

Angeriano's first book is an important artifact of the intellectual life of Naples, and a mark of its (now somewhat forgotten) magnetism in Renaissance Europe.