8vo (172 x 113 mm). 57, [1 blank] pp. Woodcut and typographic ornaments. Page 10 shakily printed, omitting 2 or 3 letters in last two lines. Nineteenth-century half red calf and marbled boards, edges red-stained. First Edition.
First edition of a poem on the pleasures of card-playing. Bettinelli was a Jesuit and distinguished belles-lettriste, an acquaintance of Voltaire, Rousseau and Helvetius, and author of controversial works on Italian literature. With tongue in cheek, Bettinelli places card-playing on the plane of the most noble and far-reaching human activities. Armorial bookplate of the Marchese Ger[olamo] d’Adda.
Extensive notes following each of the three Cantos contain well-informed discussions of the origins of card-playing, its use among the ancients, laws regulating it (Turin and Genoa have the "most pernicious" laws against card-playing), the arts in Renaissance Italy, fortune and fate as viewed by the ancient philosophers, digressions on Florentine and Genoese history, and the discovery of america and to which country that honor is due, with details of columbus's life. Describing a variety of card games – pichetto (piquet), primiera, tarocchi, ombre, lansquenet, bassetta etc., the poem and notes make copious allusions to ancient, medieval and contemporary Italian, French and English authors and artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, and Dürer.
Bettinelli claimed (note 1) that the poem was a work of his youth, stating coyly that its publication was inspired by contemplation of the Ovidian motto "Tractari vulnera nostra timent," which prefaces the work, and NOT as a poetic tribute on the occasion of a marriage (in this case that of his Genoese friend Giulio Raggi to Ersilia Carega).
Some copies of this edition have a variant imprint (Dalla Societa` tipografica presso Lorenzo Manini e comp.), and some have a variant state of the title-leaf conjugate A8, whose verso is blank in this copy but contains text in other copies (cf. the fingerprinting of ICCU: the copies described mix the two states. The poem was re-issued in 1775 with a new title-page and the same sheets; and a second edition appeared in 1778.
From the library of the bibliographer and art historian the Marchese Gerolamo d'Adda (1815-1881), whose works included a facsimile edition of one of the Columbus letters. A. Neri, "Saverio Bettinelli a Genova," Giornale ligustico di archeologia, storia e belle arti (Genoa, 1881), pp. 393-5. Not in Sabin.
Donated by Musinsky Rare Books, Inc., New York, NY.