PULCI, Luca

[Epistole] Pistole di Luca Pulci al magnifico Lorenzeo de Medici Florence, Francesco Bonacorsi & Antonio di Francesco, February 28, 1488 LUCA PULCI OR THE RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF LETTERS AT THE COURT OFURENT THE MAGNIFICENT Second edition Small in-4 (205 x 125 mm). First initial decorated and gilded on blue background, other initials rubricated. Painted coat of arms at the bottom of the first leaf. Text on one column, thirty lines per page COLLATION : a-d8 e6 f4 (last blank leaf), that is 42 ff.n.ch CONTENTS : a1r : title and incipit, f4r : explicit and colophon ITALIAN BINDING OF THE XIXth CENTURY. Brown basane, gilt decoration, framed with a roulette, spine decorated, red edges RARITY: only nine known copies in public hands according to USTC, two in the U.S.A., two in Italy, one in France, one in Ireland and one in Great Britain Hinges very worn, some foxing on the first few leaves The original edition of the Pistole by Luca Pulci (1431-1470) was published in 1481-1482. Together with his two brothers Bernardo and Luigi, the Pulci brothers were active in the Medici efforts to restore the Republic of Letters in Florence. Although Luca died young, his texts, and this collection of eighteen epistles in particular, are in the style of Ovid and the ancient authors. The stylistic element never seems, in Luca's case, to be totally distinct from the content: his poetry is not simply a form of lyrical escapism, but reveals itself to be morally and politically engaged poetry at a complex moment in the history of Florence. This is characterized on the one hand by the evolution of customs opposed to the Franciscan Observance and the preaching of the Dominicans, and on the other hand by the passage of power from the hands of Como de Medici to those of his son Piero. Luca Pulci thus balances between rigorous moralist and supporter of the republican values that civil humanism had developed in Florence at the beginning of the 15th century. This duality is found in the choice of the Pistols' printer, Francesco Bonaccorsi. The latter was indeed related to Savonarola. All the books printed by Bonaccorsi are rare and bear witness to the tumult of the Quattrocento. BIBLIOGRAPHY: USTC no. 991705 -- Goff, 1114 -- BMC VI, 671 -- Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke M 36577 -- Donatella Bisconti, Luca Pulci and his place in the culture of fifteenth-century Italy, pp. 4-12