# Sonecti, capituli, canzone, sextine, stanze, et strambocti composti per lo excellentissimo Francescho Cei cittadino fiorentino in laude di Clitia



**Autore:** Cei Francesco

**Dati editoriali:** Colophon: Florence, Filippo Giunta, 1503

**Codice archivio:** 194

**Prezzo:** 7500.00 USD

**Stato commerciale:** Disponibile

**Link ufficiale:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/sonecti-capituli-canzone-cei-1503

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## Descrizione accademica e analisi

8vo (157x100 mm). [62] leaves. Signatures: [π]4 a-g8 h2. Italic type, 29 lines, with headings in roman capitals. Title from the caption on π1r, above the dedication; spaces for initials, with printed guide letters; preliminary table and errata; colophon on h2v. Nineteenth-century red morocco by Fratelli Binda, Milan, signed, the covers framed by double gilt fillets and bearing the gilt arms of the Marquis Girolamo d’Adda; spine with five raised bands, compartments ruled and lettered in gilt; gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Some light dampstaining on a few leaves, a fine copy overall. Very rare first edition, published during the author’s lifetime, and Filippo Giunta’s first publication in the vernacular. Its combination of octavo format and italic type brings contemporary Florentine verse into the compact book format recently established by Aldus Manutius. The edition thus occupies a significant place in the beginnings of Giunta’s vernacular publishing program, while preserving the principal collection of a poet celebrated in his own day for his improvisatory gifts. In the colophon Filippo describes himself as a cartolaio, retaining the designation of his original trade (Pettas, p. 17 and no. 5). The collection enjoyed a vigorous early printing history: Falini records nine further editions by 1520 (2017, p. 2, n. 6). The opening dedication, headed “Iohannes. Monacus. Dominico. Canisiano. S.”, is addressed to Domenico Canigiani, identified by Balsamo as treasurer to Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici. It offers a pointed defence of Tuscan linguistic and literary accomplishment. The prefator criticises contemporary poets “nutriti in altra lingua che toscana”, censures their failure to sustain the dignity of their subjects, and deplores the premature publication of immature compositions. Against this background, Cei is presented as “huomo certo eruditissimo”, whose poetry resembles a refined new dish offered to a reader able to distinguish its particular flavour. The dedication gives the collection a deliberate literary programme, presenting the accomplished improviser as an author of learning and discernment. Born in Florence in 1471, Cei, a poet and a lyre player, became involved in the opposition to Savonarola associated with the arrabbiati. Contemporary chronicles connect him with satirical verse circulated in public and sung by children in the streets, showing how improvisation and poetry participated in the political struggles of the city. A sentence of banishment was issued against him in 1497 and cancelled in April 1498. His connections within Florentine literary society are documented with particular immediacy by a letter sent from Florence to Niccolò Machiavelli on 12 November 1502. Addressing Machiavelli, then at Imola, as “amicho suo precipuo”, Cei asks him to forward an enclosed letter to Agostino Vespucci and promises conversation upon his return. This correspondence establishes Cei’s presence in Florence shortly before the publication of the present edition and places him within the network of friendships examined by Degl’Innocenti in his study of Machiavelli and improvised poetry (2015, pp. 57-60). The poems celebrate the woman named Clizia, the Clitia of the title. The collection’s internal chronology traces an attachment beginning in 1494 and lasting seven years. Clizia has been identified as Cassandra di Bartolomeo Bartolini Salimbeni, who married the wealthy Florentine merchant Carlo di Leonardo Ginori in 1500; Falini points to the supporting rubric in the manuscript Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, XIII D 50, fol. 57v. The printed collection contains 134 poems: ninety-six sonnets, eight capitoli, nine canzoni, three sestine, a single poem comprising twenty ottave, and seventeen strambotti. An especially distinctive sequence, sonnets XXI–XXV, is devoted to an imagined pregnancy of Clizia (Falini, 2017, p. 5). Cei shares the repertory of conceits and verbal invention cultivated by such poets as Chariteo, Tebaldeo and Serafino Aquilano, while his Tuscan formation connects him with the work of Luigi Pulci and Poliziano. The interplay of literary artifice and sound is particularly clear in the final strambotto, “Valle, e lamenti mia sentonsi? Sentonsi”, printed immediately above the colophon on h2v. The landscape answers the lover by repeating the concluding words of his questions, turning the poem into an exchange between a speaking voice and its echo. This carefully contrived dialogue belongs to the tradition of echo verse developed by Poliziano and explored by other late fifteenth-century poets (Falini, 2023, pp. 274-275). Modern scholarship has substantially renewed the study of Cei’s verse. Marta Ceci’s Il Canzoniere (1994) has been followed by Irene Falini’s critical and annotated editions of the strambotti (2018) and sonnets (2021). The latter treats the ninety-six sonnets, collates the surviving copies of the 1503 edition, which exhibit rare variants, and examines the alternative redaction preserved in the rediscovered Neapolitan manuscript XIII D 50. The armorial binding associates the present copy with Girolamo d’Adda (1815-1881), the Milanese bibliophile whose collections were especially rich in manuscripts, incunabula, rare early-printed editions and prints. His gilt supralibros, with the motto Con limpidezza, and bindings signed Binda are well documented in institutional collections. The Binda workshop also worked for the Trivulzio family: a payment of 24 February 1854 records bindings in red and green morocco for two editions of Dante printed in 1472 (Petrella, p. 7, n. 23).

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## Bibliografia di riferimento

Edit16, CNCE 10684; USTC, 821454; A.-A. Renouard, “Notice sur la famille des Junte, et liste sommaire de leurs éditions jusqu’en 1550”, in Annales de l’imprimerie des Alde, Paris, 1834, p. XXXIV, no. 7; B. Gamba, Serie dei testi di lingua e di altre opere importanti nella italiana letteratura scritte dal secolo XIV al XIX, 4th ed., Venice, 1839, no. 1080; F. Roediger, Catalogue des livres manuscrits et imprimés composant la bibliothèque de M. Horace de Landau, Florence, 1885-1890, II, p. 288; D. Decia, I Giunti tipografi editori di Firenze, 1497-1570, edited by R. Delfiol, Florence, 1978, part I, p. 67, no. 7; J. Balsamo, De Dante à Chiabrera: poètes italiens de la Renaissance dans la Bibliothèque de la Fondation Barbier-Mueller, Geneva, Droz, 2007, I, p. 230; W.A. Pettas, The Giunti of Florence: A Renaissance Printing and Publishing Family. A History of the Florentine Firm and a Catalogue of the Editions, New Castle, DE, , 2013, p. 17 and p. 226, no. 5; G. Volpi, “Di Francesco Cei poeta fiorentino dell’ultimo Quattrocento”, in Note di varia erudizione e critica letteraria (secoli XIV e XV), Florence, 1903, pp. 56-72; C. Mutini, “Cei, Francesco”, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, XXIII, Rome, 1979, s.v.; F. Cei, Il Canzoniere, edited by Marta Ceci, Rome, 1994; L. Degl’Innocenti, “Machiavelli canterino?”, Nuova Rivista di Letteratura Italiana, XVIII, 1, 2015, pp. 11-67, especially pp. 57-60; M. Ceci-I. Falini, “Francesco Cei”, in Andrea Comboni and Tiziano Zanato, eds., Atlante dei canzonieri in volgare del Quattrocento, Florence, 2017, pp. 207-213; I. Falini, “Le rime di Francesco Cei: preliminari osservazioni metriche e tematiche”, in B. Alfonzetti, T. Cancro, V. Di Iasio and E. Pietrobon, eds., L’Italianistica oggi: ricerca e didattica. Atti del XIX Congresso dell’ADI, Rome, 2017, pp. 1-9; I. Falini, “Gli strambotti di Francesco Cei. Edizione critica e commento”, Interpres, XXXVI, 2018, pp. 139-190; Ch. Ott, “Procreation sonnets all’italiana. Der alternative Petrarkismus des Francesco Cei”, in Roland Ißler, Rolf Lohse and Ludger Scherer, eds., Europäische Gründungsmythen im Dialog der Literaturen. Festschrift für Michael Bernsen zum 65. Geburtstag, Göttingen, 2019, pp. 103-116; F. Cei, Sonetti, edited by I. Falini, Florence, 2021; I. Falini, “L’artificio retorico dell’eco nella poesia volgare di fine Quattrocento”, in Davide Mastrantonio et al., eds., Repetita iuvant, perseverare diabolicum. Un approccio multidisciplinare alla ripetizione, Siena, 2023, pp. 269-278, especially pp. 274-275; G. Petrella, Gli incunaboli Trivulziani della Commedia. Ragioni di un primato e qualche appunto per il collezionismo di Dante in casa Trivulzio a margine di una proposta di catalogo, in Il collezionismo di Dante in casa Trivulzio, Milan, 2015, p. 7, no. 23; Archivio possessori, entries “D’Adda Salvaterra, Girolamo” and “Binda”; examples at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, FOAN TES 868 and FOAN TES 031, and the Biblioteca Universitaria di Padova, SEC.XV.1081.

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*Documento generato automaticamente dall'Archivio Govi Rare Books per finalità di ricerca e catalogazione.*