James gianetti (1 Ergebnisse)

First and only edition of "the first of the complete eulogies to Cook" (Smith, p. 228). A fascinating, highly appealing example of Cook's rapid European apotheosis, printed six years after his death and noted as a fine example of 18th-century Italian printing. An uncommon book with only a handful of copies traced in auction records. Gianetti was a dilettante poet and professor of anatomy at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence. His rhapsodic account includes "what were fast becoming common features of tributes to Cook, such as his humble beginnings, and his introduction of the fruits of European civilisation - new plants, breeds of cattle, technology and commercial skills - to the peoples of the Pacific" (Williams, p. 71). Kippis, Cook's biographer, noted that "greater honour is paid to [Cook's] name abroad than at home. A remarkable proof of it occurs, in the eulogy of our navigator, by Michael Angelo Gianetti, which was read at the Royal Florentine Academy, on the ninth of June, 1785, and published at Florence, in the same year" (Kippis, p. 505). The dedication is to Sir Horace Mann, British ambassador in Florence. The translation, signed "R. M.", is by English poet Robert Merry, who arrived in Florence in 1784 and entered the city's circle of expatriate English writers and dissident Italians, returning to England in 1787 following an affair with the mistress of the grand duke; it is Merry's extravagant style, which William Gifford later characterised as "Truth sacrificed to letters, sense to sound" (ODNB), which is responsible for some of the more high-flown elements in the English text, most famously the claim that Cook, who in fact never learnt to swim, could swim so well as to "cleave the waves of the Ocean with the facility of its inhabitants". This copy has the ownership inscription of Auguste Ponsot (1846-1924), dated 1878, across the title pages. Ponsot was a French chemist responsible for the invention of papier d'Arménie, a paper which when burnt releases a benzoin and vanilla smell. It was immensely popular in the 1880s and 1890s as a supposed air purifier. Beddie 1957; Forbes 99; not in Hill; Holmes 51; Kroepelien 486; Parks (Cook) 116; Sabin 27267; Spence 226. Andrew Kippis, The Life of Captain James Cook, 1788; Bernard Smith, Imagining the Pacific: In the Wake of the Cook Voyage, 1992; Glyndwr Williams, The Death of Captain Cook: A Hero Made and Unmade, 2008. Quarto (304 x 220 mm). With title pages in Italian and English, each with an engraved vignette of the Royal Society Cook Medal, Italian and English text in parallel, framed throughout. Contemporary marbled half calf, recent red morocco spine label, single flower in gilt to compartments between raised bands, Turkish pattern marbled sides, edges speckled blue. Housed in a custom grey cloth solander box. Contemporary ex libris inscription and various shelf marks to front endpapers, library stamps of the Lega degli insegnanti Bolognese to first few leaves, marginal pencil annotation to p. 55. Binding neatly refurbished, leather built up at spine ends and tips, evidence of prior label removed from lower compartment. Spots of wear to leather, sides rubbed, hint of worming to rear pastedown, outer leaves faintly soiled, a couple of marginal marks, light dampstain to fore edge margin of pp. 49-56, contents largely bright; a wide-margined copy in very good condition.…