BOCCACCIO - MANNELLI D’AMARETTO. Il Decamerone.

Large 4to; 265x200 mm; Quarter leather binding with marbled cardboards, handwritten title on spine, red speckled edges; Pp. XXXVI, Leaves 373. Portrait of the Author on the frontispiece, Title page engraved on copper; folded plate with genealogy of Francesco di Amaretto Mannelli between p. VIII and IX of the preface and portrait of Mannelli engraved on copper on full page after p. XX. At the end of the preface and in the colophon, printer’s mark of Filippo Giunta and heirs. Copper engraved plate with facsimile of the original medieval manuscript. Ex-Libris by Francis John Davies on the inside cover. Nice copy with wide margins.

Beautiful and rare edition, highly esteemed and mentioned by the Accademici della Crusca and by Foscolo “que’ letterati liberali vincevano la più ardita fra quante pruove furono mai tentate dall’arte tipografica” (Gamba, 172 and 187). Reprint of Mannelli's Decameron of 1527, called Ventisettana, edited by Pier Antonio Guadagni with the assistance of Angelo Maria Bandini, to correct the various errors in the previous ones. Printed in Lucca in 1761, definitively corrected, it is to be considered the most faithful to Mannelli's original and also to that of Boccaccio.