Rosario della gloriosa Vergine Maria : con lle sttattiionii & iindullgenttiie delllle chiiese di Roma perr tutto L’'anno.
Venice: Presso la compagnia de gli Vniti, 1585. Over 150 woodcuts (including repeats) comprising almost full-page cuts (1 on t.p.) within borders. All had previously appeared in earlier editions. Ornamental and pictorial border pieces on almost every leaf. ( The wood cut on leaf 173v is upside. A later edition of the first rosary Book"" in Italian." This book has a wonderful
contemporary binding,
recently expertly rebacked.
It is of red Morocco with gilt
center images and borders
gilt, with angels. Certainly, these books were very popular, that said, very few copies have survived. This edition is represented on OCLC by only two copies worldwide. 1 US copy Saint Benedict/Saint John's University. (SJU Alcuin Arca Artium Rare BookBX2163 .C37 1585). [The authorship of the work and the woodcuts are attributable to the Dominican Friar Alberto da Castello, identified as author or editor at the authorizations of the Venecian Inquisition, given 5 April 1521. (Francesco Pisano)
Sander 6572-6573. See: Essling 2124. Item #807
The wood cuts represent the "Mysteries of the Rosary"
“From the beginning, publications on the Rosary came ac- companied by lavish xilographic illustrations. The most striking of these can be found in the edition of the Rosario della gloriosa Vergine Maria by Alberto da Castello from 1521 which contains a wealth of illustrations. This clearly shows that the Rosary was not just an oral recitation, but was also a contemplative prayer engaging the imagination, a combination later mirrored by the exercises of Ignatius of Loyola.
Alberto da Castello, born in the middle of the fifteenth century in Venice, joined the Dominican order around 1470 and wrote several devotional, liturgical, historical and canonical texts. In the Epistola prohemiale of his Rosario della gloriosa Vergine Maria he says that he wrote the meditations and organised the images ‘acciò che gli idioti che non sanno legere habbino el modo de contemplare gli divini beneficii et de questa contemplatione ne habbino qualche frutto spirituale’.( fol. 6r. ‘So that even the illiterate have a means to contemplate gifts from the divine and to receive spiritual fruits from such contemplation’ (translations are mine).He states that he writes especially for the ‘ignoranti, illetterati, idioti’, and that a good Christian must hold the mysteries of the Rosary deep in his heart. (Literary and Visual Forms of a Domestic Devotion: The Rosary in Renaissance Italy. Erminia Ardissino). [ URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctvbqs499.2.
Price: $7,800.00