4to., contemporary full leather binding with compartmentalized, gilt-ornamented spine with gilt-lettered burgundy leather label, red painted edges, pp. [6], 245, [6], with copper-engraved vignette of emblem of the Arcadia Academy (Accademia degli Arcadi) to title page.Hinges tender, binding a little scuffed, mild waterstain to p. 1, some mild browning and foxing; but generally very good, tight and bright. Second edition, the first to appear in Italian, the first edition of Nostradamus’s work being in French, and having been published in Lyon in 1575 with the title Les vies des plus c?l?bres et anciens Poetes provensaux, qui ont floury du temps des comtes de Provence. An important work both for being an early compendium of biographies of the troubadours and as a publication issued under the auspices of the Accademia degli Arcadi, one of the most prominent literary associations to flourish in Italy at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; an institution founded in Rome in 1690 by none other than the editor of this volume, the critic and poet Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni. Text in Italian.
