Lot 179
Picerli, Silverio.
Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: 16 January 2008 at 11:00 GMT
Description
Specchio secondo di musica, nel quale ... Canto figurato, e fermo. Naples: Matteo Nucci 1631. First edition, 4to. pp. (viii) 196 (viii), frontispiece engraving of Apollo (?) added, printer's dragon woodcut device within red-printed Cardinal's hat on titlepage, musical scores throughout, contemporary limp vellum gilt, stamped in gilt on coves with eight hedgehogs within ornate oval frame, gilt border with one hedgehog at each corner, lower outer margin of D2-E4 slightly chipped, tears to two leaves [no loss], light lamp-oil stain to one gathering, occasional early manuscript annotations, a few leaves unopened
Footnote
Note: Second song manual written by Fr. Picerli and dedicated to Cardinal Boncompagno, Archbishop of Naples. The year before, Fr. Picerli had presented Cardinal Boncompagno with the first 'Specchio di musica'. A third one was expected to be published soon, as the Apostolic censor noted in his imprimatur on verso of titlepage, but no copy has been located. Fr. Silverio Picerli was a C16 Italian music theorist, a theologian and a Franciscan friar. He was successively Superior of the monastries of S. Maria Maddalena and of S. Chiara, in Naples.
The depiction of hedgehogs ('ricci' in Italian), on the binding, implies that the first owner belonged to an Italian family with this surname, perhaps the 'Ricci' family of musicians from Naples.
BM STC It. C17 II p. 683. 'Library of Congress. Catalogue of Early Books on Music' p. 209.