Details
CONDIVI, Ascanio. Vita di Michelangolo Buonarroti. Rome: Antonio Blado, 16 July 1553.
4° (195 x 137mm). Blado's large woodcut device at end (partly coloured by a juvenile hand), 3 fine historiated initials (one partly coloured by the same hand), with the penultimate but lacks the final blank. (Short tear in D4, light spotting and staining.) Contemporary limp vellum (spine worn, rather loose).
FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE of Condivi's moving biography of his master, parts of which may well have been dictated by Michelangelo himself. A mediocre artist and with no great talent as a writer, Condivi has nevertheless given us 'the most intimate description of Michelangelo we possess' (Schlosser). Vasari incorporated it almost entirely in the second edition of his Vite without acknowledgement. This first issue is without the two added leaves in quire L and with N2 signed correctly. Gamba 1330 'Molto raro'; Steinmann & Wittkower, Michelangelo Bibliographie, 488.
4° (195 x 137mm). Blado's large woodcut device at end (partly coloured by a juvenile hand), 3 fine historiated initials (one partly coloured by the same hand), with the penultimate but lacks the final blank. (Short tear in D4, light spotting and staining.) Contemporary limp vellum (spine worn, rather loose).
FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE of Condivi's moving biography of his master, parts of which may well have been dictated by Michelangelo himself. A mediocre artist and with no great talent as a writer, Condivi has nevertheless given us 'the most intimate description of Michelangelo we possess' (Schlosser). Vasari incorporated it almost entirely in the second edition of his Vite without acknowledgement. This first issue is without the two added leaves in quire L and with N2 signed correctly. Gamba 1330 'Molto raro'; Steinmann & Wittkower, Michelangelo Bibliographie, 488.