With an old woodcut map: “Figura del sito del Triumvirato romano.”
This third part of the monumental Bologna perlustrata is devoted to the political, administrative and institutional history of Bologna.
The work had first appeared in 1650, in a less developed form. For this edition, Masini revised and considerably expanded his work, now organized in three parts. The first follows, throughout the calendar year, the feasts, relics, ceremonies, indulgences and traditions of the Bolognese churches; the second gathers notices on the bishops and notable figures of the city; the third, present here alone, treats the power, institutions and civil history of Bologna. This last part appears for the first time in this extensive reworking.
A curious woodcut plate entitled “Figura del sito del Triumvirato romano” adds to the interest of the volume. It depicts the territory west of Bologna where, according to an old tradition, Mark Antony, Octavian and Lepidus — Caesar’s three political heirs — are said to have met in the autumn of 43 BCE to divide power among themselves. The agreement opened the way to the proscriptions, the elimination of the Republican opponents and, in the longer term, the rise of Octavian, the future Augustus.
The book has since been constantly consulted by historians of Bologna and specialists of its artistic heritage; an anastatic reprint was still issued in 1986.
A rare edition of this important seventeenth-century Bolognese compendium, complete with its woodcut plate devoted to the traditional site of the second triumvirate.
Early bookplate blacked out.
Small, discreet wormholes at head and foot of spine. Stain and trace of angular dampstaining, with slight distortion of one corner; a few gatherings loose, scattered soiling and foxing.
Cicognara, 4179; Frati, 3351; Lozzi, 679; Piantanida, 700.