FRANCO, NICCOLÒ (1515-1570). De le lettere di Nicolo' Franco, scritte à prencipi, signori, & ad altri personaggi, e suoi amici, libri tre; ne le quali si scuopre l’arte del polito, e del terso scrivere. In Venetia: appresso Giorgio Valentino, 1615.

8vo (the leaf 143x95 mm), contemporary ‘carta rustica’ venetian pasteboard, spine lately covered with colored paper, flyleaves with fragments of a leaf perhaps from a 17th cent. edition of Della Porta’s work on Physiognomy, generally a genuine copy (6 leaves still unopened). Small woodcut device on title-page, pp. [6], 256 [i.e. 258, the first numb. leaf wrongly numb. 5 as quoted by the Italian SBN].



Rare edition of this collection of letters of this poet (who was hanged in 1570 in Rome by the order of the Pope), a friend and then enemy of Pietro Aretino. The letters are arranged chronologically and span from 1531 to 1538. Among the recipients of the letters, we find the King of France François I (many letters), the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, the humanists Daniele and Ermolao Barbaro, Paolo Manuzio, Agostino Ricchi, Francesco Alunno, Francesco Veniero, the painter Tiziano (fol. 117v), Federico Badoer (founder of the literary academic for which Paolo Manuzio printed several editions in the late 1550, all of them listed by Renouard).