Del bello e del sublime,: libri due

Milano: Tipografia Mussi, 1810. First edition. Very Good. Octavo (23 cm); 142, [2] pages. Bound in nineteenth-century green straight-grain morocco, ruled in gilt on both boards within a surround of gilt-tooled scallop shells; spine highly decorated in gilt with delicate interlocking circles set off by Greek key horizontal borders. GIlt turn-ins; marbled endleaves. Binder's ticket of Lodigliani. All edges gilt. Spine faded to brown, not affecting gilding. Five globular water spots, some with satellites, on upper board. Upper joint tender. Ownership inscription on front blank dated 1922. Few stray underlines in pencil.

Intellectuals in the 18th century rediscovered the classical treatise, On the Sublime, attributed to Longinus, and made it a central text in their discussion of aesthetics. Edmund Burke's "Enquiry" (1757) and Kant's "Critique of Judgment" (1790) became the primary texts in an international discussion on categorizing "the beautiful," "the picturesque," and "the sublime." (The question remained vivid for English Romantics such as Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley.) The text offered here is a sort of summary of the history of aesthetics, rather less dense than those of Kant and Schelling, with an ear toward aesthetics in the Italian literary tradition of Pindemonte, Alfieri, and Foscolo. The printer, Luigi Mussi, had worked as a typecutter in Bodoni's shop in Parma. He established his own business first in Parma, and later in Milan, disseminating the aesthetics of Bodoni designs in this and other works.