MARINO, Giovan Battista
Venezia, Ciotti, 1620 / 1622
In 12mo, Varese paper; the second part has its own title pageand numbering (“Le sculture, parte seconda, della galeria del Cavalier Marino…”, Venezia, Ciotti, 1622, but signature is continuous), a printer’s mark on engraved title page of second part.
The second edition, and the second one of two by Ciotti of1620, contemporary to the original (published in Milan by Bidelli).
Published by Marino near the end of his life (he dead in‘25), the project and writing of Galeria kept Marino busy for many years: his early intention was to publish an illustrated collection, with the help of his many painters and drawers friend, in which the illustrations and verses could show mostly mythological settings. But already since the1615, with the text in an advanced form, the collection of verses was already too wide to fit the original project, andthe work – that remains ambitious and peculiar – takes a shape similar to the one then realized: 453 composition inpoetry (for the most they are ‘madrigali’), defined by the authora “museum”, in the same meaning introduced by Paolo Giovio (v.) some decades before. Marino actual collection was important (between the paintings there were Rubens,Correggio, Carracci, Dürer, Titian, Michelangelo, etc.), and followed him during his travels around Europe, but the works here picted in poetry are often part of the collectionsof many influential personalities that M. met during his life.The work is split in two parts: painting and sculpture; the part dedicated to portraits can also be considered a modern agiography, with big characters from history (from pope Leone X to Francis Drake) or mythologi (King Arthur, Roland,Tancredi).
A strictly baroque work, a genre of which Marino is consideredthe main writer, his author took a meticolous care of it, and this is witnessed also by the many editions appearedin the same year of the first one. This ambitious and original work is, besides, the first in which the word “gallery” is used in the title of a book (the first written attestation is due to Benvenuto Cellini, between 1558 and 1562). Rare.
