Martello, Pier Jacopo (1665-1727) and Franc. Aquila and Arnoldo Van Westerhout (engravers)

Versi e Prose de Pierjacopo Martello. [aeronautica italiana,] First edition.

Rome: Per Francesco Gonzago,1710. Large 8vo (201 x 132mm). Engraved frontispiece, partly hand-colored, title with woodcut device incorporating the "Occhi di Gesu" in a baroque frame, portrait of the author and another of Christ, the latter hand-colored, 8 engraved plates, 2 of which hand-colored (variable light spotting and staining throughout). Contemporary vellum, title in old manuscript on spine (stab-hole to upper cover). Engravings by Franc. Aquila and Arnoldo Van Westerhout. and Provenance: early French manuscript note about the book loosely-inserted. Boffito Bibliotheca Aeronautica Italiana I, 276. The plate illustrating the prose fantasy work "Del Volo Mattina" depicts a bizarre flying machine - clearly in trouble, since it is inverted, with an Icarus-like figure falling from it - based on Bartolomeu de Gusmao's 1709 proposal for his airship "Passarola". Beneath it lies the wreckage of another one.

OCLC no. 14267103

At the end of book IV of "Degli occhi di Gesù" (first published Bologna, 1707) Martelli describes an airship and its imaginary voyage. When the present edition of the poem was published, he added the four prose dialogues entitled "Del volo"; in later editions the fourth dialogue ("Mattina ultima") was suppressed. cf. Boffito, G., Biblioteca aeronautica italiana, 1929, p. 276; Venturini, G., Da Icaro a Montgolfier, 1928, p. 272-298.
Description: 16 preliminary leaves, 324 pages frontispiece, plates 21 cm. Item #51-2943

Price: $2,200.00