Descrizione

UNRECORDED MILAN POPULAR IMPRINT
8vo (146x96 mm). [16] pp. Collation: A4. Woodcut vignette on the title page showing the chariot of the tarots with zodiac signs. Title page set within a typographic frame. Two tailpieces, one incorporating the “biscione” (‘grass snake'), the historic symbol of the city of Milan. Modern cardboards. In very good condition.
Apparently unrecorded publication by the typographer Pandolfo Malatesta who was active in Milan between 1593 and 1626 with the title of royal chamber printer. Similar to other popular imprints issued by Malatesta at the beginning of his career, the pamphlet is presumably datable to the last years of the 16th century. It contains an anonymous poem in tercets (incipit: “Spettacol pien d'horror hor son, ch'io fui”) in which a dead man counsels a living man on the fragility of life in the framework of the traditional contrasts between the living and the dead, as well as a shorter poem in quatrains (incipit: “Amor fu quel ch'il Paradiso aperse”) attributed to a probably fictious Fra Mario Cappuccino alla Croce.