4to, XXXIII ff. Printer's mark with a press on title page. Beautiful criblé initials. Lacking final blank. Damp staining in the first quire. Modern binding in half cloth
Very scarce original edition.
Ref. Not in Adams ; Machiels B-84 ; Renouard II,210 ; Gay I, 818. Manuscript ex libris on title page. Humanist treatise on marriage, composed between the summer of 1415 and the spring of 1416, for the wedding of Lorenzo de Medici and Ginevra Cavalcanti. It was first printed Paris 1513. It had previously circulated in manuscript form and was influential in both Italy and Germany. Considering the family institution in its relations with the functioning of the society, the author examines the nature of marriage from the social and legal point of view. Across eighteen chapters Barbaro offers advice for when and whom to marry, and suggests various tasks that women should do. In Barbaro's view, Lorenzo and Ginevra embodied the perfect marital union in which the qualities of masculine wealth and strength would harmoniously blend with the feminine attributes of nobility, fertility, and devotion to family. Barbaro identifies the wealth of wives with their intellectual and ethical endowments, not with their material possessions
