Isabella Piccini (1644–1734) who was the daughter of the Venetian engraver Giacomo Piccini (d. 1669), who trained her in the art of drawing and engraving in the styles of the great masters, particularly Titian and Peter Paul Rubens. In 1666 she entered the Convent of Santa Croce in Venice and took the name Suor (Sister) Isabella. She continued to work as an engraver, accepting numerous commissions from Venetian publishers to illustrate liturgical books, biographies of saints, and prayer manuals. However, as a Franciscan nun dedicated to a life of poverty, she divided her earnings between her convent and her family living in Venice. Her long and productive career ended with her death at the age of ninety.

In the spirit of the recording angel and of course the flying Nun I introduce the: Engraving Nun!

THESE HAVE ALL SOLD

But stay tuned , I will find more !

PLEASE contact me if you are interested to be offered them as they turn up at Jamesgray2@me.com

1. 620J Divi Avrelli Avgvstini Hipponensis episcopi Meditationes Sold

2. 807J Chifflet, Philipp (1597-1657)Sacrosancti et œcumenici concilii Tridentini SOLD

3. 808J. 5) Garzoni, Marino (ƒl 1418-) L’Arte di ben conoscere, SOLD

4. 811 Tesauro ,Emanuele . (1591-1677)La Filosofia Morale Derivata dall’alto 1671 SOLD

5. 813J –Tesauro ,Emanuele . (1591-1677)La Filosofia Morale Derivata dall’alto 1688 SOLD

6. 812J Vergil, Polydore, De gli Inventori delle cose. SOLD

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1). 620J  Saint Augustine (354-430).  Jean de Fécamp (early 11th century). Henricus Sommalius SJ (1534-1619)

Divi Avrelli Avgvstini Hipponensis episcopi Meditationes, Solioquia & Manuale. Meditations B. Anselmi cum tractatu de humani generis redemptione. D. Bernardi Idiotae viri docti, de amore diunio. Omnia ad mss. exemplaria emendata, & in meliorem ordinem distributa, opera ac studio R.P. Henrici Sommalii Societatu Iesv Theologi. 

Venetiis: Apud Nicholaum Pezzana 1718 Price SOLD

Duodecimo, 12 x 6cm. Signatures:A-Q¹²  Bound in contemporary calf gilt spine. The imprint of this book appears to me quite suspicious, and might deserve a bit more research. Most other copies have the original engraved t.p. dated 1691; This copy has been fudged, either in ink or in the plate toward 1718. The engraver of the plate is the Venetian nun Sister Isabella / Elisabetta Piccini (1644–1734) she was the daughter of the Venetian engraver Giacomo Piccini (d. 1669), who trained her in the art of drawing and engraving in the styles of the great masters, particularly Titian and Peter Paul Rubens. In 1666 she entered the Convent of Santa Croce in Venice and took the name Suor (Sister) Isabella. She continued to work as an engraver, accepting numerous commissions from Venetian publishers to illustrate liturgical books, biographies of saints, and prayer manuals. However, as a Franciscan nun dedicated to a life of poverty, she divided her earnings between her convent and her family living in Venice. Her long and productive career ended with her death at the age of ninety.

The artist signed the frontispiece engraving (in translation) “Sour (Sister) Isabella

Henricus Sommalius had been a member of the Societas Jesu since 1551 , and was the first rector of the Jesuit college in Douay. He edited several editions of works by medieval theologians and church fathers. Among them are Albertus Magnus : Paradisus animae siue de virtutibus libellus , Antverpiae, Plantiniana, 1602; Aurelius Augustine : Confessions , Douay, 1608; the pseudo-Augustinian Soliloquium, Mediationes und Manuale, Douay, 1607. He wrote the famous edition of Thomas von Kempen ‘s Opera omnia (a Kempis), first edition in 1600, Antwerpen with Nutius, where the second edition was also published in 1607 and the third in 1615, which as first complete edition applies. [1]Further reprints then in various places, such as the 7th edition in Cologne in 1680, and finally in Cologne in 1759, published by Eusebius Amort , It seems possible that the curent edition of “Augustine’s Meditatios” was printed in 1701 without printer or place or date and then re-issued to accompany the a’Kempis? 

DeBacker’Sommervogel Vol. VII Col.1381 No5. 

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4) 807J. Chifflet, Philipp (1597-1657)

Sacrosancti et œcumenici concilii Tridentini Paulo III, Iulio III et Pio IV pp. mm. celebrati canones et decreta :quid in hac editione præstitu[m] sit sequens Philippi Chiffletii … præfatio indicabit.

Venedig: Nicolaus Pezzana, 1688. Price $ SOLD

 Duodecimo 12 x 6.5 cm. Signatures: *¹² A-S¹² ,The title with a very beautiful engraved depiction of a council session (in a frame of putti, allegorical figures, and fauns ) engraving made by Isabella Piccini. – title-page depicting Popes Paul III and Julian III, alongside a view of the proceedings of the Council of Trent, signed “Soror Isabella P”.– The binding has been restored (the parchment straps and endpapers have been replaced). – Slightly rubbed and bumped; a fine copy. Bound in contemporary parchment binding, parchment straps, spine and cover titles in old handwriting, .

Provenance: “Si hic liber amitteretur et dominus non reperetur: Ego Michael de dominicis sum dominus. Die trigesimo primo martii millesimo septingentesimo primo Anno Domino” (If this book is lost and the owner cannot be found: I am Michael de Dominicis, the owner. On the thirty-first day of March in the year one thousand seven hundred and one; ownership note in old hand on the verso of the title page).

Contains the results and resolutions of the 25 sessions of the council, a list of participants with names and origins, and several registers. The Council of Trent (1545-63), was “highly important for its sweeping decrees on self-reform and for its dogmatic definitions that clarified virtually every doctrine contested by the Protestants. Despite internal strife, external dangers, and two lengthy interruptions, the council played a vital role in revitalizing the Roman Catholic Church in many parts of Europe. Pius IV confirmed the council’s decrees in 1564 and published a summary of its doctrinal statements; observance of disciplinary decrees was imposed under sanctions. In short order the catechism of Trent appeared, the missal and breviary were revised, and eventually a revised version of the Bible was published. By the end of the century, many of the abuses that had motivated the Protestant Reformation had disappeared, and the Roman Catholic Church had reclaimed many of its followers in Europe” (Britannica)

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5) 808J.  Garzoni, Marino (ƒl 1418-)

L’Arte di ben conoscere, e distinguere le Qualità de’ Cavalli, d’introdurre, e conservare una Razza Nobile, e di risanare il Cavallo da’ Mali, a’ quali soggiace. 

Venice: Andrea Poletti, 1700.        Price SOLD

Quarto 23 x –cm. Signatures : a⁸ A-X4, 3 full-page engravings of a horse: facing pages 1, 80, and 197. For the 2nd and 3rd, body parts are labeled with numbers. Each signed “Suor Isabella Piccini Scopi” or “Suor Isabella Piccini F.” Contemporary full vellum slightly worn at the extremities; light waterstain to the seven preliminary leaves and the first plate; tidemark to the top and bottom margins throughout; essentially a very good copy

It is most probable that Suor Isabella Piccini F.” is one of the earliest Women to publish engravings of horses and certainly one of very few Franciscan nuns.

Grisone was considered the “inventor” of the equestrian treatise genre because his work dedicated “to the training of horses for the use of war” was the first to be printed and was then the first to be disseminated on a large scale. Grisone started a riding academy in Naples in 1532, and in 1550 published the influential Gli ordini di cavalcare, “The Rules of Riding”, one of the first works on horsemanship since the time of Xenophon

This work was a best-seller of its time. Between 1550 and 1623, twenty-one Italian editions were printed; fifteen translated editions were published in French, seven in German, one in Spanish and six in English.  The earliest of these, The arte of ryding and breakinge greate horses, an abridged and adapted translation made by Thomas Blundeville at the suggestion of John Astley and published with plates from the original in 1560, is the earliest book in English on equitation Grisone was admired and respected as a great master of his time. Caracciolo wrote of him in 1566 “From the first it seems that every horse obeys his signal, such that those who watch are amazed.”

¶Pasquale Caracciolo, La Gloria del Cavallo

His training methods profoundly influenced the training of horses in his day, and were spread into France by Giovanni Battista Pignatelli and his pupils Salomon de la Broue and Antoine de Pluvinel. Today his methods are criticised, particularly outside Italy, for their sometimes harsh treatment of the horse. Grisone is well known for his rather forceful, sometimes cruel, methods of training. He was influenced by the famous general Xenophon, especially in the positioning of the rider’s seat and aids, but he appears to have given up the part where Greek master advocates the gentle training and riding of the horse.

There are several cases in his book “Gli Ordini di Cavalcare,” or The Rules of Horsemanship, first published in 1550, where he applies severe practices. He used harsh methods to subdue the horse, using severe spurring and harsh bits (of some of which he was the inventor).  Other examples of his cruel methods include placing live hedgehogs under the animal’s tail, punishing a horse by placing a cat strapped to a pole under its belly,[2] and forcing the horse’s head under water to the point of near-drowning if it showed any fear of crossing water. Grisone was not an advocate of the now “classical” position that was first suggested by Xenophon, and instead preferred the rider to sit with his feet pushed well forward 

Grisone was considered a master of his time, and his training methods had a great impact on the training of horses of his day. They spread into France, thanks to Salomon de la Broue and Giovanni Battista Pignatelli. However, later masters such as Antoine de Pluvinel, restored the ideas of gentle training of the horse

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6. 811J Tesauro, Emanuele (Torinese).

La Filosofia Morale Derivata dall’alto Fonte del Grande Aristotele Stagirita. Dal Conte, e Cavalier Gran Croce D. Emanuele Tesauro patricio torinesa.

Vientia Nicolo Pezzana 1688        Price SOLD

Duodecimo 15 x 8 cm. Signatures:A-Z¹² Aa-Gg¹² Frontice portrait by Isabella Piccini signed SIPF (Suor Isabella Piccini Franciscan). Bound in contemporary calf binding rather warn but the decoration on the spine is quite nice and the cords are holding strong.

Emanuel Tesauro (January 28, 1592 Turin – February 26, 1675 Turin) was an Italian rhetorician, poet and dramatist, historian, from 1612 a member of the Jesuit order. In the years 1618-1621 he worked as a professor of rhetoric in Cremona and in Milan. In 1634 he left the Jesuit order and remained a secular priest. For some time he lived in Flanders, where he worked as a tutor to the children of Eugene of Saxony In 1642 he returned to Turin, where he became the preceptor of the princes of Carignan. In 1666, he was commissioned by the municipality of Turin to write the history of the city. He is the author of several ingenious metaphors not lacking in wit, Umberto Eco refers to him as inventing the “Metaphor machine” which are central to his poetry. He himself called metaphor the mother of all wit. His most famous book is “Aristotelian Telescope” published for the first time in 1654, the book is an important foundation for the journey of modern European aesthetics.

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7. Tesauro,Emanuele (Torinese).

La Filosofia Morale Derivata dall’alto Fonte del Grande Aristotele Stagirita. Dal Conte, e Cavalier Gran Croce D. Emanuele Tesauro patricio torinesa.

Vientia Nicolo Pezzana 1671        Price $ SOLD

Duodecimo 15 x 8 cm. Signatures:A-Z¹² Aa-Gg¹² Frontice portrait by Isabella Piccinisigned SIPF (Suor Isabella Piccini Franciscan). Bound in contemporary vellum.
Bound in contemporary vellum with pen decorated spine Title and a shelf mark N:iiS4. 

Emanuel Tesauro (January 28, 1592 Turin – February 26, 1675 Turin) was an Italian rhetorician, poet and dramatist, historian, from 1612 a member of the Jesuit order. In the years 1618-1621 he worked as a professor of rhetoric in Cremona and in Milan. In 1634 he left the Jesuit order and remained a secular priest. For some time he lived in Flanders, where he worked as a tutor to the children of Evžen Savoy. In 1642 he returned to Turin, where he became the preceptor of the princes of Carignan. In 1666, he was commissioned by the municipality of Turin to write the history of the city. He is the author of several ingenious metaphors not lacking in wit, which are central to his poetry. He himself called metaphor the mother of all wit. His most famous book is “Aristotelian Telescope” published for the first time in 1654, the book is an important foundation for the journey of modern European aesthetics.

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8. 812J Vergil, Polydore, 1470?-1555.  tr Baldelli, Francesco,; active 16th century. 

Di Polidoro Virgilio da Urbino De gli Inventori delle cose. Libri Otto. Tradotti per Francesco Baldelli, con due Tavole, una de’ Capitoli, e l’altra delle cose più notabili. Consagrati al Merito de Nobilissimi Virtuosa di questa Patria.

In Brescia : Per Domenico Gromi, 1680  

Price $. SOLD

Quarto  21 x 15 cm. Signatures: π⁴ a⁴ ²a⁴ b-e⁴, A-3B⁴./ Title in red and black. Engraved frontispiece. allegorical frontispiece engraved in copper by the famous artist Isabella Piccini.  Woodcut printer’s device on title page .; decorated and historiated initials, tailpieces./ Includes index

Bound in a beautiful contemporary binding in rigid parchment with title stamped in gold on the spine. Small coat of arms on the title page. Some slight foxing on the outer edges of the first and last 4 leaves, irrelevant and overall in good to excellent condition. 

This translation is of great intellectual originally from Cortona, Francesco Baldelli, of the most famous work of the great naturalized English humanist from Urbino, Polidoro Virgili (Urbino, 1470 – Urbino, 18 April 1555). Polidoro Virgili (or Virgilio, also known as Polydore Virgile or Polydore Vergil ) was an Italian naturalized English priest, historian and humanist. He is also known as PV Castellensis or Castellesi. A forerunner of scientific historiography, he is particularly known for having published, commissioned first by King Henry VII and then by Henry VIII, the history of the British Isles as well as a history of inventions. William Shakespeare uses his works to historically frame his theatrical plays set in England. De Inventoribus (Paris, 1499). Written in just three months it deals with the origin of everything. An authentic encyclopedic work, in it the author develops numerous anecdotes on the origins of science, astrology, music, divination, games, sport, religion, heresies. One part concerns agriculture, wheat, fruit, foods, game, the discovery of grapes and the art of producing wine, etc. It originally consisted of seven volumes, increasing to 8 in 1521. This second book is dedicated to Guido’s tutor, Lodovico Odasio, of Urbino. This work becomes very popular and is soon translated into French (1521), German (1537), English (1546) and Spanish (1551). All editions, however, except those that follow the text sanctioned by Gregory XIII in 1576, are placed on the index of prohibited books. In the first book he deals with the origin of the gods and investigates the meaning of the word “god”. He also discusses topics such as creation, marriage and religion. The second book covers, among other things, law and military science, but also money and precious metals. The third book proceeds to discuss trade in agriculture, architecture and other activities. Since this book gained great popularity, Virgili added five further books dedicated to the initia institorum rei Christianae. This book also serves an important purpose: it is a concession to the Church which had declared his work heretical and depraved, not criticizing it but analyzing it with a scientific method. Virgili, thus, was well ahead of his time. He himself considered Inventoribus and Adagia to be his masterpieces. It is these, rather than the Anglica Historia that make Virgil a celebrity, both in England and on the continent. His later fame is also based on these works. Rare edition in beautiful contemporary binding.

Brian P. Copehaver wrote an exemplary work on De Inventoribus Rerum, The Historiography of Discovery in the Renaissance…, his argument being that De Inventoribus Rerum was an important and influential work of the Renaissance.  He wrote:

“Polydore’s effort to display a number of points of view on the origin of music is typical of the first three books of De Inventoribus, which contain chapters on cosmology, human origins, philosophy, astrology, geometry, weights and measures, numbers, medicine, pharmacy, magic, divination, time-keeping, books and writing, memory, the horse, metallurgy, coining, unguents, glass, sculpture, painting, agriculture, arboriculture, viniculture, animals, textiles, architecture, towns, monuments, and many other topics of interest to students of the historiography of science, technology, and medicine in the Renaissance. For all of them Polydore used essentially the same method: he tried to list and to sort out the various priority claims to be found in a most impressive range of sources, 155 titles by 88 classical, patristic, and early medieval writers.”

author deals with a large number of interesting subjects, including: literary genres, astrology, magical arts, divination, the origin of laws, the calendar, printing, mnemonics, military art, games, metals, coins, glass and amber. The third book, dedicated to agriculture, deals with subjects such as: the cultivation of trees and vines; the art of producing wine; hunting and fishing; linen, silk, carpets and textile arts; architecture, construction of labyrinths, pyramids and obelisks; theatre, commerce. The game of chess is mentioned on pp. 95-96. Elisabetta Piccini, or rather Sister Isabella Piccini, is one of the rare and very little-known female engravers. He was born in 1644 in Venice to a family of Venetian engravers. In 1666, in his early twenties, he entered the Franciscan convent of Santa Croce in Venice where he could practice his art in complete tranquility. His works were much sought after by the publishers of the time and appreciated by the public.