Jun 02, 2022 - Sale 2607

Sale 2607 - Lot 146

Price Realized: $ 1,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 300 - $ 500
Piccini, Isabella [aka Elisabetta] (1644-1734)
Four Early Books with her Engravings, 1663-1712. Including:

1) Giovanni Palazzi's De Dominio Maris Libri Duo, Venice: Combi & La Nou, 1663, 12mo, with engraved title by Piccini, her earliest published illustration, bound in original limp paper covers, untrimmed throughout, 6 x 3 1/2 in.

2) Sébastien-Joseph Du Cambout de Pontchâteau's Vita di S. Tomaso Acivescovo di Cantuaria e Martire Lucca: Presso i Marescandoli, 1696, translated into Italian by Giovanni Battista Cola, quarto, illustrated with a full-page engraving of of Thomas à Becket's murder/martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral by Piccini; bound in contemporary parchment, 8 1/4 x 5 3/4 in.

3) Miguel Antonio Frances de Urrutigoyti's Tractatus de Ecclesiis Cathedralibus, Venice: Baglioni, 1698, folio, title page printed in red and black with large woodcut; engraved vignette by Piccini depicting two female personifications of two virtues [perhaps Prudence & Temperance] flanking the arms of dedicatee Joseph Molino on the dedication leaf, second edition, bound in half leather with parchment-covered boards, 13 x 8 3/4 in.

4) Heinrich Sommalius's De Imitatione Christi Libri Quatuor, Venice: Nicolo Pezzana, 1712, 12mo, illustrated with a suite of twenty-six text vignettes (one on title page), illustrating the saint's life, of which six are signed by Piccini, bound in full contemporary sheep, gilt-tooled spine, rubbed, 6 x 3 1/4 in.

Piccini grew up in an artistic home, trained in engraving from an early age by her father, the illustrator and printer Giacomo Piccini (d. 1669). She signed the engraved title for the Palazzi with the first initial of her birth name, adopting Isabella after she joined the Convent of Santa Croce in Venice in 1666. Thus, at the time she created the plate, she was nineteen years old.