?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 900
Sex Work. Leggi e Memorie Venete sulla Prostituzione fino alla caduta della Republica.
Venice: Tipografia del Commercio di Marco Visentini, a spese del Conte di Oxford, 1870-1872.
First edition, limited, copy number 124 of 150 printed, never offered for public sale, folio, title page in red and black, frontispiece and additional full-paged allegorical and other plates in the text; bound in full olive calf binding by Riviere & Son ruled in gilt and tooled with an emblem of the Doge of Venice and the St. Mark's lion, (tooling on front board gouged with loss to the head of the winged lion), head and foot of spine lightly worn, but generally in good condition, internally clean and well-preserved, 12 3/4 x 9 1/4 in.
This catalogue of Venetian sex workers, complete with addresses and prices, also includes the names of women prosecuted for sex work between 1579 and 1617. The text is taken from a manuscript copy at the Raccolta Cicogna in Museo Correr of Venice (Misc. 2483), which itself was derived from an anonymous Venice imprint of 1535. A note in the State Archive of Venice refers to a trial against the printer Hieronimo Calepino in 1566 for printing and selling the same work. Text of the many laws banning sex work can be found here, dating from 1228 to 1796, and the various state-imposed punishments for sexually related crimes.
Soranzo 8771 and 8965; Gay Bibl. De l'Amour II, 790.
