Lettera apologetica dell'Esercitato accademico della Crusca contenente la difesa del libro intitolato Lettere d'una peruana, per rispetto alla supposizione de'quipu scritta alla duchessa di S**** e dalla medesima fatta pubblicare.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sansevero, Raimondo di Sangro, principe di, 1710-1771, author.

Contributor:

Baldi, Antonio, 1692-approximately 1778, engraver.

Morelli, Gennaro, active 18th century, printer.

Accademia della Crusca, other.

Language:

Italian

Subjects (All):

Grafigny, Mme de (Françoise d'Issembourg d'Happoncourt), 1695-1758. Lettres d'une Péruvienne.

Grafigny.

Quipu.

Lettres d'une Péruvienne (Grafigny, Mme de).

Genre:

Printing in multiple colors at one pass.

Physical Description:

[14], 320 [that is, 326], [16] pages, 3 folded leaves of plates : ill. (engravings) ; 28 cm (fol.)

Fingerprint:

r-al eno, leno saSa (3) 1750 (R)

Place of Publication:

In Napoli : [Gennaro Morelli], MDCCL [1750]

Summary:

First edition of the first extensive treatise by the Neapolitan polymath, inventor, alchemist, scholar, and Freemason Prince Raimondo di Sangro on "quipus," constructions of knotted cords used by indigenous peoples of the Andean area to communicate and record numerical information. Although di Sangro was, on the surface, writing in response to criticism of a recent popular novel by Madame Françoise de Grafigny, Lettres d'une peruvienne, in which two lovers--one in France, one in Peru--communicate using quipus instead of letters, he took this opportunity to promulgate his ideas on free thought, and on the origin of the world and the creation of man, and to express hostility to interference by the Church. The book was banned by the Church in 1752.

Notes:

Imprint date of 1750 on title page, although printing permission at end is dated February 11, 1751.

Printer's name from request to publish on leaves Ss1-Ss5.

Signatures: pi1 a⁴ b² A-O⁴ P⁸(-P8) Q-Z⁴ Aa-Rr⁴ Ss*²(Ss*1+Ss⁶).

Leaf Ss*2 is blank. Leaves a1-a2 signed a2-a3.

Vertical chain lines.

Gathering P paginated as follows: 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, [blank], *117, [blank], 118, [blank], *118, [blank], 119, 120.

Engravings: engraved device (signed: Ant. Baldi fecit) of the Accademia della Crusca on title leaf, featuring cherubs at work milling wheat, winnowing out the bran (much as the Accademia sought to "winnow" out corrupt and impure words and structures from the Italian language, and to preserve the good and pure part) above which a ribbon bears the motto of the Accademia, adopted from Petrarch, "Il piu bel fior ne coglie"; engraved headpiece (signed: Ant. Baldi fecit) on leaf A1r, portraying cherubs from both the Old World and the New World (in native headresses and loincloths) making quipus, with the motto of Raimundo di Sangro (known within the Accademia as "Esercitato"; see Melzi), "Esercitar mi sole"; two engraved initials; and three folded hand-colored engraved plates, each of which is tipped onto a blank sheet so that it can be unfolded outside the the bookblock for convenience. The first plate presents the colored knot arrangements representing 40 master words ("parole-maestre"), along with their transcriptions (in Quechua?); the second plate records a song ("canzoncina") about a princess, in words as well as pictures of the corresponding quipu knot arrangements; the third plate contains the colored knot arrangements for transliterating the letters of the alphabet, diacritics, punction marks, and spaces in six languages: Italian, Latin, French, Spanish, German, and English.

Small woodcut illustrations on pages 172 and 193.

Text printed in black, in large Roman type; polychromatic title page printed in four colors: orange, olive green, dark red, and black. The title vignette is engraved in dark red ink. Text on the second plate is printed in red and green, with words to the song printed in black. Third plate printed in black. Sansevero claimed to have invented a process for printing simultaneously in multiple colors.

Printed marginalia.

Errata on leaf Ss6.

Local Notes:

Kislak Center RBC 2026 111 purchased for the Penn Libraries in 2026 from Rulon-Miller Books. Effaced early manuscript inscription on title leaf. Bookseller's manuscript notes in pencil on verso of front free endpaper, following blank leaf, and back free endpaper. Bound in contemporary full mottled calf(?); 5 raised, gold-tooled bands on spine; gold-tooled spine panels; gold-stamped red leather spine label; decorative endpapers; all edges red; green silk marker. Housed in clamshell case. Tail of spine lightly wormed; worming at tail inner corner of leaf Ss*2, back free endpaper and back pastedown. Bookseller's description of this copy laid in.

Cited in:

Melzi, G. Anonime e pseudonime, I:375

OCLC:

14227943