12 etchings: St. Teresa reads Augustine and burns her own book. No U.S. copies.
[Teresa of Ávila] / Ambrogio Maria di Santa Barbara. Mistico ritratto della serafica vergine Santa Teresa di Giesù, Delineato con dieci Meditationi sopra le di lei più Eroiche Virtù. In Modona: per Bartolomeo Solani, 1697. 12mo [14.o x 8.5 cm], [1] f. title page, v-xiv pp., 144 pp., with XII double-leaf “madrigali” each consisting of a full-page etching facing a one-page poem etching (which are outside the pagination), here perhaps without an initial blank or half-title, with woodcut initials and tail-pieces. Bound in late 18th- or early 19th-century card covered in red mottled paper, spine gold-tooled, manuscript title label laid to spine, red edges. Minor rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards, a few stains. Narrow upper margin with a few page numbers touched, narrow fore edge just entering the platemark of a few of the etchings, the occasional early annotation, occasional minor toning a staining, on front free endpaper is a manuscript ownership inscription of convent with a letterpress shelf mark label (“Questo Libro, è del Mon.ro della Visataz.e S.ta Maria di Soresina Biblioteca [in letterpress:] Ripostiglio XI”), on front pastedown is a twentieth-century ex-libris of professor Gianfranco Emilio De-Paoli.
$2850
Extremely rare (no U.S. copies) first edition of this 1697 devotional work presented in the form of a “mystical portrait” of Santa Teresa di Giesù, i.e., Teresa of Ávila (1515-82), the Spanish Carmelite nun, author and reformer. The Mistico ritratto della serafica vergine Santa Teresa di Giesù is notable for its suite of 12 unusual full-page etchings of scenes from Teresa’s life, each paired with a facing madrigale.
The reader is meant to contemplate the images in conjunction the related poems and contemplative prose orations, invocations and a nine-day prayer cycle, or ‘novena’ (plus a tenth day here).
In the etchings Teresa is depicted, e.g., as an portrait easel painting being completed by an angel, reading Augustine’s Confessions, throwing herself into thorn bush, placing upon the altar a book containing her reforms for the Carmelites, catching in her mouth the consecrated host that flies from a priest’s hand, burning her own book on the Song of Solomon at the behest of one of her confessors (the text, the Conceptions of Divine Love of God, fortunately survived in other copies), etc.
The work is by the Carmelite Ambrogio Maria di Santa Barbara. The etchings are unsigned but are by an artist of some education. One is reminded of Lodovico Mattioli’s (1662-1747) ephemeral work for Bolognese convents.
Appended to the main text is Domenico di Giesù’s (1559-1530) Concerto e concordia spirituale, an indulgences spiritual exercise first published in 1624.
The volume carries an inscription indicating that it once formed part of the library of the convent of Visitandines in Soresina (Monastero della Visitazione Santa Maria di Soresina), located some fifteen miles north of Cremona. In the twentieth century it was in the library of Professor Gianfranco Emilio De-Paoli.
This first edition of the Mistico ritratto della serafica vergine Santa Teresa di Giesù is not located by OCLC, KVK or OPAC/SBN/ICCU, but its existence was known to some bibliographers (e.g., E. Milano, p. 40). Subsequent editions (Bologna: Per li successori del Benacci, 1719 and Bologna: Sassi, 1737) are also very rare; in the U.S. the second edition is found at the Carmelitana Collection (Washington DC).
*Fernando Moreno Cuadro, “Iconografía de Santa Teresa,” Norba: Revista de Arte, vol. XL (2020) pp. 157-174, p. 165; Ernesto Milano, Lavori preparatori per gli Annali della Tipografia Soliani.