Engraved title page by Suor Isabella Piccini. Seneca with a false imprint.

Seneca / Suor Isabella Piccini. L. Annaei Senecae Tragoediae cum notis Farnabii. Amstelodami [Venice]: ex typographia Sanzoniana, 1695. 12mo [14.7 x 7.8 cm], [4] ff., 9-476 pp., including an engraved title page. Bound in contemporary vellum, title in manuscript on spine, red sprinkled edges. Small lost to lower extremity of spine, staining, rubbing and edge wear to spine and boards. Some worming to endpapers, small marginal losses to first and last leaves, contemporary shelf-mark and ownership inscription to title.
 
 
Rare (no U.S. copies) 1695 edition of the tragedies of Seneca notable for its title page engraved by the Franciscan nun Suor Isabella Piccini (1644-1732) of Venice. 
 
Elisabeta Piccini, the daughter of the engraver Giacomo Piccini (d. 1669), was signing copperplates while still a teenager. She entered the Convent of Santa Croce in Venice in 1666 and took the name Suor Isabella. She remained there until her death at the age of 90. She is known to have contributed engravings to some 230 books (often several plates per book), and she also produced separately issued engravings. 
 
The imprint here states that book was printed in Amsterdam, but by the Venetian Paolo Antonio Sanzonio (“ex typographia Sanzoniana”). This book seems to be a variant of an edition with the same collation (and Piccini title) with the imprint “Amstelodami: Sumptibus Iacobi Bertani, 1694,” of which the Princeton cataloguer of Piccini items states, “This is thus the only example of Piccini’s work in a false imprint that we are aware of.”
 
Seneca’s tragedies were of inestimable influence on Elizabethan and 17th-century French tragedy.
 
OCLC, KVK and OPAC/SBN/ICCU locate no U.S. copies of this 1695 ‘ex typographia Sanzoniana’ issue.
The Bertolani issue of 1694 is housed in the U.S. at Princeton, Loyola of Chicago, Saint Johns (Minnesota), and San Diego State.
 
* IT\ICCU\BVEE\037670; A. F. Valcanover, “Contributi ad una storia del libro illustrato veneto: Suor Isabella Piccini,” Biblioteche Venete, vol. 4 (1985), pp. 29-48; S. Urbini, “Sul ruolo della donna ‘incisore’ nella storia del libro illustrato,” in G. Zarri, ed., Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo: Studi e testi a stampa, pp. 367-391; L. Di Vaio, “Suor Isabella Piccini,” Grafica d’arte, vol. 14, no. 53 (2003), pp. 8-13; N. Pavanello, “Prime prove incisorie di Isabella e Pietro Piccini per l’antiporta del libretto d‘opera,” in Il cielo, o qualcosa di più: Scritti per Adriano Mariuz, E. Saccomani, ed., pp. 346-352, 449-450; G. Gastaldello, “Una donna incisore tra le mura del convento di Santa Croce di Venezia,” in TECA, no. 3 (2013), pp. 97-122. F. Baccanelli, “L’arte incisoria di Isabella Piccini nei libri veneziani di fine Seicento,” in La “splendida” Venezia di Francesco Morosini (1619-1694), M. Casini, et al., eds., pp. 134-145.