1639 Roma Vetus ac Recens Alexandro Donato Rome 2nd Edition 17th C. Provenance

Roma vetus ac recens utriusque aedificiis ad eruditam cognitionem expositis. Auctore Alexandro Donato Senensi e Societate Iesu. Romæ, Ex Typographia Manelphi Manelphij. 1639. Second Edition, 404 p., + Index. 17th and 18th Century Provenance. Leather binding (not original) measuring 9 x 6.5 , 8vo. Woodcut bee on title-page for Urban VIII Barberini, to whom the work is dedicated. ***Three folding plates LACKING (49, 109 & 288 p.). In poor condition. As is. Both front and rear boards detached from binding. Detached boards scuffed at edges and worn/bumped at corners. Head of spine chipped; tail of spine lacking (headband remains). Small instances of worming to bottom corner of front board. Leather spine exhibits crack down mid-line; binding exposed. Ink marginalia found on front paste-down: Nathan P West May 4th 1802, & front fly-leaf (recto and verso): Samuel Lee, tenet. 1662. Front end-page detached from binding. Ink ownership signature found on top edge of title page: Mather Byles. N.P. West. 1808 Oct. 5th. Water or tea dampness staining to bottom half of text-block. Bee illustration on title page hand-colored red. Toning and age-staining throughout text-block. Instances of pencil and ink marginalia. Binding cracked between pages 176 - 7, cording exposed. Rear fly-leaf & end-page also exhibit ink & pencil marginalia. Age-staining to end-pages from leather lined paste-downs. Binding is very fragile - needs repair. Please see photos and ask questions, if any, before purchasing. Alessandro Donati (1584 - 1640) was born to a noble Sienese family. Donati moved to Rome in 1600 to enter the Collegio Romano where he took orders as a Jesuit, professing in 1617. He taught rhetoric there, and then became prefect of the school of humanities. He wrote a three-volume work of Latin poetry dedicated to Cardinal Francesco Barberini in 1625 with an introductory ode about the Barberini arms. He published the first edition of his Roma vetus ac recens utriusque aedificiis ad erudite cognitionem espositis in 1638, with further editions in 1639 and a second, corrected edition in 1648 and 1665, with a third (ultima) Roman edition following in 1725. Frontispiece designed by Giovanni Antonio Lelli, and originally engraved by J. F. Greuter for the first edition of this book, printed in 1638 and 1639 for Manelphi Manelphij. The Greuter frontispiece also appeared in the 1648 Roman edition published by Filippo Rubeis, but by 1665 the image had been copied by the German engraver Jacque Honervogt and bears his signature. This frontispiece appeared on editions through 1725, published in Rome by the de Rubeij brothers. Provenance: Samuel Lee (1625 1691) was an English Puritan academic and minister, late in life in New England. In July 1655 Lee was made minister of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, by Oliver Cromwell. He occupied the church till August 1659, when he was removed by a committee of the Rump parliament. Towards the end of the Protectorate he was also lecturer of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. After the Restoration Lee became a member of John Owen's congregation in Leadenhall Street, though John Wilkins, his former tutor, vainly urged him to conform. He preached in London churches, and sometimes resided on an estate he possessed at Bignal, near Bicester in Oxfordshire. Lee was a noted scholar, and studied astrology, but then destroyed the books and manuscripts that he had collected. on the subject. He continued the Theatrum Historicum of Helvicus from 1629 (Oxford edition, 1651). For the sixth edition (Oxford, 1662) he further supplied a treatise De Antiquitate Academiæ Oxoniensis, and Tractatulus ad Periodum Julianum spectans, both in the name of the printer H. Hall, and continued the work to that year. His Chronicum Cestrenæ was published in Daniel King's Vale Royal of England, London, 1656. FORN-SHELF-0461-BB-2409-HKREV16. …