Montaigne in Italia: un curioso esemplare della traduzione di Girolamo Canini

Abstract

The first complete Italian translation of Montaigne’s Essais, by Giro- lamo Canini, was published in Venice in 1633–1634, by the publisher-printer Marco Ginammi, in two volumes. Upon the genesis of this edition, recently new light has been shed by the discovery, in a Verona library, of a unique copy of the first of these volumes. The title page of this copy, indeed, bears not only a different text, but also a different and earlier year of publication (1629 instead of 1633). The present article, however, argues that this copy cannot be thought to be the first volume of a hitherto unknown previous edition. It should instead be considered a witness of an early stage of the production process, which for reasons that are difficult to establish exactly was subsequently interrupted, to be resumed and finished only some years later.