Colonna (Stefano)

I sonetti, le canzoni, et i Triomphi di m. Laura in risposta di m. Francesco Petrarcha per le sue rime in vita, et dopo la morte di lei…, FIRST and ONLY EDITION, woodcut printer’s device to title and last verso, portrait of Petrarca to title verso, ornaments, title a little dusty, detaching, ownership note to title head in an unidentified contemporary hand, 17th century speckled calf, spine gilt, a.e.g., marbled endpapers, front hinge cracked, extremities rubbed, [Brunet, III, 879], 8vo, Comin da Trino di Monferrato, [Al segno del Diamante], Venice, 1552.

*** The supposed work of Petrarch's Laura in response to the love poetry which he addressed to her. Stefano Colonna, Lord of Palestrina, was a mercenary who served Cosimo I de' Medici as lieutenant general of the Tuscan army. Colonna, in the persona of Laura, engages Petrarch in a ‘tenzone’, a literary joust, played against Petrarch's own works.