Lettioni sopra la definitione d'amore, posta dal gran filosofo Platone nel libro chiamato il convito, di Girolamo Sorboli da Bagnacavallo Theologo, e Medico Fisico di Brescello

4to (188x141 mm). [8], 70, [2] pp. Collation: ¶4 A-I4. Printer's device on the title page. Woodcut coat of arms of the dedicatee, Count Paolo Emilio Boschetti, on title-page verso. Woodcut decorated initials. Roman and italic types. Modern cardboards. Margins cut short. A good copy.
First edition. In 1590 Sorboli published the Lettioni sopra la definitione d'amore (‘Lessons on the Definition of Love') with a dedication, dated July 1590, to Paolo Emilio Boschetti, governor of Brescello and very close to the Este family. The work is a commentary on Plato's Symposium, in which Platonic discussions of the nature and effects of love, and the role of beauty, are interwoven with Christian and Aristotelian elements. Soboli was certainly influenced by the teachings of Francesco Patrizi, who was a professor of philosophy in Ferrara at the time. The Lettioni enjoyed a certain degree of success, as it was reprinted in Venice in a pirated edition by the publisher Girolamo Polo at the instigation of Flavio Candidi in 1592. Sorboli's brother-in-law, the Ferrarese poet Giovanni Antonio Vandali, contributed a laudatory poem to the dedicatee (l. ¶4r).
Girolamo Sorboli, born in Bagnacavallo between 1545 and 1550, was a man of letters, a theologian, a philosopher, and a physician. He served as public doctor successively in three towns, Massalombarda, Bagnacavallo, and Brescello, all governed at the time by the Estes of Ferrara. He is the author of treatises on the plague (Bologna, 1577) and on comets (Ferrara, 1578), as well as of a pastoral play (Celestina, Ferrara, 1586) and several poems. He died in Brescello in 1591 (cf. P. Savoia, Sorboli, Girolamo, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 93, Rome, 2018, s.v.).
Edit 16, CNCE59571; USTC, 857063.