Maria Vergine coronata. Descrizione, e Dichiarazione della Divota Solennità fatta in Reggio li 13. maggio 1674. Composta dall'abbate Giacomo Certani Dottore, Teolog. Collegiato, e nell'Università di Bologna Professor Publico di Filosofia Morale

Folio (355x240 mm). Engraved frontispiece, engraved portrait of the dedicatee Francesco II d'Este, Duke of Modena and Reggio Emilia, [12], 137, [7] pp. and 14 engraved plates (11 folding). The folding plate inserted between pp. 70-71, has an additional movable part (here pasted on the back flyleaf) that allows to visualize the transformation of a tower into a fountain. The plates, showing chariots, triumphal arches, fountains and mechanical apparatuses, were engraved by Giuseppe Maria Mitelli from drawings by Carlo Virginio Draghi, Francesco Torri, Giacomo Carboni, Michele Augusta, Prospero Manzini, Cristoforo Cattelli and Orazio Talami. Contemporary marbled boards, inked title on spine (worn and rubbed, especially the spine, restorations to the panels). Marginal staining and foxing, small restorations to the outer blank margin of the final leaves, tears along the folding in some plates with no loss, all in all a good, genuine copy.
First edition of this sumptuous festival book celebrating the crowning of the Madonna della Ghiara in the cathedral of Reggio Emilia in 1674.
Giacomo Certani, from Bologna, was canon regular of S. Giovanni in Monte, where he twice gave public lectures on philosophy and theology. Later he taught philosophy in Cesena for three years and theology in Brescia, Milan and Bologna for five years. He preached in the most important Italian pulpits, including the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna in 1650. In 1649 he was admitted to the College of Theologians and appointed public lecturer in ethics at the University of Bologna. In 1653 he left the Order and became archpriest of Santo Stefano in Senigallia. On 17 June 1655 he was appointed canon of S. Petronio and soon afterwards archpriest of San Pietro di Anzola, later also receiving the canonry of the Pieve of Budrio (G. Fantuzzi, Notizie degli scrittori Bolognesi, Bologna, 1783, III, pp. 170-171).
Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\BVEE\046308; Libreria Vinciana, no. 207; Vinet, no. 816; Berlin Catalogue, 3222; Sartori, 14817; Lozzi, II, 4001; P. Hofer, Baroque Book Illustration, Cambridge, 1951, no. 74; A. Bertarelli, Le incisioni di Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, Milan, 1940, nos. 641-657.