Funerali di Giacomo III. Re della Gran Brettagna celebrati per ordine di Nostro Signore Papa Clemente XIII. L'anno MDCCLXVI

Folio (438x315 mm). Engraved frontispiece, XXXI, [1 blank] pp. and 2 large engraved folding plates. Engraved coat-of-arms of the British royal house on the title page. Engraved initials, head- and tailpieces. The frontispiece, engraved by Antonio Cappellan after Pietro Angeletti, shows the ascension to heaven of James III, with the personification of Death and Fame holding the portrait of the king. 19th-century quarter calf gilt (rubbed, joints cracked). Some marginal foxing, plates slightly browned with a few marginal tears, small holes in plate two affecting a small portion of the engravings.
First edition of the account of the funeral ceremonies held in Rome on the death of James Francis Edward Stuart (1688-1766), the only son of James II of England and his second wife, Mary of Modena, who died in Rome at his home Palazzo Muti on January 1, 1766, at the age of 77, and was buried in the crypt of St. Peter's Basilica.
James was Prince of Wales and heir apparent until his father's deposition and exile in 1688. He was raised a Catholic in continental Europe. After his father's death in 1701, he claimed the English, Scottish, and Irish crowns as James III of England and Ireland and James VIII of Scotland, with the support of his Jacobite followers and Louis XIV of France, a cousin of his father. Fourteen years later, in 1715, he made another unsuccessful attempt to gain the British and Irish thrones. After 1715, James lived in papal territory, first in Avignon, then in Pesaro and Urbino. Pope Clement XI then offered him the Palazzo del Re in Rome as his residence, which he accepted. Pope Innocent XIII, like his predecessor, was also very supportive and granted him a life pension of 12,000 Roman scudi. A final attempt at restoration was made in 1745 by his elder son, Charles Edward Stuart, known as the Young Pretender. After James's death, the Pope refused to recognize the claim of his elder son Charles to the British and Irish thrones, and gradually began to accept the Hanoverian dynasty as the legitimate rulers of Britain and Ireland.
The first plate (ca. 500x730 mm) shows the funeral apparatus designed by the architect Paul Posi at the behest of the pope in the church of the Santissimi Apostoli. The second plate (ca. 545x760 mm) shows the great procession for the Translatio corporis, with eight rows of figures (clerics, monks, knights, etc.) accompanying the king's coffin.
Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\MODE\024575.