London
CNN
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The Italian Renaissance diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli has become synonymous with subtle plans. And now an extremely rare first edition of his most famous work, the political manual ‘The Prince’, is being auctioned, with an expected sale price of up to £300,000 ($375,000).
According to auction house Sotheby’s, the copy of the early 16th century book is one of only eleven first editions included. While all others are owned by institutional libraries, largely in ItalyThis copy comes from a private collector and was previously unknown.
“We were not aware of any other copies in private hands, and this is the first copy that we are aware of that has come to auction, certainly in recent decades,” Sotheby’s Books & Manuscripts specialist Gabriel Heaton told CNN .
“So we have one of the greatest works of political theory of all time, one of the most famous books of the 16th century, and it is a very first edition and a unique opportunity to auction a copy,” he added.
Heaton said the auction house is “delighted” and “excited” to offer the “incredibly rare book” at Sotheby’s London at the next Books & Manuscripts auction, which runs from November 28 to December 12.
He described this copy of ‘The Prince’, which is still in its Italian binding from the early 17th century, as ‘very interesting’.
It is tied to another work by Machiavelli, a second edition of his longest book, ‘Florentine Histories’.
Machiavelli was not only a writer, but also a diplomat who served in the Florentine government until the republic was overthrown. by the Medici family in 1512.
He wrote ‘The Prince’ in 1513, after being imprisoned on suspicion of conspiracy and having retired to his father’s estate in the Florentine community of San Casciano.
The political treatise, dedicated to the Florentine ruler Lorenzo Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, was circulated in manuscript before Machiavelli’s death in 1527. Seven manuscripts, some written by his former colleague Biagio Buonaccorsi, are recorded as having been published after his death. death and before 1532.
About fifteen editions were in circulation before the Catholic Church banned the text in 1559 by including it in the Index of Forbidden Books. The Index bans books deemed dangerous to the faith or morals of Roman Catholics. The text was not republished until more than seventy years later.
The copy for sale – which was in an Italian library until the mid-19th century and passed through several hands before being acquired by an English private collector – dates from 1532.
The title page has been removed, possibly “to avoid confiscation by the authorities,” the auction house said, describing it as possible material evidence of the “illegal status of the text in Renaissance Italy after 1559.”
Machiavelli’s text advises princes to learn not to be good, but to act in accordance with necessity – and this step of looking at utopian ideals about the way people and the world are, and instead at reality, led to that he was considered the founder of the modern political world. science.
An early reader of this copy has put brackets in the margin of Chapter 18, a section containing some of the book’s most strikingly modern statements about the need for a shrewd politician to manipulate the gap between appearance and reality for his own ends ” according to his catalog entry, which adds that Machiavelli’s philosophical position must be contextualized by the “exceptionally volatile political climate” of the time, in which “even a skilled politician could experience a sudden and dramatic fall from grace.”
Machiavelli is “a writer who has intrigued people since the book was first written. He provides a very clear picture of the nature of political power, and especially of the way political power is exercised in times of turbulence and uncertainty,” Heaton said.
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