Maffeo Barberino, later Pope Urban VIII (r. 1623–44), was a keen poet even after he assumed the papacy. By the end of his life, he had composed over 140 poems on various religious and spiritual themes, published in some twenty editions in both Latin and his native Italian. This edition contains selected translations by Giovanni Francesco Ferranti into verso sciolto, a kind of Italian blank verse, prefaced by an extraordinary 89-page dedicatory epistle to Francesco Barberini (1597–1679), the Pope’s nephew.

Pope Urban VIII was also the godfather of Henrietta Maria, Consort of Charles I (1609–1669) and this finely bound copy, with the queen’s arms painted on the covers, may have been a personal gift.


Bibliographic description
4to. 89, [7], 136 pages. Signatures: a-m4, A-R4.


Binding information
Contemporary Italian or French binding of crimson morocco (goatskin) over pasteboard, sewn on four recessed supports. On both covers, painted arms of Henrietta Maria (Stuart royal arms impaling those of France, though without those of Navarre) in a cartouche formed of foliate tools, crowned with a cherub’s head between; all within a panel design comprised of various decorative rolls and ornamental tools, with fleur-de-lys at corners. Spine flat, and similarly tooled to a narrow panel design. Board edges tooled with a gilt dotted roll. Textblock edges trimmed and gilt.

Included by Richard Rivington Holmes, Royal Libarian 1870–1905, in his Specimens of Royal, Fine and Historical Bookbinding (1893), no. 29.