first edition Hardcover
1660 · London
by CHRISTINA, QUEEN OF SWEDEN (1626-1689). Gualdo Priorato, Galeazzo, Conte (1606-1678), author
London: Printed for A.W. and are to be sold at the signe of the Bell in St. Pauls Church-yard, 1660. FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH (a re-issue of the 1658 ed.). The 1st edition, in Italian, was published in 1656 as “Historia della Sacra Real Maestà di Christina Alessandra, Regina di Svetia”. The translation, by John Burbery, is dedicated to Lady Mary Villiers, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (1622–1685). Hardcover. Fine. Bound in original Cambridge-style calf, rebacked in the 20th c. (wear to the boards). A nice copy though bound a bit tight and with some light marginal toning; very light marginal dampstain to a few leaves. 18th c. bookplate of the Irish writer and librettist, Newburgh Hamilton (1691–1761). Small marginal loss to leaf *3 touching one letter, light spots on leaf K5. Both issues are rare. A contemporary life of Queen Christina of Sweden, one of the greatest celebrities of 17th c. Europe. Educated, cultured, a patron of the sciences and arts, and a passionate book collector, Christina of Sweden was to become one of the great figures of Counter-Reformation Rome. In 1654 she abdicated her throne, converted to Catholicism, and relocated to Rome, where she took up residence in the Palazzo Riario in Trastevere. There she entertained international dignitaries and members from the higher echelons of the clergy (including Pope Alessandro VII).
Christina was a great supporter of theater and, in particular, of opera, as well as a patron of artists, architects, and sculptors, including Carlo Fontana and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. She paid Bernini the honor of visiting his studio and was hailed in her lifetime as the “Patroness of Rome” and the “Minerva of the North”.
The book offers a fascinating window on the splendour of mid-17th c. Baroque Rome, beginning with a description of the queen’s grand entry into the city, 23 December 1655, for which Bernini modified the city gate at Porta del Popolo, at the behest of his patron Pope Alessandro VII. The event is memorialized in the inscription above the gate, “Felici faustoque ingressui” ("For a fruitful and auspicious entry"). The queen rode on a palfrey saddled and adorned in blue and silver in a procession that included the senators of Rome, two cardinal legates, and a group of nobles, trumpeters, and a cavalry escort. Christina made her way to the Basilica of Saint Peter's, while the choir sang accompanied by the great double-organ, and Pope Alexander VII himself received her beneath the great bronze baldacchino of Bernini.
We hear of Christina’s visits to the great monuments, palaces, churches, libraries. We are treated to a play, staged in Christina’s honor, in the Barberini palace theatre. The settings and plot are described, and we get a taste of the spectacle: “[There were] several intermediums of dances, and musical consorts, with instruments suitable to the pleasure of so vertuous a recreation; they afterwards concluding with a dance admirably performed by two excellent dancers, and with the appearance of a squib full of fire-works, accompanyed with the noise of many mortar pieces.”(p. 439-40)
In the Jesuits’ Collegio Romano, the queen visited Athanasius Kircher’s museum, where she viewed his marvelous inventions:
“She went thence into the gallery, that was near, where Father Athanasius Kircherius the great Mathematician had prepared many curious and remarkable things, as well in nature, as art, which were in so great a number, that her Majesty said, more time was required, and less company to consider them with due attention. However she stayed some time to consider the herb called Phoenix, which resembling the Phoenix grew up in the waters perpetually out of its own ashes. She saw the fountains, and clocks, which by vertue of the load stone turn about with secret force.”(p. 430)
And we are given a front row seat at one of the most famous of the festivities held in her honor, the “carousel” held in the courtyard of the Palazzo Barberini on 28 February 1656, with its spectacular illuminations, floats, and a mock battle of the Amazons.
The queen was an important patron of the sciences, who counted among her friends and correspondents Descartes, Galileo, Halley and Cassini. The last of these made observations of comets (with Christina) in her palace garden. Cassini told in his autobiographical notes how each evening the Queen sent her page and coach to bring him to her palace, and how, as his head had to be uncovered in her royal presence, she placed her handkerchief on his head as protection against the night dews as they observed the heavens. It is no surprise that shortly after her arrival in Rome, she established an intellectual Academy in her palace, the first meetings of which are recounted in Gualdo Priorato’s book.
Christina was –and remains- a controversial figure. Her unconventional “masculine” attire, her extravagant expenditures, her support for the theatre, and her very public relationships with men, all added to her fame but often at the expense of her popularity. In the end, she was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica, one of only three women interred there. To this day she has endured as one of the most fascinating women of 17th century Europe. (Inventory #: 5297)
Christina was a great supporter of theater and, in particular, of opera, as well as a patron of artists, architects, and sculptors, including Carlo Fontana and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. She paid Bernini the honor of visiting his studio and was hailed in her lifetime as the “Patroness of Rome” and the “Minerva of the North”.
The book offers a fascinating window on the splendour of mid-17th c. Baroque Rome, beginning with a description of the queen’s grand entry into the city, 23 December 1655, for which Bernini modified the city gate at Porta del Popolo, at the behest of his patron Pope Alessandro VII. The event is memorialized in the inscription above the gate, “Felici faustoque ingressui” ("For a fruitful and auspicious entry"). The queen rode on a palfrey saddled and adorned in blue and silver in a procession that included the senators of Rome, two cardinal legates, and a group of nobles, trumpeters, and a cavalry escort. Christina made her way to the Basilica of Saint Peter's, while the choir sang accompanied by the great double-organ, and Pope Alexander VII himself received her beneath the great bronze baldacchino of Bernini.
We hear of Christina’s visits to the great monuments, palaces, churches, libraries. We are treated to a play, staged in Christina’s honor, in the Barberini palace theatre. The settings and plot are described, and we get a taste of the spectacle: “[There were] several intermediums of dances, and musical consorts, with instruments suitable to the pleasure of so vertuous a recreation; they afterwards concluding with a dance admirably performed by two excellent dancers, and with the appearance of a squib full of fire-works, accompanyed with the noise of many mortar pieces.”(p. 439-40)
In the Jesuits’ Collegio Romano, the queen visited Athanasius Kircher’s museum, where she viewed his marvelous inventions:
“She went thence into the gallery, that was near, where Father Athanasius Kircherius the great Mathematician had prepared many curious and remarkable things, as well in nature, as art, which were in so great a number, that her Majesty said, more time was required, and less company to consider them with due attention. However she stayed some time to consider the herb called Phoenix, which resembling the Phoenix grew up in the waters perpetually out of its own ashes. She saw the fountains, and clocks, which by vertue of the load stone turn about with secret force.”(p. 430)
And we are given a front row seat at one of the most famous of the festivities held in her honor, the “carousel” held in the courtyard of the Palazzo Barberini on 28 February 1656, with its spectacular illuminations, floats, and a mock battle of the Amazons.
The queen was an important patron of the sciences, who counted among her friends and correspondents Descartes, Galileo, Halley and Cassini. The last of these made observations of comets (with Christina) in her palace garden. Cassini told in his autobiographical notes how each evening the Queen sent her page and coach to bring him to her palace, and how, as his head had to be uncovered in her royal presence, she placed her handkerchief on his head as protection against the night dews as they observed the heavens. It is no surprise that shortly after her arrival in Rome, she established an intellectual Academy in her palace, the first meetings of which are recounted in Gualdo Priorato’s book.
Christina was –and remains- a controversial figure. Her unconventional “masculine” attire, her extravagant expenditures, her support for the theatre, and her very public relationships with men, all added to her fame but often at the expense of her popularity. In the end, she was buried in St. Peter’s Basilica, one of only three women interred there. To this day she has endured as one of the most fascinating women of 17th century Europe. (Inventory #: 5297)
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