Descrizione

[BRUSCO GIACOMO AGOSTINO] – Description des Beautés de Genes et de ses environs ornée de differentes Vuës, de tailles douce, et de la Carte Topographique de la Ville.
A Genes Chez Yves Gravier, 1773.

8vo (170 x 115 mm.), contemporary boards covered with contemporary colored paper, a fresh, unsophisticated copy. Engraved frontispiece (signed ‘Tessera’ in the copperplate), pp. (2), 155, (1 blank) with a large, folding engraved plan of Genova and 12 folding engraved plates depicting views, palaces and noble buildings existing in town.

Second edition (after the first of 1768/69, appeared in two issues, but illustrated only with 1 or 2 plates) augmented both in the text and in the iconography, of this much appreciated prized guide of Genoa which went through several editions. The work constituted a precious point of reference for foreign travelers; Thomas Jefferson himself, during his trip to Europe in 1781, made a single stop in his Italian route, just in Genoa, and bought the present edition of the guide, which he used for the notes he wrote in his diary regarding the palaces and notable sites of the city (Jefferson then gave in 1815 his copy to the Library of Congress, where is still preserved nowadays). Manno, VI, 23830. Fossati Bellani, II, 2645 (later edition); Lozzi, 2113; Schlosser / Magnino, p. 576.