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Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare sample view of the 1629 - wine book.
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  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare sample view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare detail view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare captivating detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare interesting detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare detail view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare notable image of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare photograph of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare captivating detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare representative view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare captivating detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare photograph of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare detail view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare captivating detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare interior highlight of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare sample view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare detail view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare captivating detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare interesting detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare detail view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare notable image of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare photograph of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare captivating detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare representative view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare captivating detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare photograph of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare detail view of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare captivating detail of the 1629 - wine book.
  • Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino by Rendella, Prospero, a rare interior highlight of the 1629 - wine book.
Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino

Cornerstone of wine literature, law, and Bacchus in a rare red-and-black Giunta folio.

Rendella, Prospero

Tractatus De Vinea, Vindemia Et Vino
(...) In Quo Quae Ad Vinea Tutelam & Culturam, Vindemiae Opus, Vinitoris Documenta Pertinent; Ac Plures Quaestiones, & Leges, Animadvertuntum, 7 Dilucider Explicantur (...).

1629, Venezia, Giunta

First edition

$3,800 USD

Overview

First edition of a rare work on viticulture and wine in southern Italy by Prospero Rendella, in which legal scholarship and Dionysian tradition are woven together to explore the culture of the vine.
Printed by Giunta in red and black, with woodcut initials and generous margins, the book is as visually striking as it is intellectually rich. Far more than an agricultural handbook, it embeds the vine within the legal, cultural, and religious fabric of early modern Italy. Discussions of divine myths, vintage laws, and sacred festivals culminate in accounts of Bacchic rituals and the divine origin of the grape, rooting viticulture in both Roman heritage and rural practice.

Inside the book

After the dedication to Hieronymus Bona, setting the treatise in the framework of friendship, family, and scholarship, and a poetic preface to Bacchus that praises wine as a sacred gift and source of joy, the work opens with an index of topics ranging alphabetically from vineyard fraud to religious festivals. What follows is a vast compendium, unfolding in three main parts. The first part, De Vite Sacra and Tractatus de Vinea et Vindemia, introduces the vine in allegorical and symbolic terms before moving to the practical world of viticulture. Here Rendella addresses vineyard labor, the cultivator’s legal rights against grazing animals or human damage, and apotropaic rituals meant to quiet storms and other divine phenomena. He discusses vine diseases, methods of care, and the classification of varieties, while also weaving in Roman vineyard law, guardianship, harvest regulations, omens, contracts, and theological reflections on the vine as a divine symbol from Genesis to the Eucharist. The following part focuses on wines themselves, especially those of southern Italy, Naples and Apulia in particular. Rendella identifies dozens of regional varieties, such as sorbinum, lacrima, pomeianum, and lanciaguerra, while also discussing poetic nomenclature, Bacchic associations, and the wine trade. Here wine appears not only as a commodity but also as an emblem of both secular conviviality and sacred ritual. This portion further considers the feasts of St. Martin and the celebration of the new vintage, laws governing purity and fraud, the timing of commercial disputes, and the broader legal and moral discourses around wine, its place in Roman law, its role as a sacred emblem, and warnings against excess in contrast with philosophical abstinence. Throughout, the work is enriched with printed marginalia, making the Tractatus not only a legal-theological encyclopedia of the vine but also a living record of how contemporaries read, debated, and engaged with wine as crop, commodity, and sacrament.

Why La Fenice chose it

Contracts and omens, pests and priestly blessings, regional wines from Naples and Puglia jostling with allegories of Genesis and the Eucharist... Rendella’s Tractatus is that rare blend of lawyerly precision and Dionysian exuberance, a first edition so scarce it feels like stumbling across a vineyard that grows both statutes and myths on the same trellis. It’s a book that proves viticulture could be at once practical and poetic, sacred and profane, a legal manual and a hymn to Bacchus.

Condition Report

Pp. [1] f.e., [28], 98, [1] r.e.

18th-century full vellum, red spine label gilt-titled. Title page printed in red and black with attractive printer’s device; early manuscript note in the right margin. Woodcut ornaments and initials in the text. Early handwritten note in ink, in Latin, extending over four paragraphs in the lower margin of the final leaf, difficult to decipher. A handsome, wide-margined copy of the first edition.

Dimensions (inches): 13 x 9.5 x 3/4
About the author

Rendella, jurist and erudite enologist, surveys the vineyards and wines of the Italian South, examining grape diseases, the harvest, and the rituals surrounding viticulture. His observations range widely across trade, legislation, sacred festivals, the divine origin of the vine, and Bacchic rites (Vicaire, col. 737, 738: “Traité sur le vin assez rare”).

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