MORELLI, Jacopo.

Descrizione delle feste celebrate in Venezia per la venuta di S.M.I.R. Napoleone il Massimo Imperatore de' Francesi Re d' Italia ...

      First edition of this very attractive Venetian festival book by the Librarian of the Marciana, withfine aquatint plates of the barques, triumphal arch and machina for the procession of Napoleon up the Grand Canal. Napoleon stayed ten days in Venice and the Venetians laid on various spectacles each and every day, among them regattas on the Grand Canal, acrobats of human pyramids, fireworks, etc. The La Fenice theatre entertained Napoleon three times. First there was a theatre spectacle with singing and music, the Giudizio di Giove, by Lauro Corniani Algarotti; with the theatre decked out in the most sumptuous colours and additional festival architecture. Then there was a ball held in the theatre adorned with, as Morelli stresses repeatedly, a complete new and different colour scheme and new festival architecture; lastly there was an evening of illuminations.Cicognara 1535; Vinet 533; Oechslin-Buschow. Festarchitektur, Stuttgart 1984, plates 113-114; Venezia nell'eta di Canova, 1978, no. 228; not in Ruggieri. Venice, nella Tipografia Picotti, 1808.