Quarto. [24], 224pp. Recent gilt-tooled brown crushed morocco, signed 'A.B.' to rear lower turn-in. Small paper repair to title fore-edge.

The second edition of Italian humanist polymath Francesco Sansovino's (1521-1583) authoritative history of the Ottoman Empire.

A polygraph author of epitomes, prose writings on literature, history and rhetoric, as well as a translator and editor, Sansovino's most distinctive trait, typified by the vast majority of his work, is a focus on didactic, practical implications, particularly with regard to politics. His understanding of the contemporary book market not only guaranteed the success of his own Venice printing house (from which he issued around thirty editions over the span of twenty years) but resulted in a sound knowledge of contemporary literary appetites. This present work would have certainly appealed to a beleaguered Venetian populace conscious of the advance of the Ottoman Empire into the eastern Mediterranean and the ongoing siege of Venetian Cyprus; prophecies of Turkish decline were no doubt a balm, and Sansovino's work may well be viewed as prescient in itself given the decisive victory of the combined Venetian and allied fleet over the Ottoman navy at the Battle of Lepanto just months after initial publication in 1571.