A' Dilettanti delle Bell'Arti.

1779. BETTI, Giovanni Battista. A' Dilettanti delle Bell'Arti. Contents includes illustrated engraved title and 24 engraved plates. Oblong folio, 220 x 300 mm, bound in contemporary paste-paper wrappers, preserved in a red half morocco folding box. Florence: 1779. First Edition of Betti's imaginative illustrated alphabet-book, containing 24 full-page oblong plates of richly ornamented capital letters, each letter standing in a bucolic landscape with a corresponding figure from Greek or Roman mythology. It is a work "rare and distinctive for the range of its subjects" (DBI) and draws heavily on the imagery of pastoral Greece. 6 copies in America (truncated) according to OCLC. Getty, Harvard, NYPL, Redwood Library, Austin, Newberry. An unsophisticated copy, with occasional spots and minor stains, but nevertheless an appealing copy. Bonacini 200; Berlin Kat. 5300; Guilmard 332: See Garvey, E.M. Introduction to the 1969 Facsimile published by Harvard. (Inventory #: 165360)