1774 First Edtn The First Printing of Hasanaginica : With Provenance VIAGGIO IN DALMAZIA By Alberto Fortis Illus. Giacomo (Jacopo) Leonardis (Engraver)

1774 First Edition The First Printing of Hasanaginica : With Provenance
VIAGGIO IN DALMAZIA
By Alberto Fortis

KEY DETAILS
Condition: Good
Format: Leather, Contemporary calf-backed marbled boards, quarto (4to), approx. 23 × 18.5 cm; two volumes bound in one.
Published By: Alvise Milocco, all'Apolline, Venice, 1774
Language: Italian / Latin
Illustrated By: Giacomo (Jacopo) Leonardis (Engraver)
Provenance: The Sandys Family Library, Ombersley Court, Worcestershire.
Collation: Two volumes bound in one.; Volume I: title and preliminary matter; pp. 1–180.; Illustrated with:; 1 engraved folding plate;
Dust Jacket: None, as issued
SKU: BTETM0002445
Shipping Info: Approximate Package Dimensions H: 12.5, L: 30, W: 25 (Units: cm), W: 2Kg
Tracked Shipping, Insurance Coverage as per Customer Request

DESCRIPTION
Viaggio in Dalmazia
Two Volumes Bound in One — First Printing of Hasanaginica — Complete with Two Engraved Folding Maps & Thirteen Engraved Plates by Giacomo Leonardis — Lord Sandys, Ombersley Court Provenance
VIAGGIO IN DALMAZIA
Dell'Abate Alberto Fortis
In Venezia: Presso Alvise Milocco, all'Apolline, 1774

A highly significant and extensively illustrated First Edition of Alberto Fortis's Viaggio in Dalmazia, one of the defining eighteenth-century accounts of Dalmatia and a landmark in the European study of the Balkans, combining travel, antiquarianism, natural history, geology, geography, ethnography, costume, language and oral tradition.
Fortis's journeys through Venetian Dalmatia introduced a wide European readership to a region then little understood outside the Adriatic. Of exceptional literary importance is his publication here, for the first time in print, of the South-Slavic oral ballad now known as Hasanaginica, presented as the Canzone dolente della Nobile Sposa d'Asan Agà. Fortis prints the South-Slavic text in Latin-script transcription alongside his Italian translation. The ballad rapidly entered European literary culture: Goethe produced a celebrated German poetic version, subsequently published in Herder's Volkslieder in 1778, and its European afterlife extended to writers including Walter Scott, Prosper Mérimée and Alexander Pushkin. Fortis's account of the Morlachs was similarly influential in the development of the literary and cultural phenomenon subsequently termed Morlachism.
An especially attractive association copy from the historic Sandys family library at Ombersley Court, Worcestershire, bearing the eighteenth-century armorial bookplate “Lord Sandys.” Published four years after the death of Samuel Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys (1695–1770), the book almost certainly entered the Ombersley library during the tenure of his son Edwin Sandys, 2nd Baron Sandys (1726–1797), classical scholar, politician and founding trustee of the British Museum. The volume remained at Ombersley by family descent until the dispersal of the library in 2024 and is identifiable as the copy sold by Chorley's in The Ombersley Court Library, 17 September 2024, lot 103.
The two volumes are here bound together in one substantial quarto, including the separately titled Antonio Veranzio, Iter Buda Hadrianopolim anno MDLIII forming the appendix to Volume I. The illustrative programme is complete with two engraved folding maps and thirteen engraved plates, encompassing maps, landscapes and topographical views, antiquities, costume and inhabitants, geological and natural-historical subjects.

The First Printing of Hasanaginica
Among the most enduring features of Viaggio in Dalmazia is Fortis's publication of the traditional South-Slavic ballad Hasanaginica, here headed Xalostna Pjesanza Plemenite Asan-Aghinize and accompanied by his Italian Canzone dolente della Nobile Sposa d'Asan Agà.
The poem recounts the tragedy of Hasan Aga's wife, repudiated after failing to visit her wounded husband, separated from her children and compelled to remarry, before dying of grief as she encounters them again.
Fortis's publication brought a previously oral South-Slavic poem into the mainstream of European letters. Through the early German reception of Fortis's work it reached Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who transformed the ballad into German verse. Goethe's version was included by Johann Gottfried Herder in Volkslieder in 1778, part of Herder's enormously influential project to demonstrate the poetic traditions of different peoples.
The poem subsequently entered the wider European Romantic tradition, attracting translations and adaptations associated with figures including Walter Scott, Prosper Mérimée and Alexander Pushkin.
Consequently, the present first edition occupies an unusual position at the intersection of travel literature, early ethnography, folklore studies and the emergence of European Romanticism.

PROVENANCE
The Sandys Family Library, Ombersley Court, Worcestershire.
Eighteenth-century engraved armorial bookplate inscribed “Lord Sandys.”
The book was published in 1774, four years after the death of Samuel Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys (1695–1770), and therefore almost certainly entered the family library during the tenure of Edwin Sandys, 2nd Baron Sandys (1726–1797).
Edwin Sandys was educated at Oxford, was a noted classical scholar and served as one of the founding trustees of the British Museum. Ombersley formed part of a substantial intellectual and literary milieu; Samuel Johnson was among the celebrated visitors to Edwin Sandys at Ombersley in 1774, coincidentally the year in which the present book was published.
The volume subsequently remained in the Sandys collection at Ombersley Court by descent.
Chorley's, The Ombersley Court Library, 17 September 2024, lot 103, where this copy was specifically catalogued with the Lord Sandys bookplate, marbled endpapers and edges, two maps and thirteen plates.
The documented country-house provenance is particularly appropriate to a work which occupied the intersection of travel, classical antiquity, natural philosophy, comparative culture and Enlightenment scholarship.

CONDITION, COLLATION & COPY NOTES
COLLATION
Two volumes bound in one.
Volume I: title and preliminary matter; pp. 1–180.
Illustrated with:
1 engraved folding plate;
1 engraved non-folding costume plate;
1 engraved folding map;
5 further engraved folding plates (nos. 3–7).

The Volume I half-title is not present.
Following Volume I is the separately titled appendix:
Antonio Veranzio — Iter Buda Hadrianopolim anno MDLIII...
Separate title, dedication and preliminary material; pp. v–xlvii; terminal colophon.

Volume II: separate title and preliminary matter; pp. 1–204.
Illustrated with:
1 engraved folding map;
6 engraved folding plates.

Illustrative Collation
2 engraved folding maps + 13 engraved plates = 15 inserted engraved illustrations.
Complete as to the engraved illustrative material.
Of particular importance, Volume I, pp. 98–105, contains Fortis's first printed publication of Hasanaginica. The opening pp.98–99 presents the South-Slavic:
“Xalostna Pjesanza Plemenite Asan-Aghinize”

opposite Fortis's:
“Canzone dolente della Nobile Sposa d'Asan Agà.”
At pp.104–105 Fortis supplements the conclusion with linguistic commentary and specimens of scripts used in Dalmatia and the Slavonic world, providing striking evidence of the work's early ethnographic and philological character.

Language: Italian, with South-Slavic text in Latin-script transcription and other linguistic specimens.

Historic calf-backed marbled-board binding with gilt-decorated spine, marbled endpapers and red-sprinkled/marbled edges. The binding is heavily rubbed and worn, with loss and abrasion to the leather and paper covering, bumped and worn corners and extremities, and wear to the gilt decoration.
The front board is substantially detached/separated at the joint and should be handled with appropriate care. The binding has intentionally not been cosmetically restored and retains considerable character as an eighteenth-century country-house library copy.
Internally substantially cleaner and more attractive than the exterior condition might suggest. The text is generally clean, crisp and well margined, with occasional age-toning, spotting, handling marks and other minor signs of use consistent with age. The engraved maps and plates retain strong impressions and generous margins, with the expected folds to the folding material.
The historic marbled endpapers are particularly attractive. Eighteenth-century armorial “Lord Sandys” bookplate to the front pastedown.
The Volume I half-title is absent. Both principal title pages are present, as is the separately titled Iter Buda Hadrianopolim appendix. The engraved illustrative suite is complete.

Please see Photos as part of condition report.

REFERENCES
Cicogna, Saggio di bibliografia veneziana — Fortis and Venetian scholarship.
British Library / ESTC-era institutional cataloguing — Venice, Alvise Milocco, 1774.
Zentralbibliothek Zürich / e-rara — digitised institutional example of the 1774 edition, recording two maps and thirteen plates.
Christie's — bibliographical descriptions of the 1774 first edition, including the separately titled Veranzio appendix and engraved suite.
Chorley's, The Ombersley Court Library, 17 September 2024, lot 103 — the present copy.
Institutional and historical descriptions vary slightly in their terminology for the folding status of individual plates; the plate statement above follows direct physical examination of the present copy.

SYNOPSIS
Viaggio in Dalmazia records Fortis's journeys through eighteenth-century Dalmatia, then largely under Venetian rule, examining the region through the unusually broad perspective of an Enlightenment natural philosopher.
Fortis describes towns, islands and landscapes; Roman and medieval antiquities; geological formations, fossils and minerals; agriculture and economic conditions; plants and animals; architecture; roads and communications; and the daily lives of the inhabitants. Maps, topographical and costume plates, antiquarian subjects and natural-history illustrations accompany the text.
His celebrated account of the Morlachs moves beyond topographical description into language, marriage, family structure, hospitality, music, poetry, superstition and social customs. Although Fortis's conception of the Morlachs reflects eighteenth-century European ideas about “primitive” and “natural” peoples and was challenged by contemporary Dalmatian writers, it became extraordinarily influential in shaping western European perceptions of the region.
The separately titled Iter Buda Hadrianopolim anno MDLIII reproduces the sixteenth-century journey of the Dalmatian-born diplomat and humanist Antonio Veranzio (Antun Vrančić, 1504–1573) from Buda towards Adrianople, edited and incorporated by Fortis as an historical complement to his own observations.
Taken as a whole, Viaggio in Dalmazia is therefore much more than a travel narrative: it is an ambitious Enlightenment investigation of landscape, antiquity, natural history, peoples and culture, and one of the books through which Dalmatia and South-Slavic oral culture first entered the wider European imagination.

AUTHOR BIO
Alberto Fortis (1741–1803) was a Venetian naturalist, geologist, traveller, antiquary and writer whose interdisciplinary investigations place him among the more distinctive figures of the Italian Enlightenment.
Educated in the intellectual environment of the Venetian Republic, Fortis developed wide-ranging interests in geology, mineralogy, palaeontology, natural history, archaeology, geography and the customs and languages of the peoples he encountered. His travels took him repeatedly along the eastern Adriatic coast and through Dalmatia, where his observations provided the material for Viaggio in Dalmazia.
Published in 1774, the work established his international reputation. Rather than simply recording an itinerary, Fortis attempted to understand the physical landscape, antiquities, economic life, customs, dress, language and oral traditions of Dalmatia. This combination of empirical natural history with observation of human culture makes Viaggio an important precursor to later ethnographic travel writing.
Fortis's depiction of the Morlachs, inhabitants of the Dalmatian hinterland, proved especially influential. His portrayal of their social customs, virtues, poetry and supposedly ancient way of life appealed strongly to contemporary European interest in the “natural” or uncorrupted human condition and helped stimulate the cultural phenomenon later called Morlachism.

ILLUSTRATOR
Giacomo (Jacopo) Leonardis (Engraver)
Engraved by Giacomo Leonardis, after drawings made during Fortis's Dalmatian travels, including work associated with Angelo Donati

Giacomo (Jacopo) Antonio Leonardis (1723–1797) was a Venetian engraver, etcher and book illustrator, born at Palmanova and later active in Venice. After early training with Pietro Bainville, he moved to Venice in 1741 and studied in the artistic milieu of Giambattista Tiepolo before turning to copper engraving around 1745. He probably worked in the influential workshop of Joseph Wagner and later established an independent practice, becoming one of the notable Venetian engravers associated with eighteenth-century illustrated publishing. Leonardis specialised in reproductive engraving and book illustration, translating into copper designs after artists including Tintoretto, the Tiepolos, Giulio Carpioni, Sebastiano Conca and Pietro Antonio Novelli. His technique combined etching and burin work, with fine cross-hatching used to achieve subtle tonal effects. The engraved plates of Fortis's Viaggio in Dalmazia are attributed to Leonardis; the original field drawings were made during Fortis's travels, with Angelo Donati documented among the artists accompanying him in Dalmatia.