This is a stolen book!

LUCRETIUS, Titus Carus. Della natura delle cose libri sei, tradotti dal Latino in Italiano da Alessandro Marchetti. Dati nuovamente in luce da Francesco Gerbault.

Amsterdam, for the publisher., 1754

Two volumes, octavo (223 x 138mm.), two engraved titles and two frontispieces by Le Mire after Eisen, six plates by Aliamet and others after Cochin and Le Lorrain, 12 head- and tail-pieces by Baquoy and others after Eisen, Cochin and Vasse. A very fine copy in contemporary red morocco elaborately gilt by Louis Douceur, with his ticket on rear flyleaf of volume one, spines gilt in compartments with green morocco lettering-pieces, gilt edges.

A beautiful copy of one of the most fascinating poems of Latin literature: Lucretius' De rerum natura, in the famous first transalation into Italian by Alessandro Marchetti.

“Alessandro Marchetti (17 March 1633 – 6 September 1714) was an Italian mathematician, noted for criticizing some conclusions of Guido Grandi, a student of Giovanni Alfonso Borelli who was influenced by Galileo and Aristotle. In 1669 Marchetti completed the first known Italian vernacular translation of Lucretius' Epicurean epic poem De Rerum Natura. He was denied permission to publish his translation, entitled Della Natura delle Cose, but it circulated widely in manuscript form before its first printing in 1717. Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 15 October 99 BC– c. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the didactic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which is usually translated into English as On the Nature of Things. Lucretius has been credited with originating the concept of the three-age system which was formalised from 1834 by C. J. Thomsen.Very little is known about Lucretius's life; the only certain fact is that he was either a friend or client of Gaius Memmius, to whom the poem was addressed and dedicated.De rerum natura was a considerable influence on the Augustan poets, particularly Virgil (in his Aeneid and Georgics, and to a lesser extent on the Eclogues) and Horace. The work virtually disappeared during the Middle Ages, but was rediscovered in 1417 in a monastery in Germany by Poggio Bracciolini and it played an important role both in the development of atomism (Lucretius was an important influence on Pierre Gassendi) and the efforts of various figures of the Enlightenment era to construct a new Christian humanism.” (WorthPoint) 

“Handsomely printed on large paper with headpieces, and tailpieces by leading artists, it is encountered more often in contemporary bindings of decorated morocco ... than almost any other work of the time.” (Ray) The beautiful vignettes, tailpieces, and plates are mostly the work of Charles-Nicolas Cochin (1715-90) and Charles-Dominique-Joseph Eisen (1720-78), and so impressed Gordon Ray that he declared this edition “the model for the sumptuous Rococo volumes of the ensuing twenty-five years.” Ray considers this some of Cochin's finest work, noting that the artist was “more at home with Lucretius' philosophical poem than with the amorous classical scenes of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' and that his engravings here ‘are marked not only by the mastery of outline and firmness of composition which never deserted him, but also by acute observation and unpretentious humor.”
Our copy is splendidly bound by the famous French binder Luis Douceur. “Louis Douceur, probablement le fils du relieur François Douceur, est reçu maître le 14 octobre 1721 et exerce les fonctions de garde de la communauté du 11 septembre 1737 au 10 juin 1739. Il est connu pour la réalisation de reliures à décor à la dentelle portant (ou non) son étiquette, et tout particulièrement celles exécutées sur les exemplaires de luxe des Fables de La Fontaine publiées de 1755 à 1759, illustrées d'après les dessins de Jean-Baptiste Oudry, pour lesquels des fers animaliers furent spécialement gravés (plus d'une trentaine pour huit reliures recensées); seules deux de ces reliures parlantes portent l'étiquette de Douceur, dont l'exemplaire décrit ci-dessous. Louis Douceur fit également graver des fers parlants destinés à orner les reliures de luxueux exemplaires des Amours pastorales de Daphnis et Chloé de Longus (1745) (trois agneaux) et de l'Éloge de la Folie d'Erasme (1751)(tête de fou). Le recensement des reliures sorties de son atelier indique que Louis Douceur possédait un très important stock de fers et qu'il comptait parmi ses clients Madame de Pompadour. Il a aussi exécuté quelques reliures à décor mosaïqué. Il se retire en 1766 au profit de son gendre Nicolas II Le Tellier.”(reliures.bnf.fr).

Brunet III, 1222; Cohen-de-Ricci 665-66; Ray French 9.