Information
Specialist Notes
"The success of these editions [Aldo's Dante and Petrarca] was immediate and their print run literally sold out. In fact, to Aldo's official print run, we must add the pirated copies that were printed in Lyon by Baldassarre Da Gabiano , an Italian immigrant originally from Asti. He received the books to be counterfeited from his uncle Giovanni Bartolomeo, an active Venetian bookseller, particularly attentive to the innovative typographical results achieved by Aldo. The Da Gabianos' publishing project consisted in distributing on the Lyon market, which was particularly receptive, editions that were in every way similar to the Aldine ones, that is to say, the same format and characters and the same text: they reproduce, page for page, the Venetian editions, even if "the texts are generally mediocre, less refined than the originals; the character is tight but has few ligatures and is therefore more airy and easier to read than the Aldine one; the hatching in the shafts presents characteristics of the lettre bâtarde" (...) Even the counterfeit editions quickly sold out and had to be reprinted several times, even more quickly than the originals."
Carlo Pulsoni, https://www.insulaeuropea.eu/wpcontent/uploads/2017/11/i_classici_italiani_di_aldo_manuzio.pdf
A. Tinto, Italics in sixteenth-century typography, Milan 1972, pp. 31-32.
Paradoxically, it can be said that the Lyon counterfeit of Aldo's Terze Rime is much rarer than the original, with only a few examples having appeared on the market in the recent past.
J. Baudrier, Bibliographie Lyonnaise , vol. 7, p. 11-12