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This manuscript contains four texts united on cosmography. The first is Plato’s Timaeus, in the canonical fourth-century translation with commentary by Calcidius. This remained the only text by Plato known in the Latin West until Henry Aristippus’s translation of the Meno and the Phaedo in the twelfth century. The second text is a unique translation of the pseudo-Aristotelian On the Universe, produced by John Argyropoulos (ca. 1415–87). The third work is Philo of Alexandria’s De incorruptione mundi, probably translated by the Umbrian humanist Lilio Libelli Tifernate (1417/18–86). The final text is the sole known work by the Greek astronomer Cleomedes, De contemplatione orbium excelsorum, translated and dedicated to the condottiere Cesare Borgia by his humanist secretary, Carlo Valgulio (ca. 1440–98). The geometric diagrams for the Timaeus are annotated in Latin, while those for the Cleomedes are in Greek, suggesting an early user fluent in both.

The growing financial demands placed upon the French state during the reign of Francis I (r. 1515–47) precipitated efforts to reform the nation’s tax system that had been in place since the Middle Ages. This unique booklet consists of fifty-eight recommendations and was issued in 1522 or 1523. The colophon echoes the claim voiced by the king’s mother, Louise of Savoy that she and her son were being continuously swindled by financial officials. Tax collection in the kingdom had previously been farmed out to independent merchants who extracted a substantial cut of the revenues, a system the author sought to reform. The intent was to provide a more stable and predictable means of financing the king’s activities and to free him from dependence on credit from foreign merchants.

This booklet consists of extracts, abbreviated and transliterated into Venetian-inflected Italian, drawn from the major texts of Renaissance mathematics and architecture: Luca Pacioli’s Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità and Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria. Pacioli’s Summa, which consists of an Italian-language synthesis of mathematical knowledge, was first printed in Venice in 1494 by Paganini. The extracts found in this booklet are taken from the second part of the Summa, which is dedicated to geometry. The second set of extracts concerns the elements of classical architecture. Finally, this book contains three recipes for making ink and two remedies for stomach aches added to its final leaves, proof of ongoing use of the item in a reader’s daily life. Perhaps owned by an architect-in-training, it demonstrates how geometry, as a branch of the quadrivium, came to influence theories of architecture and their real-life application.

This single leaf is a rare survival of a stand-alone practical tool designed to be pinned to a surface or kept loosely among papers for easy reference. It consists of a simple diagram showing the years from 1490 to 1504 and their equivalents in a fifteen-numbered sequence of Roman numerals: the indiction system. This method for dating had its roots in Roman Egypt and was first used as a means of assessing periodic land and agricultural taxes in late antiquity. It became popular in the early Byzantine world and was revived in the West as a result of its mention by Bede the Venerable (672/3–735), though its use later declined. By the time this simple diagram was made, it may have been unfamiliar enough to justify such a computational aid. The text above and below the diagram, written in a humanist cursive script, explains how the system functions.

These splendid initials, which form part of a larger set of cuttings held at the Free Library, demonstrate the creativity and delicacy that could be applied to aspects of book illustration sometimes considered secondary to larger narrative miniatures. The Milanese artist to whom these can be attributed, the so-called Master B.F. (act. ca. 1490–1545) is so named after a number of works he signed with these initials, including an historiated initial of King David, also at the Free Library. The three historiated initials in Philadelphia, these sets of initials, and several more decorated letters, all in the Free Library, were associated with numerous other fragments from a dismembered set of twenty choir books from the Olivetan monastery of Santi Angelo e Niccolò at Villanova Sillaro, near Lodi.

This diverse early humanist compendium, mostly in Latin, contains short works and extracts of longer texts relating to political philosophy, religion, history, and literature. The presence of much material related to the political circumstances in the region around Bologna in the fourteenth century helps localize the manuscript. It includes multiple texts by Donato Albanzani (ca. 1328–after 1411), a rhetorician active in Venice, Ravenna, and Ferrara. Albanzani was a friend of Petrarch and Boccaccio, translating their respective works into Italian. Over a quarter of the manuscript is devoted to Jacobus de Cessolis’s De ludo scachorum of circa 1300, a collection of sermons comparing the proper relationships between a king and various subjects to the rules of chess, providing a detailed introduction to the game as it was played in his time. Portions of the manuscript are a palimpsest; the undertext appears to be a fourteenth-century legal text.

Tiny incunables do exist, but the constraints in the production of miniature metal type limited the amount of information they could contain. The finely crafted book, which contains an array of astrological and astronomical charts, as well as other useful information for travel, was produced in 1511 by Imbert Feutrier. Little is known about this individual, who was bailli or bailiff of Crèvecœur-sur-l’Escaut near Cambrai. However, his rank may have given him occasion to travel. Though many of the short texts concern the movements of the celestial bodies, several also touch upon topics as diverse as international commerce, the positions of various European cities, textile production, and remedies for certain ailments. Together, they suggest that the book’s original user, probably Feutrier, intended to bring it along with him on far-flung journeys. Combining science with superstition, the book’s contents represent an updated version of the medieval “bat-book,” or portable medical almanac.

Written in French and dated to 30 December 1524, this document consists of a brevet, or commission, granted to the viscount of Turenne, Antoine de La Tour d’Auvergne, seigneur d’Oliergues (1474–1527), bestowing the rank of captain and the charge of twenty-five lances and fifty men-at-arms. It is signed by the French king, Francis I, in his distinctive scrawl: “françoys.” Politically, the document attests to Francis’s preparations for a new attack on Milan as part of the Italian war of 1521–26. Ultimately, this military campaign would end disastrously for the King, concluding abruptly with the decisive French defeat at the Battle of Pavia in February 1525, where the King was captured and held hostage for several years. Through this document, we become party to a strategic decision, personally approved by the king and issued less than two months prior to this ill-fated expedition.

While the layout of this book is more reminiscent of a Missal or a Breviary, it nonetheless contains all of the sections habitually found in a Book of Hours, including a calendar with numerous Milanese and Franciscan Saints and fifteen prayers of Saint Bridget. The underlying design of the all’antica border design, with its carefully shaded pearls, grotesque faces, and golden acanthus leaves, points to the ambit of Giovanni Pietro Birago (act. 1471–1513), an illuminator with close links to the Sforza court. The coat of arms in the lower margin depicted here belonged to Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519), the famous illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei. The arms, quartered with those of her husband Alfonso d’Este (1476–1534), must date from between their marriage in February 1502 and his elevation to the dukedom in June 1505.

A heraldic escutcheon bearing two coats of arms impaled (indicating a matrimonial union) is present on the first page of the Hours of the Virgin of this Milanese Book of Hours. The right side features a serpent devouring a human baby, the famous vipera or Biscione, employed by the Visconti rulers of Milan and incorporated into the arms of their successors, the Sforza. The left side of the arms is of the De Raude or da Rhò, with the cartwheel being a play on the Latin word “rota” or wheel. It belonged to Cornelia Rhò who married Giovanni II in 1518. Their 1518 wedding accords perfectly with the book’s c. 1520 date on account of the style of its miniatures and inhabited initials, which show the ongoing impact of the art of Leonardo da Vinci and his followers on miniature painting in Lombardy. This Book of Hours was likely a wedding gift to the young bride.