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Illustrated herbals were in the Middle Ages linked to chains of exempla, diminishing the fidelity of their images to nature. Its 192 illustrations testify to the gradual shift away from an earlier, conventional representational system, toward a more naturalistic style that came to predominate by the century’s end. The first group of specimen images from the first half of the fifteenth century are often visually unrecognizable. The roots, for example, are given special prominence, sometimes incorporating fantastical anthropomorphic creatures, as in the drawings of a female mandragora or a blue-faced woad plant. The commentary text, present for about a quarter of the plants, describes preparations and predicted medicinal properties. Most of the medicinal notes are in Italian, though some are in Latin and a few mix the two languages.

Horace’s Ars poetica (Art of Poetry) became a foundational text for Renaissance poetics and prompted numerous responses. Petrarch addressed a letter to the ancient author in the form of an Ode and felt a strong attachment to the Roman poet’s simplicity of life and love of friendship. The inhabited initial P shows a Roman soldier seated between a tree and the base of a column, which has been attributed to the anonymous Venetian illuminator known as the Master of the Putti. The precise dating of this illuminator’s work allows for a fairly precise estimated date of production for the book as a whole. On the same page, in the lower margin, is the coat of arms of the Tirelta or Tiretta family of Treviso.

The recovery of ancient collections of letters provided new stylistic models for humanists eager to break with the medieval formularies that had until then structured letter-writing practices. Petrarch had uncovered Cicero’s Epistolae ad Atticum in 1345 in Verona, but it was only in 1392 that Coluccio Salutati brought to light the entire sixteen books that make up the Epistolae ad familiares. Beyond its exemplary style of Latin prose, this collection of letters provided invaluable historical information concerning the final years of the Roman Republic. The writing of the book was completed in Ferrara on 12 March 1468 by Gregorio Martinello de Buccassolo, as noted in the closing colophon. Little is known regarding the scribe, Gregorio Martinello, though he appears to have been a schoolmaster in Finale Emilia, just west of Ferrara, and seems to have transcribed a copy of Federico Frezzi’s epic poem of circa 1400, the Quadriregio.

This is a manuscript copy of a famous ode to Guidobaldo of Montefeltro (1472–1508), Duke of Urbino, by Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529). The text was dedicated to King Henry of England, named specifically as Henry VII, in the first edition of the text. The manuscript’s fine humanist script, decoration, and coats of arms on the first page, together with the early English ownership marks, suggest that it was the presentation copy brought to England and offered to the king. Federigo Veterani (ca. 1450–1530) acted as both scribe and illuminator of this copy and served as librarian and secretary to Guidobaldo’s father, the great condottiere, patron of the arts, and bibliophile, Federico da Montefeltro. The lofty position of the manuscript’s intended recipient demonstrates how European rulers could use the services of a talented poet not just for personal flattery, but also for cementing strategic alliances at the highest levels.

Arezzo-born historian and statesman Leonardo Bruni (ca. 1370–1444) is credited with instigating the tripartite vision of history made up of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modernity. His synthetic work on the First Punic War (264–41 BC), completed in 1420, became wildly popular. Some 160 manuscripts preserve the original text, with many in the early Italian translation. This copy of Bruni’s text was written in 1444 by the Milanese scribe Milano Borro (act. ca. 1430–50), one of the first practitioners of the littera antiqua in Milan. The true recipient of this copy of Bruni’s text was Gian Matteo Bottigella, secretary to Filippo Maria and later secret councillor to his successor, Gian Galeazzo Sforza. The escutcheon bearing his arms in the lower margin has been obliterated, but the crowned, gilded initials of his double-barreled first name are visible above it.

This ascetic miscellany contains a selection of works related to self-privation, and yet, its first page is decorated with vibrant white-vine motifs fashionable in central Italy around 1470. Five texts are included in the miscellany, beginning with the anonymous tract on the art of dying well, De arte bene moriendi, followed by an excerpt from the legend of Saint Bernard by Jacobus da Voragine. The manuscript’s longest text, the De miseria humane conditionis, was authored by Lothar of Segni (1160 or 1161–1216), who would reign from 1198 as Pope Innocent III. His text was extremely popular in the later centuries of the Middle Ages and survives in over 700 other copies. The other texts in this miscellany consist of a rhyming poem on the fifteen signs of doomsday extracted from Jacobus da Voragine’s writings and a dialogue between the body and the soul attributed to Saint Bernard.

While Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae remained an enduring text beyond the Middle Ages, and his ambitious, unfinished project to translate all Aristotelian and Platonic texts from Greek into Latin resonated with humanist audiences, his treatise on music, De institutione musica, was less frequently copied in the Renaissance. Nevertheless, the De musica was included in the first printed edition of Boethius’s works and remained a fundamental reference work on music theory and harmonics. The work put forward the influential notion of a tripartite division of musical types: the imperceptible music of the spheres, the spiritual and somatic music of the body, and the audible instrumental music of voice and instrument. The present volume, illustrated with diagrams throughout, demonstrates the ongoing utility of the manuscript medium, especially since the complex visual schematics could not readily be printed. The semi-humanist script and watermarks indicate a date of production for this manuscript around 1490.

This paper manuscript is possibly the presentation copy of a treatise on edible fruits dedicated to Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara (1431–1505). It appears to have been personally transcribed by its author, Baptista Massa of Argenta, and includes a colophon bearing the date of 10 June 1471. Each chapter is devoted to a type of fruit and its effects on parts of the body, such as the complexion, stomach, kidneys, heart, and brain. The names of medical authorities cited in the text, such as Galen, Avicenna, and Isaac Israeli, are written in the margins in red ink, demonstrating the extent to which classical and Arabic sources remained dominant reference points in physiological studies at the time.

This copy of Saint Augustine’s City of God is an example of the involvement of traditional illuminators with the new technology of printing. This third edition copy was printed in Italy by the German printers Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz. The two business partners were the first to establish a press outside of German-speaking lands, and by 1467, they had moved in search of greater economic opportunities to Rome, where the present volume was printed. Adapting to their translapine audience, Sweynheym and Pannartz abandoned the Gothic typeface used in Northern Europe, developing a semi-Roman type, followed by a fully Roman version, upon their move to the papal city. Most remarkably, this incunable’s secondary decoration was added not in Italy, but in France. The figures in the illuminated initials in particular are attributed to the workshop of François Le Barbier in the later part of the fifteenth century.

Like the previous item, this manuscript is an elaborately decorated commissione issued during the dogeship of Leonardo Loredan (1501–17). It was issued to Paolo Nani and designates him as podestà and capitaneus of the important inland town of Treviso. The frontispiece features an elaborate frame of all’antica ornamentation, while the central image shows Saint Paul presenting a kneeling Nani to the enthroned Virgin and Child, a simplified version of large-scale compositions by contemporary Venetian painters. It is likely the work of the illuminator and cartographer Benedetto Bordone (1450–1530). Not only was Bordone a master illuminator of Venetian commissioni in the early the sixteenth century, he also likely designed woodcuts for Francesco Colonna and Aldus Manutius. The vibrant colors of Bordone’s frontispiece bear witness to the high-quality pigments available to artists working in Venice, the European hub for the trade of paintstuffs at the turn of the sixteenth century.