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Johannes Müller von Königsberg (1436–76), better known as Regiomontanus, was a Central European astronomer whose peripatetic career brought him into dialogue with some of the key humanist thinkers and patrons. He was one of the founders of modern observational astronomy and exerted a profound influence on Nicolaus Copernicus. His works were even used by Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama as navigational aids. Regiomontanus completed his Tabulae directionum et profectionum, a series of tables that allowed for the positions of celestial bodies to be determined mathematically with unprecedented accuracy when compared to the existing Alphonsine Tables that had been developed at the court of Alfonso X of Castile in the mid-thirteenth century. Regiomontanus’s tables, as copied in the present manuscript, continue the Ptolemaic system of their predecessors, but with added tables of tangents and sines that allowed for a much higher degree of predictive accuracy.

The prolific Genoese mapmaker Battista Agnese (active ca. 1535–64) was responsible for over sixty surviving sets of charts and atlases, principally showing Europe and the Mediterranean basin and including the far-flung territories then being reached by European navigators. As showpieces intended for display rather than practical use, his maps tend to favor the decorative over strict accuracy. Working in Venice, the center of European cartography, he acted as copyist and synthesizer of charts produced by others, rather than an original creator. Nevertheless, over the course of his career he strove to integrate the most up-to-date geographic information into his world maps, depicting, for example, the circumnavigation of Ferdinand Magellan and the discoveries made of the Pacific Northwest by Francisco de Ulloa in 1539 and 1540.

This manuscript’s small scale indicates that it was conceived for portability; its contents are custom selected to enable its user to contribute vocally to the daily Offices that structured monastic life. It consists of general musical forms as well as more specific chants for the annual liturgical cycle. “Fr. Ioannes de Plebe” is named as the scribe in the colophon. The toponymic surname “de plebe” might refer to an individual from Piove di Sacco, near Padua, where a Franciscan convent was established in 1484. The pedagogical nature of the volume is enhanced by the presence of a finely drawn Guidonian hand, depicted here. This emblematic mnemonic device is named after its inventor, Guido of Arezzo (991/2–after 1033), who developed the ancestor of the modern system of pitch notation through lines and spaces, and a method of sight-singing based on the syllables ut–re–mi–fa–so–la.

This compendium of abridged classical texts in Latin exemplifies the sort of miscellany that could be used for undertaking the studia humanitatis and is made up of exemplary excerpts. The lengthiest segment of the manuscript is Book 1 of Cicero’s De officiis, popular throughout the Middle Ages, that focuses on the nature of virtue and its vital constituents: truth, justice, fortitude, and decorum. The other substantial sections record two of Terence’s comedies: Andria, which became the first of the author’s plays to be performed since antiquity when it was staged by Florentine students of Giorgio Antonio Vespucci in 1476, and Eunuchus, the author’s most successful play during his lifetime. Shorter passages include the openings of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae and Virgil’s Aeneid. The compendium also includes such varia as remedies for the eyes and for sore chests, a recipe for camomile unguent, and aphorisms.

Though they were widely known throughout the Middle Ages, Gaius Sallustius Crispius’s two writings on Roman history, the Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Iugurthinum, were harnessed anew in the fifteenth century by humanists who sought both positive and negative examples from Republican Rome for contemporary civic politics. In both texts, Sallust strove to demonstrate how the moral depravity of leaders could result in catastrophic outcomes. From the Carolingian period onward, Sallust was included as part of the study of rhetoric, a basic component of medieval education. This mid-fifteenth-century copy of Sallust’s texts is dotted with early marginal annotations, which offer alternate readings and occasional insertions into the text. There is a partially obliterated coat of arms, combined with an effaced ownership inscription that bears the name of Mario Maffei (1463–1537). Mario was a churchman and bibliophile, becoming bishop of Aquino in 1516 and Cavaillon in 1527.

This Prayer Book epitomizes a customized product commissioned to suit the user’s devotional needs. The first four texts contain six-line, abridged versions of the prayers found in the Hours of the Virgin, a kind of memory aid to the longer Offices. The four radiant but childlike miniatures reflect the soft style championed by Leonardo da Vinci’s followers, Marco d’Oggiono and Bernardino Luini. The most innovative aspect of the book is found in the illusionistically painted sprigs of violas, carnations, and other flowers surrounding the four miniatures, painted so as to appear threaded through cuts in the parchment. This clever visual device is much more closely associated with Netherlandish manuscript illumination, particularly work from the so-called Ghent-Bruges school. The Litany includes saints more typical of France, including Denis, Eustache, and Lubin, which might indicate that the book was produced in Milan during the period of French domination, from 1500 to 1512.

The first of the three charts shows the Atlantic coast of Europe, stretching from the south coasts of England to Iberia, the northwest quadrant of Africa, and Madeira and the Canary Islands. The center of Spain is overlaid with a crude coat of arms mimicking that of Castile and León. The second chart shows the central and Eastern Mediterranean. Hovering over central Anatolia is a crowned blue medallion containing a crescent moon with a face in profile representing the Ottoman Sultanate. This symbol hints at the broader conflict simmering between Christian and Muslim powers in the mid-sixteenth century. The third chart shows the Western Mediterranean from the Adriatic Sea to the Straits of Gibraltar and beyond. Though the charts appear to have been produced in Italy, the place-names demonstrate Portuguese influence; the cartographer was familiar with trade activity in the Eastern Atlantic and along the west coast of Africa.

In this manuscript, the seven Penitential Psalms are translated into Italian. The poetic rhyming scheme of this translation, which is known only through this single copy, transposes the Vulgate’s prose into Tuscan terza rima, the interlocking rhyming schema of the ABA BCB CDC type espoused by Dante Alighieri (ca. 1265–1321) in the Divine Comedy. The short volume also contains two other texts: the Trattato dell’amicizia (Treatise on Friendship) by Mariotto Davanzati (ca. 1408/10–after 1470), also in terza rima, and the Lettera consolitaria a Pino de Rossi by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–75) in which the author consoles Pino de’ Rossi following his exile from Florence. The book bears all hallmarks of Florentine book decoration in the 1460s, produced in the style of the city’s leading illuminator, Francesco di Antonio del Chierico (1433–84).

This impressive leaf from an Antiphonal contains the incipit for Epiphany, “Hodie in Jordane baptizato domino aperti sunt caeli.” This Antiphon is introduced with a large historiated initial showing the Adoration of the Magi. While it displays the same iconography as the previous item, this choir book leaf relates to the singing of the Office by the assembled choir, as opposed to a Missal, which is intended for the recitation of the Mass by the priest. The style of the miniature recalls that of the Master of the Vitae Imperatorum and of the Olivetan Master, whose output is closely linked. The work of both artists is representative of Lombard illumination in the early fifteenth century. The completion of this leaf was a collaborative undertaking: in the left margin, an instructional note for the illuminator, in Italian, reads: “l’adoratia di magi.”

The historiated letter on this detached Missal leaf begins the Introit for Mass on Epiphany, “Ecce advenit dominator Dominus.” Accordingly, the illuminator has used the bowl of the letter E as the setting for a crowded Adoration of the Magi. The characteristic palette of shaded pink, verdigris, azurite, and lapis, which extends into the vibrant borders identifies this leaf’s illuminator as the Master of Antiphonal Q of San Giorgio Maggiore, a prolific but anonymous individual associated with the eponymous volume in the Benedictine abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.