Browse Entries (87 items total)

The Walloon poet and historiographer Jean Lemaire de Belges (ca. 1473–ca. 1525), wrote this autograph copy of a unique text produced for the Queen of France, Anne of Brittany (1477–1514). This copy is likely the sole surviving exemplar of this unpublished and unknown work. Anne, to whom the work is dedicated, was an extraordinary political leader and a great patroness of the arts. She has the distinction of being the only French sovereign to have been twice crowned, first as the wife of King Charles VIII and then, after his sudden death in 1498, as the consort of Charles’s successor and second cousin once removed, Louis XII. The first page opening includes the year in Roman numerals as well as the queen’s Castilian motto “NON MUDERA,” which she inherited from her Spanish mother.

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.

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 is the presentation copy of a work on cryptography made for Alfonso da Borgia (1378–1458) during his three-year reign as Pope Callixtus III. The text demonstrates two methods for encrypting text based on alternate words supplied in tables, to which both communicating parties would have exclusive access. During his brief pontificate, Callixtus was preoccupied with countering Ottoman Turkish advances in the Mediterranean, calling for a new crusade in the wake of the fall of Constantinople. The intricate bianchi girari or white-vine decorations, depicted here on the manuscript’s first folio, were created by Gioacchino di Giovanni di Gigantibus (act. ca. 1450–85). Originally from Rothenberg, this professional illuminator worked for members of the papal court from 1448 onward, and his involvement indicates that Zopello was in Rome to coordinate the production of his manuscript.

This short, rhymed work in French by the Burgundian chronicler and poet Georges Chastellain (ca. 1402/1415–75) is entitled L’oultré d’amour pour amour morte, or “The Lover’s Lament over the Death of his Love” in English. Chastellain was a prominent figure at the Burgundian court, serving dukes Phillip the Good and Charles the Bold with distinction. This copy was likely produced in Western France in the 1460s or 1470s, possibly dating from Chastellain’s lifetime. Given the popularity of this text in Renaissance France, this manuscript is especially notable because of its subsequent presence in an important humanist library, that of Jacques Thiboust (1492–1555), a noted book collector in early sixteenth-century France who served as a notary and secretary to King Francis I and his sister Marguerite de Valois.

This mid-fifteenth-century manuscript contains six texts relating to papal affairs in the first half of the century, each written by a prominent literary figure of the day. The first, by the diplomat and scholar Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459), consists of an oration to Nicholas V, who was widely admired for rebuilding Rome and establishing the Vatican Library during his pontificate (1447–55). The second text consists of another oratio in praise of Nicholas V, Poggio Bracciolini’s oratio ad summum pontificem Nicolaum V, which is followed by Franciscus Florentinus’s Letter to Nicholas V. The final three tracts are shorter works by Leonardo Bruni and deal with the circumstances surrounding the Council of Basel and its convocation by Martin V (r. 1417–31). The coat of arms depicted here, a red unicorn rampant on a silver field, suggests that the manuscript’s first owner was a member of the Picenardi family of Cremona.

This manuscript was produced in Tournai in the first half of the eleventh century and contains the texts of Gregory the Great’s Ten Homilies on Ezekiel, Radbod II’s Sermo de nativitate Mariae Virginis, and selected brief moral maxims and exhortations. A note on the first folio, “Liber Radbodi epi,” was likely written by Radbod II himself. Radbod II was elected Bishop of Noyon and Tournai in 1067–68 and died in 1098. The existence of two manuscripts of Radbod’s Sermo de nativitate has been noted, one in the Vatican and the other in the library of Saint-Martin at Tournai. Given that this exemplar once belonged to Radbod, our manuscript may be the Saint-Martin copy.

Gerbert of Aurillac (ca. 945–1003) was the first Frenchman elected to the papacy and reigned as Sylvester II for the final four years of his life. His renown, however, stems from his prowess as a mathematician and pedagogue. Among his achievements were the reintroduction of the abacus and armillary sphere to Western Europe, via the Islamic civilization of Al-Andalus. He is also thought to be responsible for introducing the Hindu-Arabic numeration system to the Latinate world. This volume contains texts such as Gerbert’s correspondence with Adebaldus of Utrecht on the isosceles triangle, and a short treatise on the astrolabe, another instrument that he helped familiarize to Christian audiences. This manuscript is an excellent example of Renaissance engagement with scholarship from the High Middle Ages. An assiduous reader of classical authors, including Virgil, Cicero, and Boethius, Gerbert of Aurillac was an outstanding conduit of classical thought for much later readers.

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 initial has been excised from an eleventh-century copy of Florus of Lyon’s commentary on the Epistles of Paul: the fragmentary text visible on the reverse side includes the conclusion of the commentary on Philemon and the beginning of the section on Hebrews. Florus (ca. 810–60) was a theologian, canonist, and liturgist educated in the spirit of the Carolingian Renaissance. His work on the Pauline Epistles was widely copied in the following centuries. The white-vine scroll decoration seen in this fragment—known in Italian as bianchi girari—is typical of manuscript illumination associated with the Romanesque period. It was later borrowed by humanist scribes and illuminators who thought the texts they were copying were ancient, or at least reliable copies of lost originals.