Guido da Pisa, La Fiorita d’Italia, with frequent citations of the works of Dante Alighieri, in medieval Italian, decorated manuscript on parchment [Italy (probably Tuscany), mid-fifteenth century]

Guido da Pisa, La Fiorita dItalia, with frequent citations of the works of Dante Alighieri, in medieval Italian, decorated manuscript on parchment [Italy (probably Tuscany), mid-fifteenth century]

83 leaves, wanting a few single leaves throughout and 3 leaves from end, collation: i10, ii9 (wants iv), iii10, iv8 (wants iv and vii), v4 (wants innermost and outermost bifolia), vi10, vii9 (wants viii), viii-ix8, x7 (wanting last 3), catchwords and early modern foliation (slightly faulty from loss of single leaves, but followed here for convenience), single column of 37 lines of 2 Italian bookhands (the first accomplished and appealing semi-humanist hand; the second more influenced by secretarial script), pale red rubrics, initials in red or blue with contrasting penwork in and around the initial extending into long whip-like extensions in margin, one large initial in split blue bands with same penwork on frontispiece, the penwork extensions there extending entire height of margin, some small spots and areas of discolouration, slight cockling to leaves throughout, else in good condition, 260 by 190mm.; contemporary binding of blind-tooled dark brown leather over wooden boards, tooling of fillet, ropework designs and panels of small flowerheads all arranged as frames around a circular central boss enclosing crosses on each board, marks on lower board from feet once attached there to hold book above potentially damp medieval shelf, boards much affected by worm at edges, with losses there and wood broken near clasp supports (one of these slightly loose, another repaired, losses to leather at foot of boards and spine, modern conservation to stabilise, and so in fair condition, fitted purple buckram case of c. 1900

An important early Italian vernacular text, in a remarkably fine copy still in its contemporary binding; and evidently the first copy to emerge on the open market in over 140 years

Provenance:

1. Written in the mid-fifteenth century, most probably in Tuscany, for a patron of some wealth and influence.

2. Thereafter in an ecclesiastical library, most probably in same region: Questo libero di santo Cosimo in eighteenth-century scrawl in margin of fol. 78v. Other heavily erased inscriptions on front pastedown and at head of frontispiece.

3. Gerali di Pontunoli, inscription on front pastedown recording its acquisition from his family on 20 November 1889, and apparently unrecorded since.

Text:

Little is known about the author of this important early Italian work. He was a native of Pisa and reveals in his work that he was a Carmelite Friar. He composed it sometime between 1321 and 1337, and despite a modest description of it by the author as some memorable facts and sayings of the ancients, it is in fact a chronicle of the Biblical and Ancient World, designed to show how that developed into civilised Christian society. To do this he draws on a large number of Classical authorities, including Livy, Ovid, Isidore and Jerome, as well as medieval writers such as Jacobus de Voragine and Nicholas Trevet, but none are given the same prominence here as Dante Alighieri, whose verse he cites frequently and at length.

His devotion to Dante was doubtless driven by his composition of a lengthy gloss on the Comedia, as well as his shared belief with that author in the use of Tuscan Italian as a literary and educational language. As Guido himself insists: sono molti, i quali vorrebbono sapere … ed abbiano avuto impedimento dal non studiare (there are many, who would like to know ... and have had impediment from not studying), and it is for them that, intendo di traslare di latino in volgare alquanti memorabili fatti e detti degli antichi (I intend to translate from Latin into the vernacular some memorable facts and sayings of the ancients). It is clearly unfinished, as it sets out in its prologue the scope of a work to enumerate all the Roman Emperors in seven books, but ends in the existing version after two of these. Despite this it was greatly popular in the late Middle Ages, and some 60 codices have been traced (S. Bellomo, Censimento dei manoscritti della "Fiorita" di G. da P., Trento 1990; and P. Rinoldi, Per la tradizione indiretta della Fiorita di G. da P.: due manoscritti dellAquila, in LaParoladeltesto, 3, 1999, pp. 113-131; without knowledge of the present codex). In the main these were produced for use by students, and so are almost universally on paper and more rough and ready than the present copy. This is one of only four to survive on parchment.

Few copies exist outside of Italy, and the Schoenberg database records only one as appearing on the market, a copy dated 1411 once in the collection of the Florentine nobleman, Baron Seymour Kirkup, and offered in Sothebys, 6 December 1871, lot 2035.