Mazzocchi, Epigrammata antiquae Urbis, Rome, 1521, later half sheep, Colonna-De Ricci copy, annotated

Mazzocchi, Giacomo. Epigrammata antiquae urbis. (Rome: Giacomo Mazzocchi, April 1521)

The anonymous Epigrammata Antiquae Urbis is the first printed collection of ancient inscriptions found in the city of Rome, and an exceptional witness to Rome’s antiquities before the Sack of 1527. An artist was commissioned to produce woodcuts of some monuments, however in most cases, the printers’ types and generic borders are used to represent the carved inscriptions. Although some 3000 are presented, the collection did not achieve its objective of completeness, and is full of conspicuous mistakes, such as misplaced lines, missing or misspelled words, incorrect abbreviations (or expansions of words that were abbreviated). These omissions and inaccuracies encouraged its owners in the decades immediately following publication to emend and supplement it, making corrections and inserting new inscriptions in the margins or elsewhere. The book came to be a sort of vade mecum for any humanist interested in Roman antiquities, and, especially, epigraphy, and is believed to be "probably the most heavily annotated antiquarian book of the Renaissance" (Antiquarian Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Archaeology and Epigraphy, Introduction by the editors Joan Carbonell Manils and Gerard González Germain, De Gruyter, 2020).

Until recently, scholarship has been focused almost exclusively on four copies preserved in Roman libraries, three in the Vatican (Vat. Lat. 8492, 8493, 8495), annotated respectively by humanists based in Rome: Antonio Lelio Podagro in the 1520s, Angelo Colocci in the 1530s and 1540s, and Jean Matal in 1546-1551; and one in the Biblioteca Angelica (KK 15 17), belonging to Latino Giovenale Manetti (1486-1553), Paul III’s Commissioner of Antiquities. A project initiated in 2018 to analyse reception of the Epigrammata and its influence has produced a census of more than 320 copies in institutional collections worldwide, and these are now being explored systematically for marginalia left by early modern owners. The forty-one copies located in North American collections were examined by William Stenhouse, who found however that "fewer than half feature significant annotations" and that "none can be associated with a named epigraphic scholar" (The Epigrammata Antiquae Urbis (1521) and Its Influence on European Antiquarianism, edited by Carbonell Manils and González Germain, Bretschneider).

The present copy was not located by the census takers, although it is well known. It was purchased in Rome in 1854 by a former lawyer turned archaeologist (later Membre de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres and Directeur de l'Ecole française de Rome) named Edmond-Frédéric Le Blant (1818-1897). Curious about the value of its annotations, Le Blant consulted Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822-1894), who was then completing a 15 year-long project of recording all known ancient Christian inscriptions in Rome (published by the Vatican in 1857). De Rossi wrote a two-page report for Le Blant, which he dated at Rome, 15 September 1854. The handwritten document is bound at the front of this volume. It subsequently was published (with minor alterations and without De Rossi’s permission) by Léon Renier, "Note sur le recueil d'inscriptions latines intitulé ‘Epigrammata antiquae urbis’", Revue archéologique 13 (1856), pp.51-53.

At that time, the only known annotated copies of the Epigrammata were Vat. Lat. 8492-8493, Angelica KK 15 17, and an apograph of Vat. Lat. 8492 in Florence in the Marucelliana. After mentioning these copies, De Rossi wrote to Le Blant (translation) “Finally, the fourth [known copy] is this one, which was part of the Colonna library, and whose handwritten notes are fewer than those of the previous copies. However, I encountered several small observations which are not found in these; for example, on folio 172 verso: ‘Alibi nam vendidit ipse [CIL VI 16979];’ on folio 149 recto: ‘Consule lapidem [CIL VI 1892],’ and a few others of the same kind, which certainly do not offer much interest, but which nevertheless do not fail to be curious, since they seem to be from an early period subsequent to the publication of this book.”

Le Blant’s copy was afterwards scrutinised for the Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, VI: Inscriptiones urbis Romae Latinae, Pars I-IV (Berlin 1876-1894), whose editors cited it in more than sixty entries, always with reference to Matal, Lelio Podagro, and Manetti’s annotated copies (e.g. as “corrigitur in emendationis editis et ms. in exemplis Metelli Podagri Leblantii Angelicano”). The volume later fell out of sight. Its rediscovery in the Bibliotheca Brookeriana is opportune, as a team of scholars is now feverishly analyzing the Epigrammata, collating the extant annotated copies to shed as much light as possible on its owners and readers. Preliminary study suggests that the anonymous annotator has entered into this copy a great number of annotations from the set collected before 1527 by Antonio Lelio, however his other manuscript sources await identification, and comparison with other annotated copies is needed. That investigation may reveal whether he was a humanist, working in a library, or an active antiquarian, in the field, examining the actual stones.

An auction of Le Blant’s library was conducted by Maurice Delestre & Théophile Belin, Catalogue de bon livres anciens et modernes: principalement sur l'archéologie, les antiquités chrétiennes, l'épigraphie et la numismatique: provenant de la bibliothèque de feu M. Ed. Le Blant, Paris, 28 March-2 April 1898. It has not been possible to access the sale catalogue to determine if this volume was included in the sale.

In this copy, there are no printer’s ornaments on the title-page (2 are present in another setting), the Epistola dedicatoria to Pope Leo X is set in 24 lines (28 lines in another setting), and the printer’s name is spelled “Mazochii” in the colophon (“Mazoch” in another setting).

Folio (302 x 205 mm). Roman type.

collation

: π

2

1

⁸ (π1+1⁸+π2) A⁴ B-Z⁶ &⁶ [con]⁶ [rum]⁶ Aa-Cc⁶ Dd-Ee⁴ aa⁸: 198 leaves. Woodcut frames and cartouches to some inscriptions. (Title-page slightly stained and foxed, T1_6 browned, a few other leaves lightly foxed or browned.)

binding: Modern half brown leather over marbled boards (310 x 220 mm). There is a note about the binding on the flyleaf, stating that the previous binding was early nineteenth-century English half russia.

provenance: Libraria Colonna, red ink stamp on title-page and final verso — Edmond-Frédéric Le Blant (1818-1897), bought in Rome in 1854, two-page report to him by Jean Baptiste de Rossi dated 15 September 1854 tipped in at front of volume — Seymour De Ricci (1881-1942, bibliographer and scholar of epigraphy), inscription on verso of flyleaf. acquisition: Purchased in 2010 from Librairie Paul Jammes, Paris. references: Edit16 18162; Mortimer, Harvard Italian 27; Rossetti 6901