Philelphus, Epistolae, Venice, 1488, modern vellum

Franciscus Philelphus

Epistolae. Venice: Joannes Rubeus Vercellensis, 28 January 1488

Chancery folio (295 x 200mm.), 125 leaves (of 126, without initial blank), a-d⁸ e-t⁸ u⁴, 54 lines, initial spaces, roman type with some phrases in Greek, a few old manuscript annotations with a note about this edition on the rear flyleaf, modern vellum, retaining old flyleaves from previous binding, small wormhole in text, last few leaves repaired at foredge with a few small stains

Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481) spent some years at the Byzantine court in the 1420s and is generally considered to be the greatest scholar of Greek of his time. He obtained a chair in Florence in 1429, but had to flee in 1434 because of disputes with other scholars, finally settling in Milan at the Sforza and Visconti courts. This volume of his letters, which begins in 1427 with a letter from Venice written on his return from Constantinople and ends in 1461, addresses popes, cardinals and kings, as well as numerous humanists, including Cardinal Bessarion, Giovanni Aurispa, Ambrogio Traversari and Lorenzo Valla, and ranges from short notes to friends to lengthy philosophical discussions and diatribes. It was first printed in Venice in 1473.

Filelfo's letter from Bologna to Enea Silvio Piccolomini of 1439 describes the attack on him by an assassin sent, he opines, by Cosimo de' Medici and his brother Lorenzo; the letter to Charles VII of France, dated 1451, congratulates him on defeating the English, following the capture of Bordeaux.

PROVENANCE

Sale, Sotheby's, 13 December 2001, lot 65

LITERATURE

ISTC ip00585000