Petrarca, Vite dei Pontefici e Imperatori romani, Florence, 1478, modern reused vellum

Francesco Petrarca

Vite dei Pontefici e Imperatori romani. Florence: Apud Sanctum Jacobum de Ripoli, [not after 3 February] 1478

Chancery folio (286 x 199mm.), 104 leaves, [*]² a-b⁸ c-h⁶ I⁶ l-q⁶ r⁸, 33-34 lines, roman type, first initial supplied in gold with leafy marginal decoration in imitation of contemporary decoration, second initial in gold on a blue and dark pink ground (also in imitation of contemporary decoration), modern binding of reused liturgical manuscript on vellum, first few leaves slightly soiled

A wide-margined copy of this edition of biographies from Caesar to Gregory IX, with the lives of Urban IV to Sixtus IV added later. The text is no longer considered to be by Petrarch himself.

The press at the Florentine convent of San Jacopo a Ripoli was in operation from 1476 to 1484; its surviving day book gives extensive detail of the activies of this press (M. Conway, The "Diario" of the Printing Press of San Jacopo a Ripoli, 1476-1484 (Florence: Olschki, 1999), including the printing costs of the paper (161 lire), ink (115.5 lire) and labour (77 lire) for this edition of 650 copies.

LITERATURE:

ISTC ip00420000; Speck, Petrarca 622

PROVENANCE:

Francesco Riccardi di Vernaccia, armorial bookplate; Gustavo Galletti, Florence, ink stamp on second leaf; Baron Horace de Landau, bookplate with stamped number 4013; Clifford Rattey (1886-1970), bookplate; purchased from Maggs on 4 May 1972 for £600