Colacio, [Opuscula], Venice, 1486, modern half vellum

Colacio, Matteo [Matthaeus Colatius] Opuscula. Venice: Bernardino Rizzo (Bernardinus Rizus Novariensis), 1486

First and only edition of six short texts by the Calabrian humanist Matteo Colacio (or Collazio), of which one is of significance to art history.

Colacio was a schoolteacher in Venice from ca. 1450s to 1480s, where he published four books, mostly refutations of Quintilian on the purposes of rhetoric. The present volume contains treatises on Quintilian and rhetoric addressed to Domenico Morosini; a dialogue about a disputation which the author had recently held at Padua; a letter to the Vicenzan nobleman Gasparo Trissino (father of the celebrated Giangiorgio) concerning the epitaph Colacio had written for his recently deceased son Girolamo. That epitaph (c4v) is dated 1 March 1490, however BMC considers this a misprint.

The two last and most important works are Colazio’s laudatio of the intarsia decoration executed 1462-1469 by Lorenzo and Cristoforo Canozi in the choirstalls of S. Antonio, Padua, addressed to its craftsman, and preceded by a preface to a fellow Calabrian, Antonio degli Adinolfi (Antonius Adinolphus Siculus). Because the choir was destroyed in a fire in 1749, Colacio’s work has received close scholarly attention. "You are more skilled at depicting nature," he tells the Canozi brothers, "than we are at describing your works… I have never seen anything of greater genius. Everything seems real to me, I cannot believe it is feigned… I saw books, and they were more real than the real ones; some on top of others, by chance or carelessness, not balanced; some closed, some opened because they were newly bound" (translation by Antoine M. Wilmering, The Gubbio Studiolo and its conservation: II. Italian Renaissance intarsia and the conservation of the Gubbio Studiolo (New York 1999), p.61). Colacio manages to find parallels between the disciplines of intarsia and rhetoric and also to mention the painters Antonello da Messina, Bellini and Mantegna.

4to (214 x 147 mm). Roman type, 33 lines. collation: a-b⁸ c-d⁴: 24 leaves. Woodcut initial, 2- to 5-line initial spaces, mostly with printed guides. (Small wormhole in last two leaves.)

binding: Modern vellum-backed cream paper boards (221 x 160 mm), lettering-pieces on spine. (Spine labels worn.) 

provenance: Embossed stamp on flyleaf with the initials GDM surmounted by a dragon — Sotheby's, London, 25 May 2000, lot 28 — Libreria Antiquaria Mediolanum, Milan, bookseller's label. acquisition: Purchased in 2016 from Mediolanum. references: Goff C750; GW 7156; ISTC ic007500000; Chiara Savettieri, “La Laus perspectivae di Matteo Colacio e la fortuna critica della tarsia in area veneta”, Ricerche di storia dell'arte 64 (1998), pp.5-22