Boccaccio

BOCCACCIO, Giovanni / ALBANZANI, Donato degli (trans) / PICCARDI, Francesco di Pagolo (scribe) / TUCCI, Angolo (cartolaio)ABAA

Delle famose donne De mulieribus claris

1456ref. 5673BOCCACCIO'S FAMOUS WOMEN SIGNED AND DATED SEPTEMBER 1456 BY THE SCRIBE COPIOUSLY ANNOTATED WITH EARLY POEMS ON WOMEN SOME UNPUBLISHED Florence F. di Pagolo Piccardi 1456. 4to manuscript on paper 27.3 x 19.5 cm 133 ff. consisting of 13 quinions and 3 singletons written in a single column of thirty lines f. 1r. with white-vine initial 'D' and white-vine lower border in gold blue green pink and white with laurel wreath with blank space for arms; later unidentified arms added in brown ink rubricated chapter headings initials in blue early foliation in Arabic numerals in upper margin catchwords on final page of quires Arabic numeration of quires preserved on first page of several gatherings. Bound in old 17th-century vellum pattern of pricked holes for straps on lower cover vellum sewing stays at middle of quires red sprinkled edges. Minor rubbing and edge wear to spine and covers. Copiously annotated see below some rubbing staining edge wear to f. 1r minor to moderate occasional spotting and staining mostly marginal one to two letters of a few marginal annotations trimmed at fore-edge not affecting poems old repairs to inner margin of ff. 8-11 leaves of fourth quire out of order due to scribal error and misbinding text perfectly legible neatly and consistently written. Fine 15th-century Florentine vernacular manuscript – illuminated on its opening page with the 'white-vine' motif made famous by Tuscan illuminators of the Quattrocento – of Giovanni Boccaccio's 1313-75 renowned treatise De mulieribus claris Famous Women "the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted exclusively to women" and a work considered to be "the fountainhead of the European tradition of female biography" V. Brown pp. xii and xxii. The present manuscript preserves the first volgare translation of Boccaccio's original Latin text an Italian rendering Delle famose donne made by Donato degli Albanzani di Casentino d. 1411 a Venetian schoolmaster and friend of the author. Donato degli Albanzani began his translation in the 1360s "almost contemporaneously" Scarpati p. 211 with Boccaccio writing the original work which he first composed in 1361/1362 but revised several times in the following years. The present volume was expertly written out in a mercantesca libraria script signed and dated 1 September 1456 by the noted scribe Francesco di Pagolo Piccardi active 1440s-70s who was working at the behest of the prominent Florentine cartolaio Angolo Tucci 1395-1476 see below. The volume also contains copious later marginal annotations in several hands including poems on prominent women by Bernardo Accolti 1458-1535 and Raffaello Gualtieri fl. 1550s-70s as well as several pieces which are yet to be identified see below. While the manuscript tradition of Boccaccio's Latin De mulieribus claris has received sustained scholarly attention over the last century see especially Branca much work and indeed even a proper census remains to be done on this earliest of vernacular translations especially considering that during the Trecento and Quattrocento the greater part of female readership of the Famous Women would have experienced the text not in the Latin but in the volgare. Inspired by Petrarch's 1304-74 De viris illustribus Lives of Famous Men; a title Donato degli Albanzani also translated into the volgare Boccaccio in the De mulieribus claris penned 103 chapters on classical goddesses and female mythological figures e.g. Juno Minerva Isis Medea Arachne Medusa 'historical' women of the ancient world Helen Dido Sappho Lucretia Cleopatra Agrippina and prominent women who lived in post-classical times Empress Irene of Constantinople Queen Joanna of Jerusalem and Sicily the Sienese widow Camiloa the infamous 'Pope Joan'. Boccaccio notably excludes the vast pantheon of female Christian saints who had already been adequately covered in the hagiographical tradition. He sought to record for posterity the stories of women renowned for any sort of deed – including both 'good' and 'bad' women – and although he rarely cites his sources his stories typically derive from classical authors newly elevated in the wake of Petrarchan humanism including Livy Ovid Pliny the Elder Statius Suetonius Valerius Maximus and Virgil. Boccaccio composed the De mulieribus claris at Certaldo between the summer of 1361 and the summer of 1362. He dedicated his treatise to Andrea Acciaiuoli Countess of Altavilla a Tuscan noblewoman living in southern Italy who was the sister of Niccolò Acciaiuoli an old friend of Boccaccio and a major power behind the throne of Joann Queen of Naples. Donato degli Albanzani our translator first met Boccaccio in Ravenna in 1346 while at the court of Ostasio da Polenta but a friendship between the two scholars took root only later during Boccaccio's visit to Venice in 1363 where he was a guest of Petrarch at the Palazzo Molin sulla Riva degli Schiavoni. Donato began his translation of the De mulieribus claris in the mid-1360s and is believed to have presented a preliminary version of his work to Boccaccio in 1368 when he visited the writer at Padua. Donato's translation would not be fully finished however until sometime after he moved to Ferrara in 1381 to work as chancellor to Alberto d'Este and as tutor in the d'Este household. He dedicated the completed translation to his pupil Niccolò III d'Este son of Alberto see Zaccaria pp. 132-6. "Among the most popular works in the last age of the manuscript book" Brown p. xii both in its Latin and vernacular versions the Famous Women immediately exerted a considerable influence on authors across Europe including Geoffrey Chaucer who inserted a translation of the entire chapter on Zenobia as one of the stories that makes up The Monk's Tale and Christine de Pizan who used Boccaccio's work as a point of departure for her Livre de la cité des dames 1405. "The Famous Women also inspired many imitators in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries among whom are Iacopo Filippo Foresti De plurimis claris selectisque mulieribus Giovanni Sabbadino degli Arienti Gynevera de la clare donne Alvaro de Luna De las virtuosas y claras mujeres Alonso of Cartagena De las mujeres ilustres and Thomas Elyot's Defense of Good Women" Brown p. xxii. Fascinatingly the present manuscript includes numerous later marginal additions attesting to the fact that Boccaccio's treatise was carefully read well into the 17th-century. Ottava rima poems treating Semiramis f. 2r. Medea 19r Helen 39r Lucretia 53v and Cleopatra 101r all written out in the same 16th-century hand are the work of the renowned poet Bernardo Accolti 1458-1535; called 'L'Unico Aretino'. At ff. 45v-46r is a sonnet on Dido itself glossed with relevant lines from Book IV of the Aeneid by the poet Raffaello Gualtieri of Arezzo fl. 1550s-70s. These poems were published together in the Libro terzo delle rime di diversi nobilissimi et eccellentissimi autori nuovamente raccolte Venice 1550 but they appear there in readings that differ from those found in this Boccaccio manuscript suggesting that the annotator was perhaps working from a manuscript collection of poems or indeed working from memory. In any case a thoughtful addition of contemporary poems about famous women to a volume of Boccaccio's Delle famose donne that was written out a century earlier certainly warrants further examination given the context of wider Cinquecento debates about women then raging on the Italian peninsula e.g. in Baldassare Castiglione's Il Cortegiano. Further annotations in the manuscript include a passage from Aesop's "De Gallo et Jaspide" a popular school text here added to Boccaccio's chapter on Jocasta; f. 26r and unidentified poems at entries on Semiramis 2v Juno 5r Hypermnestra 15r Almathea 27r Pocris 29v-30r and Flora 75r as well as various lines of devotional verse e.g. 52r 133v monetary notes mathematical calculations and the like. One annotator records at fol. 80r the planting of parsley on Monday 4 August 1567 while another signs fol. 62v "5 November 1663 from Florence." The names 'sammoello dangnolo' and 'antonio dangnolo dale corti' are written in the margins of ff. 120r and 121r and the opening page on the manuscript is inscribed by Bartolomeo Cipriani: An 'Antonio d'Agnolo di Battista dalle Corti' and a 'Bartolome Cipriani' are attested as living in the Tuscan town of Greve in Chianti during respectively the 1570s and 1660s-1670s C. Baldini pp. 172 and 183; I Baldini pp. 51 and 209 and perhaps should be associated with the manuscript. The manuscript's colophon reads: "Questo libro e schritto per me Francesco di Pagolo Piccardi a pitizione Dangiolo Tucci cartolaio ad primo di settembre 1456. Iddio lodato." The scribe Francesco di Pagolo Piccardi seems to have specialized in the writing of vernacular manuscripts recording his name in Italian translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses and of Livy in a copy of Boccaccio's Il Ninfale Fiesolano and in an ottava rima pilgrim's guide to Santiago de Compostella. His earliest surviving effort dated 27 August 1444 is in fact another copy of Bocaccio's Delle famose donne which he wrote out while a prisoner at Florence's infamous Carcere delle Stinche see Cursi p. 184 no. 20; Pavia Biblioteca Universitaria MS Aldini 249. Agnolo Tucci 1395-1476 was cartolaio to the Badia in Florence from 1451 to 1467 managing shops located opposite Sant'Apollinare and the Camera del Comune. His business was taken over at his death by his son Bartolome d'Agnolo Tucci 1427-1525 who employed several well-known Florentine illuminators of the later Quattrocento see Commissioni p. 21. Further manuscripts identified as having been by written by the scribe Pagolo Piccardi are: Vatican City Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Barb. lat. 3933 dated 1473; Vatican City Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Capp. 243 dated 1454; Florence Biblioteca Riccardiana 1517 Q. III. 9 dated 1463; Florence Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Acq. e doni 145 dated 1455; Florence Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale II. IV. 17 Conv. Soppr. B. V. 2582 dated 1470; Florence. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Palat. 583 dated 1475; Rome Biblioteca Nazionale Vitt. Em. 488; Torino Biblioteca Nazionale N. I. 14.; Paris Bibliothèque nationale de France Département des Manuscrits Italiens ms. n. 900-8773 on manuscripts signed by Pagolo Piccardi see S. Mattiazzo p. 207 no. 184. Watermarks are of the letter 'P' and although buried in the gutter as expected in a quarto book and thus impossible to examine with precision they are consistent throughout the volume and are very like Briquet 8971 which is localized to Siena 1454-57 and Florence 1461-62. We have located only 1 example of Donato degli Albanzani's Delle famose donne at a U.S. institution New Haven Yale Beinecke Library MS 398 and just 6 further global copies Pavia Biblioteca Universitaria MS Aldini 249; London British Library MS Add. 16. 435; Oxford Bodleian MS Canon. It. 86; Florence Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale MS Palat. E. 5. 6. 60; Torino Bib. Univ. Cod. E. IV 29 Lat. 1047; and Montecassino MS 528 s. xv see Inguanez vol. 3 pp. 185-6; Tosti pp. 7-14. Indeed while manuscripts of Boccaccio's Latin De mulieribus claris survive in much greater numbers than do manuscripts of Albanzani's translation V. Branca traces some 110 Latin copies although 30 of these are damaged incomplete or excerpts these too are quite rare in the United States with just 3 examples having been recorded New Haven Yale Beinecke Library Marston MS 62; Wellesley Mass. Wellesley College MS 843; Cambridge Harvard MS Richardson 41 fragment; see V. Branca. G. Manzoni Delle Donne Famose de Giovanni Boccacci traduzione di M. Donato degli Albanzani di Casentino detto L'Apenninigena 1881; V. Brown ed. and trans. Giovanni Boccaccio. Famous Women; V. Zaccaria "I volgarizzamenti del Boccacco latino à Venezia" in V. Branca and G. Padoan eds. Boccaccio Venezia e il Veneto pp. 131-52; L. Tosti e.d Volgarizzamento di Maestro Donato da Casentino dell'opera di Messer Boccaccio De claris mulieribus; C. Scarpati "Note sulla fortuna editorial del Boccaccio: I volgarizzamenti cinquecenteschi delle opere latine" in G. Tournoy ed. Boccaccio in Europe pp. 209-20; A. Altamura "Donato da Casentino: Un volgarizzamento trecentesco del De Claris mulieribus del Boccaccio" Atti e memorie della R. Accademia Petrarca di Lettere Arte e Scienze vol. 24 1938 pp. 265-71; L. Toretta "Il Liber de claris mulieribus Parte III: I traduttori del Liber de claris mulieribus" Giornale storico della letteratura italiana vol. 40 1902 pp. 35-50; F. Novati "Donato degli Albanzani alla corte estense" Archivio storico italiano ser. 5 vol. 6 1890 pp. 365-85; V. Branca Tradizione delle opere di Giovanni Boccaccio vol. 1 "Un primo elenco dei codici e tre studi" pp. 92-98 and vol. 2 "Un secondo elenco di manoscritti e studi sul testo del 'Decameron' con due appendici" pp. 57-62; M. Franklin Boccaccio's Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society; I. Baldini Pievi parrocchie e castelli de Greve in Chianti; C. Baldini Statuti della lega di Val di Greve; M. Cursi "'Con molte sue fatiche': copisti in carcere alle Stinche alla fine del Medioevo secoli XIV e XV" in In uno volumine: Studi in onore di Cesare Scalon ed. L. Pani pp. 151-92; C. Guerzi "Un manoscritto ferrarese del tempo di Niccolò III d'Este: il De mulieribus claris della Bodleian Library di Oxford Canon. it. 86 e il suo miniatore" in Intorno a Boccaccio ed. S. Zamponi pp. 157-77; M. P. Mussini Sacchi "Le ottave epigrammatiche di Bernardo Accolti nel ms. Rossiano 680" Interpres vol. XV 1995-96 pp. 219-301; S. Mattiazzo Di mia propria mano. Le sottoscrizioni dei copisti "italiani" del Quattrocento nei codici della Bibloteca Riccardiana di Firenze; R. Daniels Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 1340-1520; F. Zambrini Serie delle edizioni delle opere di Giovanni Boccacci: Latine volgare tradotte pp. 21-7; A. Hortis Studi sulle Opere Latine del Boccaccio pp. 930-31. F. di Pagolo Piccardi books

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