It was a pleasure to participate in the Archives and Book Culture in Early Modern Florence seminar organized jointly by MAP, the Medici Archive Project, and ISI Florence on June 10 – 15, 2019.

Together with Prof. Stefano Baldassarri, I escorted an enthusiastic group of postgraduate students to the Biblioteca Riccardiana and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale to consult a selection of manuscripts.

These works ranged from Ugolino Verino‘s autograph of his epic Carlias to the magnificent presentation copy of the same poem for King Charles VIII of France; dedication manuscripts of a poem for Pope Leo X and autograph volumes by Ficino, Bruni, and Poliziano. The highlight, however, was a deluxe volume of inscriptions compiled by Fra Giocondo, written by his friend Bartolomeo Sanvito and once owned by Palla Rucellai.

Our library visits were supplemented with a practical seminar on compositorial errors encountered in early printed books with special emphasis given to the typographical problems in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s works (1623): a special addition to an otherwise packed program which I hope will be repeated in the near future.

 

Paul GWYNNE, Ph.D.
Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Director, Interdisciplinary Studies, The American University of Rome