Beschreibung:

HENRICO BOSCANO, Isola beata , in Italian; ODORIC MATTIUZZI DA PORDENONE (1286-1331), De rebus incognitis , in Italian; Littera di Alexandro...ad Aristotile...de le cose maravigliosi de lindia , in Italian, MANUSCRIPT ON PAPER Milan, in or shortly after 1513 289 x 205mm. ii + 140 + iii leaves: 1-14 1 0, COMPLETE, 27 lines written in brown ink in a cursive humanistic bookhand between two verticals ruled in metalpoint and on 27 horizontals ruled in brown, justification: 228 x 125mm, running headings to first work, opening capitals in margins (small tear in margin of f.1, very small hole in upper margin ff.115-118). Contemporary Milanese olive-brown morocco over pasteboard tooled in gilt, gauffered gilt edges (worn, corners and joints rubbed, top of spine defective, lacking four clasps). LEONARDO DA VINCI AND UTOPIAN LITERATURE: AN UNKNOWN MILANESE TEXT OF 1513 PROVENANCE: 1. The text was composed in Milan in 1513. This handsomely bound copy may have been made for the dedicatee, Simon Crotto, or for one of the circle of poets, painters and musicians to which the author belonged. 2. The Barnabite College of St Michael, Vienna: Collegij Sci Michaelis Vienna on first added paper; shelf marks on spine E, N above a number obscured by paper label A.2.1. The Barnabites, noted for their scholarship, had been founded in Milan in 1530; the Barnabite architect Gian Ambrogio Mazenta (1565-1635), General of the Order 1612-1617, played an important role in the preservation of Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts and wrote a memorial on their dispersal (C. Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci on Painting, a Lost Book (Libro A) , 1964, pp.252-9). This tantalising link may explain how the Isola beata came to Vienna, where the Barnabites were granted St Michael as their first Austrian house in 1626. In 1923 it passed to the Salvatorians. CONTENT: Henrico Boscano (doc.1513-1528), Isola beata ff.1-92: title f.1, prefatory sonnet by Antonio Fileremo Fregoso opening Piaceri et meraviglie in queste carte... f.1v; Book I comprising dedication to Simon Crotto, Knight of Jerusalem and patrician of Milan, opening Si come gli auctori diconi... ff.2-3; letter purportedly from Andrea Boscano to his cousin Henrico from the Isola beata , opening Da poi che per gran desiderio di vedere dil mondo... , last two lines on f.5v to twenty-third line of f.7 inked over, ending Impossibile exprimere tal beatitudine di viver. Data a lisola beata iiij Aprile. 1510 , ff.3v-8; brief description of the island ff.8v-10v; table of contents ff.11-14; Books II-IX, opening El primo giorno che desmontassemo de Barcha... , detailing Andrea's reception, the island's geography, trees, animals, birds, plants, inhabitants, and god, ff.15-80v; Book X, with Andrea's message to Henrico, the ensuing debate on whether the island is truly blessed between a theologian, a physician, a learned knight skilled in astronomy and a geometrician, who is an excellent painter and good cosmographer, the debate summarised in a letter to Andrea, dated in Milano a xx di Magio 1513 , and the exchange between Henrico and Andrea's messenger from the island, ending ...hai somno tene renderia mille auctorita per ciascuna de tue prepositione. Finis , ff.81-92; f.93 ruled blank. This description of the Blessed Island apparently predates the publication of Utopia , Sir Thomas More's fictional island, by three years. Both use the framework of a traveller's account and Boscano makes the authenticity of the narration a subsidiary issue in the final debate. It is, however, the author's imagination and invention that is stressed in the prefatory poem and dedicatory letter. Boscano did not, like More, write primarily to criticise the reality of his own country. Instead he delights in the natural history of the island and then focuses on whether a pagan 'Blessed Island' can be integrated into Christian eschatology. Boscano probably drew on classical ideal communities, most famously Plato's Republic , and on the traditions of At