Details
December 1500
LUCRETIUS (94-55 B.C.) De rerum natura. Ed. Girolamo Avanzi (d. after 1534). Super-chancery 4° (216 x 153mm). Collation: π6 (1r title T. Lucretii Cari, Libri sex nuper emendati, 1v printer's dedication to Alberto Pio, 2r-3r editor's letter to Valerio Superchio, 3v-6r editorial note followed by table of contents, 6v biographical note on Lucretius and praise from classical authors including Ovid); a-m8 n6 (text, n6r colophon, privilege, register, n6v blank). 108 leaves. Roman type 10:82, greek 3:84 (occasional words). 37 lines. Woodcut initials.
PREFACE: Aldus offers Pio this edition of the most learned philosopher of his sect, disparaging all previous editions and praising Avanzi's numerous emendations. Lucretius has described Epicurean dogma in this didactic but elegant poem, in imitation of Empedocles, who was the first of the Greeks to set down wisdom in verse. [Avancius's dedication encourages Superchius and other learned friends to continue to revise the text of Lucretius.]
BINDING: 18th-century English red morocco, gilt-rule border. PROVENANCE: ? Piero Candido da Portico (1460s-1513, Camaldolese monk and friend of Aldus's), the editor of Filippo Giunta's 1512 Florentine edition of Lucretius, EMENDATIONS AND NOTES ON EVERY PAGE, POSSIBLY AUTOGRAPH, in fine humanistic cursive script (compare his Latin hand in Ms. Vat. gr. 1898 and Ms. Barb. gr. 62), with frequent reference to two codices corrected by Michael Marullus under sigla Pe.M. [perhaps Piero de' Medici, now Ms. Laur. 35.25, or Petrus Martellus of Florence, his copy of the 1495 Venice ed. (CIBN L-257, Rés.m.Yc 397)] and An.P [apparently not Angelo Poliziano, now Ms. Laur. 35.29, but possibly Antonius Petreius of Florence, whose name turns up in collations of Propertius]; James Comerford (19th-century armorial bookplate)
FIRST ALDINE EDITION. The claims made for this edition by Aldus and Avantius, member of the Aldine Academy, could only be modest, since they worked 'sine antiquo exemplari' and their copy text was the 1495 Venice edition, to which however many missing lines were restored, including one (II.1169) not previously found. A significant further advance on the text of Lucretius's great philosophical poem was made with the Juntine edition of 1512, whose redaction by PETRUS CANDIDUS according to his preface was based in the first place on the work of MICHAEL TARCHANIOTA MARULLUS (ca. 1450-1500) and that of Giovanni Gioviano Pontano. In 1847 Jacob Bernays gave basic shape to the stemma of Lucretius. From the lost archetype of the text, magisterially reconstructed by Lachmann in his edition of 1850, derive the two earliest surviving manuscripts, O and Q, both 9th-century and in the Vossius collection at Leyden University. From O descend the so-called Itali manuscripts (such as those used by Marullus and Candidus) mainly (but not exclusively) via Niccolò Niccoli's transcription (now Ms. Laur. 35.30) of an ancient manuscript discovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. The Itali therefore have little independent textual value except as a repository of conjectures. "But Lucretius passed through such distinguished hands in the course of the Renaissance that the later history of his text can throw a great deal of light on the capacity and cross-currents of humanist scholarship" (L.D. Reynolds, Texts and Transmission, Clarendon Press 1983, p. 221). Piero Candido's annotations -- if they are his -- involve many corrections and some wholesale transpositions, the latter not generally recorded, and certainly not in O or Q. The corrections, when not Marullus's own emendations, tend to follow Q not O, where the two differ. The references must themselves be copied from an intermediate source since the notes of ownership are in the present tense ('Codex Lucretii est apud Pe.M.' and 'in codice postremo emendato a Marullo qui est apud An.P.').
In any case, this is a significant new witness in the Itali tradition, whose undeserved neglect has been recognized by M.D. Reeve ("The Italian Tradition of Lucretius" in: Italia medioevale e umanistica XXIII, p. 27-48). Dr. Reeve has kindly examined this copy for us and compared it with his notes on the known annotated Itali codices; he has provisionally concluded that the collator was not using any known version of Marullus's notes, at least in its present state, and sees no textual reason for identifying him as Candidus. BOOKS ANNOTATED IN MANUSCRIPT BY PROMINENT QUATTROCENTO LATINISTS ARE OF THE GREATEST RARITY ON THE MARKET. HC *10285; BMC V, 562; Goff L-335; IGI 5868; Flodr 210:6 (Lucretius); Dionisotti & Orlandi XXI; Murphy 30; Sansoviniana 39; Laurenziana 38; R 23:1
LUCRETIUS (94-55 B.C.) De rerum natura. Ed. Girolamo Avanzi (d. after 1534). Super-chancery 4° (216 x 153mm). Collation: π6 (1r title T. Lucretii Cari, Libri sex nuper emendati, 1v printer's dedication to Alberto Pio, 2r-3r editor's letter to Valerio Superchio, 3v-6r editorial note followed by table of contents, 6v biographical note on Lucretius and praise from classical authors including Ovid); a-m8 n6 (text, n6r colophon, privilege, register, n6v blank). 108 leaves. Roman type 10:82, greek 3:84 (occasional words). 37 lines. Woodcut initials.
PREFACE: Aldus offers Pio this edition of the most learned philosopher of his sect, disparaging all previous editions and praising Avanzi's numerous emendations. Lucretius has described Epicurean dogma in this didactic but elegant poem, in imitation of Empedocles, who was the first of the Greeks to set down wisdom in verse. [Avancius's dedication encourages Superchius and other learned friends to continue to revise the text of Lucretius.]
BINDING: 18th-century English red morocco, gilt-rule border. PROVENANCE: ? Piero Candido da Portico (1460s-1513, Camaldolese monk and friend of Aldus's), the editor of Filippo Giunta's 1512 Florentine edition of Lucretius, EMENDATIONS AND NOTES ON EVERY PAGE, POSSIBLY AUTOGRAPH, in fine humanistic cursive script (compare his Latin hand in Ms. Vat. gr. 1898 and Ms. Barb. gr. 62), with frequent reference to two codices corrected by Michael Marullus under sigla Pe.M. [perhaps Piero de' Medici, now Ms. Laur. 35.25, or Petrus Martellus of Florence, his copy of the 1495 Venice ed. (CIBN L-257, Rés.m.Yc 397)] and An.P [apparently not Angelo Poliziano, now Ms. Laur. 35.29, but possibly Antonius Petreius of Florence, whose name turns up in collations of Propertius]; James Comerford (19th-century armorial bookplate)
FIRST ALDINE EDITION. The claims made for this edition by Aldus and Avantius, member of the Aldine Academy, could only be modest, since they worked 'sine antiquo exemplari' and their copy text was the 1495 Venice edition, to which however many missing lines were restored, including one (II.1169) not previously found. A significant further advance on the text of Lucretius's great philosophical poem was made with the Juntine edition of 1512, whose redaction by PETRUS CANDIDUS according to his preface was based in the first place on the work of MICHAEL TARCHANIOTA MARULLUS (ca. 1450-1500) and that of Giovanni Gioviano Pontano. In 1847 Jacob Bernays gave basic shape to the stemma of Lucretius. From the lost archetype of the text, magisterially reconstructed by Lachmann in his edition of 1850, derive the two earliest surviving manuscripts, O and Q, both 9th-century and in the Vossius collection at Leyden University. From O descend the so-called Itali manuscripts (such as those used by Marullus and Candidus) mainly (but not exclusively) via Niccolò Niccoli's transcription (now Ms. Laur. 35.30) of an ancient manuscript discovered by Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. The Itali therefore have little independent textual value except as a repository of conjectures. "But Lucretius passed through such distinguished hands in the course of the Renaissance that the later history of his text can throw a great deal of light on the capacity and cross-currents of humanist scholarship" (L.D. Reynolds, Texts and Transmission, Clarendon Press 1983, p. 221). Piero Candido's annotations -- if they are his -- involve many corrections and some wholesale transpositions, the latter not generally recorded, and certainly not in O or Q. The corrections, when not Marullus's own emendations, tend to follow Q not O, where the two differ. The references must themselves be copied from an intermediate source since the notes of ownership are in the present tense ('Codex Lucretii est apud Pe.M.' and 'in codice postremo emendato a Marullo qui est apud An.P.').
In any case, this is a significant new witness in the Itali tradition, whose undeserved neglect has been recognized by M.D. Reeve ("The Italian Tradition of Lucretius" in: Italia medioevale e umanistica XXIII, p. 27-48). Dr. Reeve has kindly examined this copy for us and compared it with his notes on the known annotated Itali codices; he has provisionally concluded that the collator was not using any known version of Marullus's notes, at least in its present state, and sees no textual reason for identifying him as Candidus. BOOKS ANNOTATED IN MANUSCRIPT BY PROMINENT QUATTROCENTO LATINISTS ARE OF THE GREATEST RARITY ON THE MARKET. HC *10285; BMC V, 562; Goff L-335; IGI 5868; Flodr 210:6 (Lucretius); Dionisotti & Orlandi XXI; Murphy 30; Sansoviniana 39; Laurenziana 38; R 23:1