Before the history of Italian bestiary literature can be satisfactorily written, considerable preliminary work remains to be done. When Lauchert published his Geschichte des Physiologus (Strassburg, 1889), although he devoted a certain amount of space to the poets from the Sicilian school to Ariosto, he was not aware that any bestiaries earlier than that of Leonardo da Vinci existed in Italian prose. Three years later, Goldstaub and Wendriner, Ein Tosco-Venezianischer Bestiarius (Halle, 1892), published the text of a manuscript belonging to the Biblioteca Comunale at Padua, and also an account of seven other manuscripts, all of which are in Florentine libraries. This book (cited hereafter as G-W) is the most comprehensive study of the Italian bestiaries now available, and may safely be taken as the basis for further investigation. The present paper, based in large part on work done in the libraries of Florence, Naples and Paris, is offered as a contribution to the study of the subject, and will, it is hoped, be of value in indicating a large amount of material, including several important manuscripts, which was entirely unknown to Goldstaub and Wendriner. An important phase of the subject, namely, the use of bestiary material by the Italian poets of the thirteenth century, has been investigated by Dr. M. S. Garver, of Yale University, in a dissertation which he hopes to publish soon.
Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered. Carmen C. Bambach. 4 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019. xvi + 502 pp. (vol. 1), xiv + 480 pp. (vol. 2), xiv + 634 pp. (vol. 3), xiv + 666 pp. (vol. 4). $550.