The Use and Reuse of Printed Illustrations in 15th-Century Venetian Editions

A presentation of the 15cILLUSTRATION database and website, a searchable database of 15th-century printed illustrations developed by the 15cBOOKTRADE Project in collaboration with the Visual Geometry Group (VGG) at the Department of Engineering Science of the University of Oxford. 15cILLUSTRATION is the first comprehensive and systematic tool to track and investigate the production, use, circulation, and copying of woodblocks, iconographic subjects, artistic styles, within 15th-century printed illustrated editions. The paper illustrates the potential of the 15cILLUSTRATION website as a research support tool for art historians, book historians, philologists and historians of visual and material culture.

Hebrew Incunabula in the National Library of Israel as a Source for Early Modern Book History in Europe and Beyond

Hebrew incunabula from the collection of the National Library of Israel contain a vast amount of manuscript annotations, many of them of historical, philological, linguistic, and palaeographical interest. The paper presents a few examples of owners’ notes that shed light on the history of books in early modern Jewish communities. From the book owned by the well-known rabbi Moses Alashkar, to a reference to the participation of rabbi Mordecai Dato in a family ceremony, and the extensive glosses of Samuel Lerma, to the joyful message of an unnamed Jew whose daughter had been released from captivity. Such material is a valuable resource for research on the distribution and use of early Hebrew printed books in Europe and beyond.

Il commercio degli incunaboli a Padova nel 1480: il Quaderneto di Antonio Moretto

In 1480 publisher and bookseller Antonio Moretto delivered a total of over 900 incunabula to be sold in his shop in Padua. The details of this business transaction survive in a small paper gathering of 8 leaves, known as Quaderneto, in which the titles of the books, the number of copies available, and the sale prices fixed by Moretto himself are listed. It is an important source for our knowledge of Italian Renaissance book-trade and – thanks to a comparison with the Zornale of Francesco de Madiis – provides valuable information about book prices and sales towards the end of the 15th century.

Visual Interpretation of the ISTC

The Atlas of Early Printing is an online resource built with GIS tools to depict the spread and development of printing during the incunable period in Europe. It has been online since 2008 and continues to be developed. The site uses data from the Incunabula Short Title Catalog (ISTC) and other sources, providing a visualisation of the databases from which the data is retrieved. The data being visualised is the result of many decades of cataloguing, arranging, publishing, and migrating; the work that followed was informed by material constraints and has left material traces. For the ISTC, an important period in the development of data formats was the work Margaret Bingham Stillwell undertook from 1924 to 1940 for the bibliography Incunabula in American Libraries, a Second Census. The data she gathered were meticulously coordinated through mailing campaigns and organised on cards, and then translated into print according to the publisher’s requirements. The decisions underlying Stillwell’s descriptions were migrated to Frederick Goff’s Third Census and eventually directly into the first version of the ISTC. The structures she developed serve as the foundation for modern efforts to expand beyond the limitations of the short-title format, and to provide the data for geographic and other visualisations.

La formazione delle raccolte marciane

This essay takes into consideration four early catalogues (cc. XVII-XVIII) of former Libreria di San Marco (now Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana). Their analysis and comparison provide information about book accession and preservation methods through the centuries, about rearrangement of miscellanies, replacement and/or discarding of copies of the same edition. Some case studies from the incunabula collection are given. The first catalogue, printed between 1623 and 1626, contains records of 59 dated incunabula: tracking these items in the following three catalogues, a list of identified editions is provided, as well as their related copies currently held at the Marciana Library.

From the Corpus Iuris to ‘psalterioli da puti’, on Parchment, Bound, Gilt... The Price of Any Book Sold in Venice 1484-1488

The ledger of the Venetian bookseller Francesco De Madiis, known as the Zornale (1484-88), which is currently being studied by Cristina Dondi and Neil Harris, offers a unique insight into the market value of the earliest printed books, of any sort. The essay offers the analysis of a variety of subjects, prices, sales, customers, and comparison with the cost of living in Renaissance Venice, the largest place of production and distribution in 15th-century Europe. The focus is first and foremost on the cheapest and most popular items, a production and trade enabled by the new technology.

«Heredes de Plauto stampadore deno avere infrascritte robe e dinari»

Two archival sources of the late 15th century allow to outline some considerations and comparisons between the cost of living and book prices in Bologna. The first reports books stored in Bologna by the printer/bookseller Francesco Platone de’ Benedetti during his lifetime; the second, the most important for this study-case, reports the prices and sales of those books made by his heirs.

The Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC)

From its foundation in 1980, the ISTC has been one of the most important international reference sources for incunabula studies. Based on a merger of F.R. Goff’s Incunabula in North American Libraries: A Third Census and the Indice Generale degli Incunaboli delle Biblioteche d’Italia, it aimed to be a comprehensive list both of 15th-century editions and of surviving copies of incunabula. While maintaining its original purpose, it has striven to take advantage of new partnerships and technical innovations to ensure its continued utility as a cornerstone of incunabula research. Managed by the British Library in London and hosted by CERL, the ISTC continues to rely on cooperation and partnership from holding institutions and researchers worldwide. Free since 2003, the ISTC can be used as a simple guide to editions and copies, but also as a dataset enabling researchers to look at 15th-century printing in new ways. After briefly looking at the ISTC’s history, this essay focuses on new developments made to the database, highlighting its continued relevance and potential to support traditional incunabula research as well as new projects, and its managers’ intention and flexibility to improve the file in response to its users’ feedback.

La compravendita di libri nella contabilità dei mercanti fiorentini

The account-books of Florentine merchants are full of purchases and sales of books. In particular, the ledgers of the company of Francesco and Bernardo of Niccolò Cambini offer, for the second half of the 15th century, numerous records. Unfortunately, the conciseness of the accounting does not allow us to know all the characteristics of these books; however, the registrations always indicate the monetary value, thus enabling us to reconstruct the average selling price for various types of books. In this paper, we aim to compare this information with the price series of two goods – wheat and wine – that constituted the basis of the diet for the majority of the population, to better understand what the purchase of a book meant for the society of the period and to perceive more clearly its value.

«Emptus Ferrarie». I prezzi del libro a stampa nella città estense fra Quattro e primi del Cinquecento

During the second half of the 15th century Ferrara, with the Este Court as well as the University and many professionals in law and medicine was an active centre in book circulation, use and - of course - selling. At the end of 15th century, the book market, besides the manuscript production prepared for the Este family and its entourage, was dominated by the cheapest hand-printed editions, also purchased by nobles (such as the Pio princes of Carpi) as well as by professors, doctors, judges and so on. This essay starts from the analytical study of book prices recorded in well known lists never examined before in this respect, then it focuses on purchasing notes in surviving copies, and archival documents. Book prices found in these three kinds of sources will be related not only to different moments in the purchase by the same owner but also to prices paid for everyday life goods in Ferrara at the time of Borso and Ercole I. This will offer a more precise idea of the average book price at the time, and of how much money was spent on books compared to that spent for something else.