From the library of Franchino Gaffurio, musicus and phonascus

Perotti, Niccolò (ca. 1430-1480).

Cornucopiae linguae Latinae. Venice, Baptista de Tortis, 19 October 1490.

A fine copy of the third edition of Perotti’s Cornu copiae, once belonging to the renowned Renaissance music theorist, musician at the Sforza court, and choirmaster or maestro di cappella at the Duomo of Milan, Franchino Gaffurio.

Born in Sassoferrato, in the Marche region of Italy, Niccolò Perotti was a pupil of Vittorino da Feltre and Guarino Veronese, and a pre- eminent member of the circle around Cardinal Iohannes Bessarion, whose secretary he became in 1447. Later he retired in his native town, in his house named Curifugia, where he began writing the Cornu copiae linguae Latinae, a commentary on Book i of Martial, collecting innumerable Greek and Latin sources to this end. The work’s manuscript – which is dedicated to Duke Federico da Montefeltro – was later revised and expanded by Perotti’s son Pyrrhus. It was first printed in Venice in 1489, issued by Paganino’s press, nine years after the author’s death.

The Cornu copiae enjoyed wide and immediate success, becoming a standard reference on the Latin language and a sort of encyclopaedia of antiquity, “which like a gigantic commonplace book should be used by contemporary writers and readers of Latin” (M. Pade, “Niccolò Perotti’s Cornu copiae”, p. 262). At least 36 editions were published before 1536, when Robert Estienne’s Thesaurus linguae Latinae appeared.

This precious volume comes from the library of musicus and phonascus Franchino Gaffurio (or Gafori). Born in Lodi to an aristocratic family, the young Gaffurio entered into a Benedictine monastery where he acquired his early musical training. He later became a priest and lived in Mantua and Verona before settling in Milan as the local cathedral’s maestro di cappella, a position he held from 1484 until his death in 1522. He had a strong humanist bent and met with composers and artists from across Europe. In Milan alone, Gaffurio made the acquaintance of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) as well as the Franco-Flemish Josquin Desprez or des Prez (ca. 1450-1521), the greatest composer of the period. Desprez and Gaffurio are also the most plausible candidates for the subject of Leonardo’s celebrated ‘Portrait of a Musician’. As of 1492, Gaffurio taught music (‘cathedra ad lecturam musicae’) at the Gymnasium Mediolanense founded by the Duke of Milan Ludovico il Moro, the same academy where lectures were given by, among others, Giorgio Merula, Luca Pacioli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Bramante.

An autograph note on fol. O5v states that Gaffurio acquired the present copy of the Cornu copiae on 16 January 1494 for 3 1⁄2 lire, a very high sum compared to his monthly salary as a musicus and teacher. The lavish purchase is a mark of his interest in Perotti’s work, which he may have considered an aid for his own teaching, or in the preparation of his Practica musicae, which first appeared in 1496 and is replete with references to such ancient sources as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Pliny.

This annotation recording the purchase of the book bears the distinctive features of Gaffurio’s youthful hand and can be compared with an autograph document dated 1495 and published by Gaetano Cesari. By contrast, the second annotation visible here – an ownership

inscription on fol. B8v, in which Gaffurio describes himself as ‘royal musician and singer (phonascus) of the church of Milan’ – is written in the more trembling hand typical of his later life, as evinced by a letter dated 1520, also edited by Cesari.

The title of Perotti’s treatise is included in the inventory compiled in 1518, when Gaffurio gifted all or part of his library to the Church of the Incoronata in his hometown of Lodi, where the famous Schola cantorum had been founded in 1511. In 1694 the library of the ‘Tempio dell’Incoronata’ was dispersed and partly sold to the Oratorian monastery located in the town. Only a few volumes once owned by Gaffurio have been discovered among the collections of the Biblioteca Laudense at Lodi.

ISTC ip00290000; GW M31105; H 12698; BMC V 326; IGI 7421; Goff P-290; G. Cesari, “Musica e musicisti alla Corte sforzesca”, F. Malaguzzi Valeri (ed.), La corte di Ludovico il Moro, iv (1923), p. 210; F. Fano, “Vita e attività del musico teorico e pratico Francino Gaffurio da Lodi”, Arte Lombarda, 15/2 (1970), pp. 49-62; E. Motta, “I libri della chiesa dell’Incoronata di Lodi nel 1518”, Il libro e la stampa, 1 (1970), pp. 105- 112; A. Novasconi, L’Incoronata di Lodi, Lodi 1974, esp. pp. 19-42; J.-L. Charlet, “Observations sur certaines éditions du Cornucopiae de Niccolò Perotti (1489-1500)”, Res Publica Litterarum, 11 (1988), pp. 83- 96; M. Furno, Le Cornu Copiae de Niccolò Perotti. Culture et méthode d’un humaniste qui amait les mots, Geneva 1995; M. Pantarotto, “Per la biblioteca di Franchino Gaffurio: i manoscritti laudensi”, Scripta, 5 (2012), pp. 111-118; M. Pade, “Niccolò Perotti’s Cornu Copiae: The Commentary as a Repository of Knowledge”, K. Enenkel - H. Nellen (eds.), Neo-Latin Commentaries and the Management of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period (1400 -1700), Leuven 2013; M. Pantarotto, “Franchino Gaffurio e i suoi libri”, D. Daolmi (ed.), Ritratto di Gaffurio, Lucca 2017, pp. 49-72.