Simonetta, Giovanni (1420-1491/92). Commentarii rerum gestarum Francisci Sfortiae. Ed: Franciscus Puteolanus. Milan, Antonius Zarotus, 23 January [between 6 July 1481 and 3 February 1482].
Simonetta, Giovanni (1420-1491/92). Commentarii rerum gestarum Francisci Sfortiae. Ed: Franciscus Puteolanus. Milan, Antonius Zarotus, 23 January [between 6 July 1481 and 3 February 1482].
Simonetta, Giovanni (1420-1491/92).
Commentarii rerum gestarum Francisci Sfortiae. Ed: Franciscus Puteolanus.
Milan, Antonius Zarotus, 23 January [between 6 July 1481 and 3 February 1482].
MEDIOLANI ANT: ZAROTUS MCCCCLXXIX
Simonetta, Giovanni (1420-1491/92).
Commentarii rerum gestarum Francisci Sfortiae. Ed: Franciscus Puteolanus. Milan, Antonius Zarotus, 23 January [between 6 July 1481 and 3 February 1482].
Folio (312x251 mm). Collation: a-z8, A-E8, F-G6, H-K8, L6, M-N8, O10. 291 of [292] leaves, lacking fol. O10 blank; including fol. O9, likewise blank. Text in one column, 42 lines. Type: 5. Fine six-line initial in blue on a richly ornamented red ground on fol. a1r; numerous six-line Lombard initials, alternately in blue and red, with the inked guide letter still visible in a few cases; two-line initial in blue on fol. O8v. Early twentieth-century English diced brown russia, over wooden boards. Covers with double blind fillet border. Spine with five double raised bands, with author’s name, title and imprint in gilt lettering. Gilt edges. Joints slightly rubbed. A very good, wide-margined copy, a few insignificant spots in places. Marginal reading notes in two (possibly three) early hands, slightly trimmed.
A fine, wide-margined copy of the first edition of this vast and highly detailed account of the gesta of condottiero Francesco Sforza (1401- 1466), the first duke of Milan from the Sforza dynasty.
The publication of the work was rather troubled following the Simonettas’ fall from grace – and above all the disgrace of Giovanni’s brother Francesco Simonetta, the one-time secretary to Ludovico Sforza il Moro (1452-1508) who was executed on 30 October 1480. Giovanni’s life was spared, but he was exiled to Vercelli and unable to proceed with the publication of his ambitious work. The manuscript was revised by Francesco Dal Pozzo from Parma, better known as Puteolanus (d. 1490), and the work was published by Antonio Zarotto, who had introduced printing to Milan in 1471. The Commentarii were issued in 400 copies, with the text prefaced with an undated Oratio addressed by Puteolonus to Ludovico il Moro, along with a dedicatory epistle to his nephew Giangaleazzo Sforza (1469-1494).
The volume closes with a letter to the author written by Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), in which the leading humanist states he had read the work with the greatest pleasure. This letter is dated 8 June 1479, and – given that the colophon states only a day and month, ‘Decimo Kalendas Februaria’, i.e., 23 January, without any indication of year – this was long considered a crucial clue as to the chronology of the Commentarii, overlooking the possibility that Filelfo may have been referring to the achievement of the work in manuscript form, rather than its effective publication. More recently, attention has been given to the fact that the printer was granted a six-year privilege by Duke Ludovico on 6 July 1481. Further, a vellum copy of the Commentary was discovered in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in which Puteolanus’s Oratio to Ludovico il Moro is replaced with a printed dedicatory epistle to King Louis XI dated 3 February 1482. Such points lead to a dating of the printing of the volume between these new chronological extremes.
Even if only due to an erroneous interpretation of Filelfo’s encomiastic letter, the year ‘1479’ as the date of printing dominated the cataloguing and collecting of Simonetta’s Commentary until the first decades of the twentieth century. All nineteenth-century bookseller catalogues list it as an incunable printed in 1479, and still in 1917 Anderson Galleries described the edition as having been issued that year. It is
therefore not surprising that the imprint lettered in gilt on the spine of the copy presented here – bound in the early twentieth century – also reads ‘MEDIOLANI ANT: ZAROTUS MCCCCLXXIX’.
ISTC is00532000; GW M42283; HC 14753 = HR 14754; BMC VI 718; IGI 9013; Goff S-532; A. Ganda, I primordi della tipografia milanese. Antonio Zarotto da Parma (1471-1507), Florence 1984, no. 92; G. Ianziti, “The First Edition of Giovanni Simonetta’s De rebus gestis Francisci Sfortiae commentarii: Questions of Chronology and Interpretation”, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 44 (1982), pp. 137-147; A. Nuovo, “Privilegi librari a Milano (secc. XV-XVI)”, La Bibliofilia, 116 (2014), p. 197.
