Impraessum Venetiis amicorum cura

Today we are celebrating the founding of Venice with a fine copy, housed in its original ‘speaking’ binding (that is, a binding that refers to the book’s contents), of the 1530 Orationes duae, Carminaque nonnulla by Andrea Navagero (1483-1529; read a description of this copy here), a first-rank figure who embodies several aspects of the Venetian Renaissance: an exemplary humanist well versed in both the Latin and Greek languages, he was a close collaborator of Manutius’s printing press and a member of the Aldine Academy, a historian and a librarian, a poet and an orator, a diplomat and a curious-minded traveller, and a devoted patron of arts and letters. A man with refined artistic taste, a marked passion for gardens and gardening, and above all a central node in a wide network of friends that included some of the major intellectuals of his age.

Born of a noble family in Venice in 1483, Andrea Navagero first studied rhetoric and Latin language at the St Mark School under Marcantonio Coccio Sabellico (1436-1506), official historian of the Venetian Republic and author of the monumental world history Enneades, (see a superb copy of Sabellico’s Rapsodiae historiarum Enneadum, printed by Bade in 1513/16, here).

Navagero completed his scholastic education at the University of Padua, where he studied philosophy with Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525), and Greek with the Cretan philologian Marcus Musurus (ca. 1470 -1517), one of the closest collaborators of the Aldine Press.  

Navagero’s relationship with Aldus Manutius was likewise very close. It was Navagero, together with his teacher Musurus, that encouraged Aldus to resume his publishing activity after the long interruption of 1505-1512. The printer subsequently dedicated the Pindarus edition of January 1513 to Navagero, praising the latter’s intelligence, literary skills, and moral virtue. The Venetian was also a member of the so-called Aldine Academy, founded in 1502, and edited several classical texts for Aldus, including the rhetorical works by Cicero (March 1514), Quintilianus (August 1514), Virgil (October 1514), and Lucretius (January 1515), while his three-volume edition of Cicero’s Orationes would be issued by Aldus’s successor Andrea Torresano in 1519. 

The famous Aldine anchor device, from Pietro Bembo’s Gli Asolani (Venice, Aldo Manuzio, March 1505).

See a complete description of this copy here.

His network of intellectuals in Venice was wide and distinguished, and included, among others, the physician and philosopher Girolamo Fracastoro (1478-1553), the future cardinal Gasparo Contarini (1483-1542), the diplomat and geographer Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557), and the humanist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), eminent editor of Dante and Petrarch, and author of the seminal dialogue Asolani (see a description of the first edition of 1505 here).

Navagero’s intellectual qualities were also publicly acknowledged. In January 1516, the Venetian Consiglio dei Dieci named him official historian of the Republic, and soon after he became librarian of San Marco – the library known today as the Biblioteca Marciana – succeeding his teacher Sabellico in both posts. That same year, he travelled to Rome, together with his Venetian friend Agostino Beaziano (d. 1549), a protégé of Bembo. He was received with great distinction at the court of Leo X, and was hosted – possibly thanks to Bembo’s mediation – at the palace of another great protagonist of the Italian Renaissance, the Mantuan Baldassarre Castiglione (1478-1529), celebrated author of the Libro del Cortegiano (see a complete description of a rare edition of the Cortegiano printed by Benedetto Giunti here). In Rome, Navagero was familiar with Raphael – who portrayed him with Beaziano in a fine ‘double portrait’ – as well as Jacopo Sadoleto and numerous members of the Roman Academy.

Raphael, Portrait of Andrea Navagero (left) and Agostino Beaziano (right), 1516.. Galleria Doria Pamphili, Rome. Image in the public domain.

In 1525 Navagero was elected Venetian ambassador to Spain, and in March 1526 he represented the Republic at Charles V and Isabella of Portugal’s sumptuous wedding in Seville. He remained in Spain until 1528, and in the letters he wrote to his friends Bembo and Ramusio, he provided vivid descriptions of the towns he had visited, including the Casa de la contratación de las Indias, established in Seville in 1503 for the purposes of controlling trade with the New World. The long stay in Spain also provided an occasion for fruitful exchanges, the collation of ancient manuscripts, and conversations with antiquarians, historians, geographers, and above all poets, such as Garcilaso de la Vega (1501-1536), whom he introduced to Petrarch’s poetry.

The correspondence reveals Navagero’s especial taste for the splendor of Islamic Spain, and the lush gardens of Barcelona, Seville, Toledo, and Granada, which were – as we read in a letter to Ramusio written on 5 May 1525 – bountiful in myrtles, oranges trees, and cedars. In this period he also wrote an extensive account of his travels, which was finally published only in 1563 (Il viaggio fatto in Ispagna, ed in Francia dal magnifico M. Andrea Navagero, Oratore del Senato Veneto a Carlo V Imperadore, Venice, Domenico Farri, 1563). 

Navagero returned to Venice in May 1528. Elected ambassador to France in January 1529, he once again left his hometown on 2 March, and arrived in Blois on 11 April, where he was received by King Francis I. Sadly, his French experience lasted only a few weeks as he fell ill and died, unexpectedly, on 8 May of that year.

The news deeply touched his Venetian circle. In a letter to Ramusio dated 18 May, Bembo lamented over his friend’s sudden and premature death, which had provoked an immense loss not only “alla sua casa”, i.e. for his family, but also “a’ suoi amici”, for his friends (cf. A. Navagero, Opera omnia, Padua 1718, p. xxxiii).

Navagero’s friends decided to pay homage to his memory by publishing a collection of his works, as none of his writings had been printed during his lifetime, despite his literary activity being well known in his milieu.

The collection – which appeared in Venice in March 1530, issued by the printing press of Giovanni Tacuino – represents one of the earliest examples of a private, or semi-private publication, an initiative organized within a circle of friends, those “Amici tutti” to whom Navagero usually addressed his greetings from Spain. In fact, the colophon printed at the end states, ‘IMPRAESSVM VENETIIS AMICORVM CVRA QVAM POTVIT FIERI DILIGENTER’.

The texts are introduced by a short address to the reader, written by one of Navagero’s closest friends, Girolamo Fracastoro. In addition to observing Navagero’s diplomatic career, Fracastoro praises the elegance of his friend’s oratory, his erudite studies, his editions of classics, and finally his literary legacy. Notably, Fracastoro also points up the loss of a substantial portion of Navagero’s writings: these were destroyed by the author himself, who was dissatisfied with their quality. He further underlines that the surviving texts (reliquiae) are presented in an imperfect state, without having been revised with Navagero’s characteristic meticulousness, owing to the Venetian’s tragic sudden demise.  



The collection – the title of which reads Orationes duae, Carminaque nonnulla – contains two funeral orations, and forty-four compositions in verse.

The first oration – Oratio habita in funere Bartholomaei Liviani – was given on 10 November 1515 at the death of the famous condottiero at the service of the Venetian Republic Bartolomeo d’Alviano (1455-1515), also known as Liviano. The second oration was given by Navagero, as official historian of the Venetian Republic, on 25 June 1521, on the occasion of the death of the Doge Leonardo Loredan (1436-1521).

The poems included in the 1530 collection are introduced with the general heading of Lusus (Diversions), suggesting that Navagero had composed them as a pastime. The poems are inspired by classical pastoral poetry and were later included in collections entirely devoted to neo-Latin poetry, such as the Bucolicorum autores farragon eclogarum printed in Basel in 1546. The edition of the complete works by Navagero would appear in Padua only in 1718.

The title-page of the 1530 edition bears a fine woodcut vignette with the inscription ‘NAVCELVS’, depicting a river god reclining on rocks and holding a branch in his hand.

The motif is all’antica: the source is in fact a sestertius (an ancient Roman coin) forged during the reign of Trajan, whose bust appears on the obverse. On the reverse is the Genius of Aqua Traiana, in commemoration of the aqueduct built by Trajan and inaugurated in 109 AD. The refined ‘arcadic’ invention recalls both Navagero’s antiquarian taste and his theory of poetry as an activity able to invigorate and conciliate the mind. It also speaks to his passion for gardens and gardening, so frequently expressed in the verses of the Lusus. His interest in gardening informed the landscape of his own two villas — the first in the Venetian inland, near Treviso, and the second on the island of Murano — which provided the setting for numerous conversations with his learned friends.

As Navagero declared in a letter sent from Spain to his friend Ramusio, he would have liked to spend his entire life in a garden.

Trajan sestertius, copper alloy coin, Rome, 104-111 AD. With a bust of Trajan, laureate, on the observe and the river god (the Genius of the Aqua Traiana) reclining on rocks on the reverse. British Museum, London, R. 11961. © The Trustees of the British Museum; CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

The same motif was used by one the greatest medalists and goldsmiths of all time, Il Vicentino, Valerio Belli (ca. 1468-1546) for the bronze medal he created for Bembo in Venice in February-March 1532. In this medal, a bust of Bembo appears on the observe while the reclining figure of the Genius – also now symbolic of poetry – is included on the reverse.

Valerio Belli, Cast bronze medal for Pietro Bembo, 1532. British Museum, London, 1875,1004.10. © The Trustees of the British Museum; CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

This edition of the Orationes duae, Carminaque nonnulla circulated largely within Navagero’s network of friends and acquaintances, and copies were addressed to distinguished recipients. Counting among the original owners of this publication were several great Renaissance book collectors like Jean Grolier (1479-1565) and Giovanni Battista Grimaldi (d. 1543), while the Vatican Library preserves a copy once owned by the antiquarian, philologian and friend of Raphael, Angelo Colocci (1487-1549), whose hand-written notes appear in the margins of certain leaves (Biblioteca Vaticana, Inc.II.886. int.2).

The copy we present here is no exception to this trend of distinguished owners, given its provenance and exquisite Venetian ‘speaking’ binding.

The binding was executed by the skilled crafstman Andrea di Lorenzo, who was active in Venice between 1518 and 1555 and who has been influentially dubbed the ‘Mendoza Binder’ by Anthony Hobson, after his chief client, the Spanish ambassador in Venice and extraordinary collector, Diego Hurtago de Mendoza (1504-1574). In fact, this specific binding is listed by Hobson in his census of the Mendoza Binder’s production (see A. Hobson, Renaissance Book Collecting, Cambridge 1999, Appendix 5, no. 136).

The Mendoza Binder ran the most important workshop in Venice for over twenty-five years, and worked part-time for the Aldine press, employing standard decorative schemes for trade bindings. His bespoke works are, however, marked by greater originality and elaborateness. These were executed for refined bibliophiles, members of the Venetian elite, wealthy patrons of the arts, and diplomats active in the Serenissima. Such is the case of this fine morocco binding. The covers are decorated with line borders in gilt and blind, an undulating panel on the sides, and foliate cornerpieces. The central flaming urn tool is enclosed within an interlaced lozenge and square, and is identical to that used around 1536 for the covers of a manuscript of Demosthenes’ Orationes preserved in the Bodleian Library (MS Laud. gr. 5).

Lettered in the upper border is the author’s name ‘AND. NAVAGERIVS’:

The name of the owner ‘BENEDICTVS CVRTIVS’ is stamped below:

The nobleman in question was Benedetto Curzi from Pavia, then ambassador to Venice under Francesco II Sforza, Duke of Milan; he was, in all likelihood, gifted this precious volume of the Orationes duae, Carminaque nonnulla, printed in Navagero’s memory amicorum cura.

How to cite this information

Margherita Palumbo, "Impressum Venetiis amicorum cura," 28 April 2021, www.prphbooks.com/blog/navagero. Accessed [date].

This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.