Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis

Ms. parm. 896

Membranaceous, sec. XV, Latin, mm 254x173, following II, 120, II'.

Illuminated page is the opening to the valuable code "De officiis", spiritual testament of Cicero dedicated to his son Mario. It is framed by a border of white girari, on a red, green, blue background, on which rest, in the lower margin, two angels pointing to a coat of arms. At the center of the coat of arms, an ermine symbolizes virtues such as calmness, balance and moderation, typical of the "honest man", a theme dear to the author. A rare jewel and testimony to one of the most brilliant minds in Western history, it comes from the collection of counts Alessandro and Stefano Sanvitale in 1838.

Aloisio Cesani, Nautical Atlas

Ms. Parm. 1616

Member, 1574, 5 plates, cm. 28 x 39.7

The five tables of the atlas, drawn on parchment, folded and assembled in the form of a book, seem to have been laid out and thus composed by the same author, originally from Otranto, whose name is testified in the legend of the fifth table, placed vertically. Unlike the other nautical charts, which entered the Parma library in the first years of its establishment with the librarian Paciaudi, the atlas has maintained its original binding in red morocco, richly and naturalistically decorated in dry and gold; in the center of the front plate there is the super libros with the arms of that branch of the Gonzaga family which had the Principality of Molfetta and the Duchy of Guastalla.

The precious atlas is made up of an inclusive planisphere of the new world, three nautical charts and a systematic astronomical table; heads of blowing men, warriors on foot and on horseback, figures of enthroned kings, sailing ships, turreted cities, tents, fantastic animals and waving flags populate his tables amidst sea routes, wind roses and names of coastal towns, graduated by importance in red and black, in Latin and Italian, in a humanistic handwriting tending towards small module cursive. All the maps in the atlas are bordered in lively red, but the three nautical ones have frames in which the names of the winds appear, formed by two strips in which dashes are also drawn at various distances, which could be interpreted as scales; there are wind roses with the traditional colored rhombuses, in gold the one that indicates north with an acute index; the fifth table is particularly interesting as it presents tables and captions written in black and red which refer to the perpetual calendar, weather forecasts, the winds and the zodiac.

Welcome Cellini, Stories

Venice, from the Alvisopoli typography, 1828

Col. HI 17

The operetta was printed by Bartolomeo Gamba, to whose library it belongs, in only two copies on parchment, one of which is the present and the other merged into the "Trivulzio Library of Milan". In 1810, the Venetian nobleman Alvise Mocenigo had purchased a small printing press in the town of Alvisopoli, in the Portogruaro district, which he transferred to Venice in 1814, keeping its name and entrusting the management to Gamba. Thus he transformed it into the main Venetian printing house of the Restoration years, avoiding commissioned works and printing erudite works contrary to new ideas. Gamba maintained its direction, despite the commitments undertaken since 1824 as librarian of the Marciana Library, until 1836, when he handed it over to his son Francesco.

Vesconte and Giovanni Maggiolo, Nautical Chart

Member, 1525 (July 8), Genoa, 64.7 x 96.3 cm.

Brilliant and colorful nautical chart, full of illustrations of animals, plants, banners and multicolored buildings; the precious map is the work of two exponents of the Maiollos, a Genoese family of talented cartographers. It was kept rolled up in a cylindrical cardboard container, to which it was nailed through holes that are still visible today. It represents the entire Mediterranean basin, part of the western coasts of Africa and Europe, and various islands, even outside the Mare Nostrum. The localities are indicated differently in red or black, in Italian with strong dialectal influences or in Latin, in Gothic or capital letters with a larger module, based on a rigid hierarchy of importance.

Yishaq Ben Shelomoh Ibn Sahulah

Mashal ha-kadmoni [The Ancient Tale]

Palatine Library, St. De Rossi 990/6

"The work, composed in 1298 by the Castilian Ibn Sahulah, poet and Kabbalist scholar, to offer Jewish readers a Jewish equivalent of the Arab "Travels of Sindbad the sailor" or of the "Kalilah and Dimnah" of Indian origin, is a product of the Adriatic activity of Gershom ben Mosheh Soncino, accompanied by 78 splendid woodcuts which make it the first illustrated Jewish book, ever to appear in print. The images seem to have all come from the hand of the same artist, who maintains himself strictly within the tradition of the courtly illustration and bestiaries.In the cartoons, princes and princesses, jesters and banquet and hunting scenes alternate talking and crowned animals, symbols of human virtues and vices.

"Statute Magnifice Comunitatis Parmae"

Inc. parm. 534

It is the 1494 edition of the revision of the Parma statutes approved in the 1520s by Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, but modified again by Ludovico Sforza in 1494. The work includes the text of the statutes divided into five books and was donated to the Library by Count Giovanni Sanvitale in 1838

Incipit page with the coat of arms of Bartolomeo Prati, c. Iv, with an illuminated initial in blue and with refined plant motifs and at the bottom of the paper the coat of arms of the owner Bartolomeo Prati, jurist and nobleman of Parma.

Nicolaus Copernicus

"De revolutionibus orbium coelestium", books VI

M IV 12785

This first edition of "De revolutionibus" has a unique story: in 1543, the year of Copernicus' death, the book was published in a limited number of copies, from 400 to 500 copies. Owen Gingerich, professor of astronomy at Harvard University, studied the Nuremberg first editions and the Basel second editions for over 30 years, failing to view, during the survey of the 18 specimens preserved in Italy, the one owned by the Palatine Library, which at the end of the seventies it was missing from the shelf.

The element that makes the Parma volume unique is the insertion, in the opening pages, of a handwritten poem, which seems to have been commissioned by Retico to his elderly colleague Camerario, a distinguished classicist of the 16th century who dabbled in writing verses Greek-language dedicatees for school books. The Parma specimen was found in January 2000 by the Command of the Carabinieri for the protection of Cultural Heritage (TPC), precisely thanks to the particularity of the Greek composition, which can be interpreted as a new introduction, to be inserted in place of the misleading one by Osiander, which hid the real content of the treaty.

The poem is written in the form of a dialogue between a philosopher and a foreigner who urges the former to present the book; what emerges is the description of an innovative text full of incalculable knowledge, which deals with the celestial motions and the Earth, which in the Copernican revolution rotates in the sky around the Sun, fire of the Universe.

"Book of Hours". Inc. Pal. 330.

The volume, which can be dated back to at least 1505, is part of a lot of liturgical works in Gothic characters printed on parchment, mostly by Parisian typographers between the 15th and 16th centuries, which belonged to Duke Don Ferdinando and remained in the Reggia di Colorno until 1854. This edition , printed by Guillame Anabat for the booksellers Gillet and Germain Hardouin, has numerous illuminated and gilded illustrations; even the initials and paragraph signs were colored in red and blue and completed with gold retouches. The binding, in red morocco, belongs to a prominent figure, as demonstrated by various details. Among them we note the presence on the reverse of the front endpaper of the Farnese coat of arms, surmounted by the ducal crown. This detail would lead back to an owner of this family and to a passage of the volume, separated from the collection transferred to Naples with Don Carlo, in the collections of the House of Bourbon Parma, through Elisabetta Farnese, grandmother of Don Ferdinando.

Leonardo Bruni

De bello Gothico

Inc. par. 1017

Venice 1471

The edition was produced by the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson, who arrived in Venice and who represented, well before the activity of Manutius, the most refined typographer of the time; he also distinguished himself for his commercial organization within the book market, abandoning the family model and transforming the company into a real company which, in order to survive, handled advertising and tried to make itself known in the Venetian circles of power.

The specimen in the Palatine Library, belonging to the library of Count Filippo Linati, has the first leaf decorated with a frame in white girari with phytomorphic, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic motifs in green, blue, red, black and gold.