Early Florentine Engravings and the Devotional Print:

Origins and Transformations, c. 1460-85

Volume 1
Text

Emily Rosanna Gray

Submitted for the degree of Ph.D. Courtauld
Institute of Art, University of London
2012

1
Abstract

This thesis aims to reframe the way art historians think about early Florentine
engravings from around 1460 to 1485, especially the devotional print. Although some scholars
have considered engravings within cultural histories of Florence, on the whole the prints have
been viewed through the lens of connoisseurship. Most of this scholarship has focused on
secular and semi-religious prints; even less attention has been granted to those with religious
subjects. This dissertation readdresses these engravings by examining them from several
historical perspectives: workshop organisation, artistic practice, trade, the compiling of
manuscripts and devotional practices. As a result, it highlights the inventiveness of the early
Florentine engravers and shows how they transformed the way people could view images,
particularly in the veneration of saints, meditation on Christ and the Virgin and contemplation
of God.

2
 Early Florentine Engravings and the Devotional Print:
Origins and Transformations, c. 1460-85

Contents

Volume 1: Text

Acknowledgements 6
Abbreviations 7
Notes on Transcriptions and Translations 7

Introduction 8

1. A Historiography of Florentine Engravings and European Print Culture 8

2. Connoisseurship and a Taxonomy of Style 22

Part I: Early Florentine Engravings: Creation to Reception 31

1. In Bottega: Production in the Printmakers’ Workshops 32

1.1. Classification and Terminology of Early Florentine Prints 32

Baccio Baldini: The Dante Workshop 32
The Master of the Vienna Passion and Related Engravers: The Vienna Category 38
Dating 44
1.2. Methods of Intaglio Printmaking in Florence 48
Materials and Techniques 51
Design and Pastiche 59

2. On the Market: The Commerce of Engravings 65

2.1. Capital and Revenue 65

2.2. Sales and Distribution 68
2.3. Price and Value 73

3. In Viewers’ Hands: The Reception and Use of Prints 78

3.1. The Application of European Prints 78

3.2. Prints in Florentine Manuscripts 84
The Raphael Prayer Book 86
Piero Bonaccorsi’s Quadragesimale and Opuscula Augustini et Hyeronim 91
The Tieri Manuscript 102
3
Part II: Early Florentine Engravings: The Devotional Print 114

Introduction: Engravings in a Culture of Personal Devotion 115

4. Veneration: The Hagiographic Vita Print 117

4.1. Origins and Renewal of the Vita Configuration 117

4.2. Forms and Functions 123
St John the Baptist: Education and Delight 123
St Anthony Abbot and St Anthony of Padua: Supplication 126
St Catherine of Siena and Philip of Florence: Promotion of an Order 128

5. Meditation: Engraved Lives of Christ and the Virgin 135

5.1. Meditation and Narrative Images in Fifteenth-Century Europe 135

5.2. The Vienna Passion 140
Form and Framework 140
Meditating on Christ’s Body 143
5.3. The Vita Prints 146
The Passion of Christ 146
The Mysteries of the Virgin 150

6. Contemplation: Illustrations in Antonio Bettini’s Monte sancto di Dio 157

6.1. Design 160

Pictorial Composition 162
Iconographic Invention 164
6.2. Editing and Financing 172
6.3. Purpose and Function 176
The Mnemonic Diagram 177
The Exemplum 179

Conclusion 182

Bibliography of Cited Sources 187

1. Manuscript Sources 187

2. Printed Primary Sources 188
3. Printed Secondary Sources 191
4. Online Sources 217

4
 Volume 2: Appendices and Illustrations

Appendices 2

Appendix 1: Attributions of Fine Manner Engravings 2

Appendix 2: Prices in Florence 10

Appendix 2.1: Prices of Prints in Alessandro Rosselli’s Shop, 1527-28 10
Appendix 2.2: Prices of Goods in Florence, 1470-90 11

Appendix 3: Prints in Manuscripts 13

Appendix 3.1: Prints in Florentine Manuscripts 13
Appendix 3.2: Florentine Prints in Non-Florentine Manuscripts 16

Appendix 5: Texts in the Vienna Passion 19

List of Illustrations 21

Illustrations 47

Introduction 47
Chapter 1 51
Chapter 2 123
Chapter 3 132
Chapter 4 175
Chapter 5 207
Chapter 6 246

5
Acknowledgements

My work on thesis is hugely indebted to my supervisors and mentors, Patricia Rubin

and Mark McDonald. The time and rigour they have invested in overseeing this thesis is
immeasurable, and I am extremely grateful for the many lessons, both scholarly and personal,
that I have learnt under their guidance. I am also grateful to the AHRC for funding my research
with a Collaborative Doctoral Award, enabling me to enjoy the resources and expertise of the
Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum Courtauld Institute of Art. At the
British Museum, Angela Roche assisted in giving access to the collections, Antony Griffiths
offered helpful information about the history of the collection and J. D. Hill enthusiastically
provided logistical support. At the Courtauld I am grateful to members of the Renaissance
Department for their advice and encouragement, notably Georgia Clarke, Paul Hills, Susie Nash
and Scott Nethersole.
The fourth year of my study was generously made possible by a grant from Il Circolo
Italian Cultural Association and I am similarly thankful for a fellowship at the Dutch Institute of
Art History and the support of Michael Kwakkelstein and Gert Jan van der Sman. I am also
appreciative of the help offered by staff in Florence at the Archivio di Stato, the
Kunsthistoriche Institut, the Biblioteca Riccardiana and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale.
Curators accross Europe have been very welcoming in granting access to there collections, at
the Uffizi Galleries, the the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris, the Musée du Louvre, the Kunsthalle
in Hamburg and the Albertina Graphic Arts Collection in Vienna. Special thanks go to Jirí
Matyás and his colleagues at the Regional Museum in Žatec in the Czech Republic for
additional help.
A number of experts have generously answered queries for me. Roy Cooney
introduced me to the practice of intaglio copperplate engraving, while Charles Dempsey,
Anthony Dyson, Konrad Eisenbichler, John Henderson, Megan Holmes, Sean Roberts, Ad
Stijnman and Alison Wright generously shared their knowledge.
Finally, I am privileged to have had the support of great friends, many of whom are art
historians. These include Elizabeth Legge, Gillian and Kenneth Bartlett, Elizabeth Upper,
Susanna Berger, Sarah Vowles, Femke Speelberg, Anita Sganzerla, Mary Hogan Camp, Irene
Brooke, Nikoo Paydar and Meredith Brown. I have enormously treasured the friendships of
Rachel Hillsdon, Karen Wykurz and Marie Julie Chenard, without whom this thesis, and so
much else would not be possible. Above all, I would like to thank my family, Lindsay, Caroline
and Susanna, who have helped me immeasurably in so many different ways. I dedicate this
thesis to them.

6
Abbreviations

ASF Archivio di Stato di Firenze

BML Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence
BNCF Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze
BR Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence
Hain Ludwig Friedrich Theodor Hain, Repertorium bibliographicum, 2 vols, Suttgart,
1826-38 and Dietrich Riechling, Appendices ad Hainii-Copingeri Repertorium
bibliographicum, 8 vols, Milan, 1905-11
Hind Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving: A Critical Catalogue with Complete
Reproduction of All the Prints Described, 7 vols, London, 1938-1948

A Note on Translations

Biblical quotations in English are taken from the Douay-Rheims translation of the Latin Vulgate
bible.

Except when indicated in the footnotes, other translations are my own.

When quotations are taken directly from fifteenth-century printed books, the original spellings
have been retained without the addition of modern accents or punctuation.

7
Introduction

1. A Historiography of Florentine Engravings and European Print Culture

When Giorgio Vasari published his second edition of the Lives of the Artists in 1568, he
credited the invention of intaglio copperplate engraving to the Florentine goldsmith Maso
Finiguerra.

Engraving was invented by Maso Finguerra of Florence about 1460. Of every work
engraved by him in silver to be filled with niello, he took an impression in clay on
which he poured liquid sulphur, so that it was blackened by the fumes and showed in
oil the subject engraved on the silver. He did the like with a damp sheet with the same
tint, going over it with a round cylinder, which made it look like a pen-and-ink
drawing.1

Although there may be some truth to this story, the discovery of intaglio printmaking is
far more likely to have been made by goldsmiths from Germany and the Netherlands, where
the earliest dated engraving is from 1446.2 Nevertheless, over two hundred engravings have
been attributed to Florentine artists and dated to the fifteenth-century, suggesting that
Florence was a major centre of intaglio printmaking in Europe and the largest in Italy. Why was
this, and how was it achieved? What effect did this have on visual communication in this
period? This dissertation will demonstrate some of the ways in which Florentine engravers
and their public harnessed the potential of engravings. It will situate the prints in their cultural
context by examining them from the perspectives of artistic design and invention, trade
organisation, commerce, use and reception and, in particular, the function of devotional
prints. Thus, it will show how the engraved image transformed the way artists, patrons and
consumers related to images, especially within the cultivation of devotion, defined by Thomas
Aquinas as the subjection of oneself wholly to God.3

1
Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. A. B. Hinds, 4 vols, rev. ed.
st
London, 1963 (1 ed. London, 1927), vol. 3, p. 68. For the Italian, see Gaetano Milanesi (ed.), Le opere di
Giorgio Vasari con nuove annotazione e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, 9 vols, Florence, 1998 (repr. of
Florence, 1906), vol. 5, pp. 395-96: ‘Il principio dunque dell’intagliare le stampe venne da Maso
Finiguerra fiorentino circa gli anni di nostra salute 1460; perchè costui tutte le cose che intagliò in
argento per empierle di niello, le improntò con terra; e gittatovi sopra solfo liquefatto, vennero
improntate e ripiene di fumo; onde a olio mostravano il medesimo che l’argento: e ciò fece ancora con
carta umida e con la medesima tinta, aggranvandovi sopra un rullo tondo, ma piano per tutto; il che non
solo le faceva apparire stampate, ma venivano come disegnate di penna’.
2
David Landau and Peter Parshall, The Renaissance Print: 1470-1550, New Haven and London, 1994, pp.
3-4.
3
Thomas Aquinas, The “Summa theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, literally translated by fathers of the
English Dominican Province, 22 vols, London, 1921-32, from New Advent:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3082.htm [accessed 21 December, 2011]
8
 Despite the apparent importance of Florence as a centre for printmaking in the
Quattrocento, no extensive study has considered these questions. In part, this is because of
the lack of documentation regarding copperplate engraving in this period, with only two
passages in Vasari’s Lives as documentary evidence. One is in the Life of Botticelli where Vasari
notes how Botticelli designed illustrations for Dante’s Commedia that were later made in to
engravings:

Being of a sophistical turn of mind, he there [in Florence] wrote a commentary on a

portion of Dante and illustrated the Inferno, which he printed, spending much time
over it, and this abstension from work led to serious disorders in his living. He printed
many other drawings, but in an inferior style, because the plates were badly engraved,
his best work being the triumph of the faith of Fra Girolamo Savonarola of Ferrara.4

The second reference, partly cited above, was made in the general account of
printmaking in the Life of Marcantonio Raimondi, added to the second edition of the Lives
published in 1568. After the account of Maso Finiguerra’s purported invention of intaglio
printmaking, Vasari records that: ‘He was followed by Baccio Baldini, goldsmith of Florence,
who, not having much design, copied the drawings of Sandro Botticello’.5
Some of Vasari’s narrative is accurate: nineteen engravings illustrating Dante’s
Commedia survive in Cristoforo Landino’s Comento sopra la comedia di Dante printed in
Florence by Niccolò della Magna in 1481.6 But there are several problems with Vasari’s

4
Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 2, p. 87. For the Italian see Milanesi, Le
opere di Giorgio Vasari con nuove annotazione e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, vol. 3, p. 317: ‘dove per
essere persona sofistica, comentò una parte di Dante, e figurò lo inferno, e lo mise in stampa; dietro al
quale consume di molto tempo, per il che non lavorando fu cagione di infiniti disordini alla vita sua. Mise
in stampa ancora molte cose di disegni che egli haveva fatti, ma in cattiva maniera, perchè l’intaglio era
mal fatto: onde il meglio, che si vegga di sua mano è il trionfo della Fede di fra Girolamo Savonarola da
Ferrara.’ For an extended discussion of Vasari and his interest in printmaking, see Sharon Lynne Gregory,
Vasari, Prints, and Printmaking, PhD Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1998, esp.
pp. 27-34.
5
Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 3, p. 68. For the Italian, see Milanesi, Le
opere di Giorgio Vasari, vol. 5, p. 396: ‘Fu seguitato costui da Baccio Baldini orefice fiorentino, il quale,
non avendo molto disegno, tutto quello che fece fu con invenzione e disegno di Sandro Botticello. ’ A
third, less discussed reference, is made in the discussion of the illuminator Gherardo di Giovanni del
Fora, who according to Vasari copied the engravings of Schongauer and Dürer. If this is correct,
Gherardo thus must have made his engravings towards the end of the fifteenth century, at the earliest.
See Milanesi, Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, vol. 5, p. 240: ‘... furono recate a Fiorenza alcune stampe di
maniera tedesca, fatte da Martino e da Alberto Duro: perchè piacendogli molto quella sorte d’intaglio, si
mise col bulino a intagliare, e ritrasse alcune di quelle carte benissimo; come si può vedere in certi pezzi
nel nostro Libraro, insieme con alcuni disegni di mano del medesimo’. Several engravings have been
convincingly attributed to him in Lorenza Melli, ‘Gherardo di Giovanni, poliedrico artista alle prese col
“David” del Verrocchio’, in Nicoletta Baldini (ed.), Invisibile agli occhi: Atti della giornata di studio in
ricordo di Lisa Venturini, Florence, 2007, pp. 37-43.
6
Cristoforo Landino, Comento sopra la comedia di Dante, Florence: Niccolò della Magna, 1481 (Hain
5946). See Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engraving: A Critical Catalogue with Complete Reproduction of
9
account, beyond the fact that it is now accepted that intaglio printmaking from copper plates
was invented in Germany and the Netherlands rather than in Florence. Firstly, Botticelli must
have had a very limited role, if any, in making the engravings for the Dante illustrations, since
they are only loosely inspired by his drawings.7 Secondly, there is no evidence in Florentine
archives that a Baccio (or Bartolommeo) Baldini existed.8 To no avail, scholars have diligently
searched the matriculation records of the Arte della Seta, the guild to which goldsmiths
belonged, and the ‘Baccio orafo’ discovered by Herbert Horne in the burial records of San
Lorenzo in 1487 is too imprecise to confirm the existence of Baccio Baldini.9 As Benedetto
Dei’s list of goldsmith workshops compiled in 1470 indicates, there were a number of
goldsmiths named Bartolommeo alive in this period, yet none of them is listed with the
surname Baldini.10 Through her analysis of the Florentine tax records of 1480, Sharon Gregory
demonstrated that there was a Baldini family descended from a Baldino Baldini, some of
whom were goldsmiths active in the fifteenth century, but none are called Bartolommeo.11
Gregory found the will of a ‘Mona di Bartolommeo Baldini’ (wife of Bartolommeo Baldini) who
died in 1528, but it is hard to believe that this Bartolommeo, with a wife dying in 1528, was old
enough to have produced the engravings made in the 1460s, 1470s and 1480s.12
The only securely attributed Florentine fifteenth-century print is the Battle of the Nudes
signed by Antonio del Pollaiuolo (fig. Int.1). It seems that Pollaiuolo experiemented only briefly
with printmaking, for the engraving is stylistically and technically distinct from any other print
with a claim to Florentine authorship.13 Beginning in the 1760s with François Basan, a
Parisian dealer, and Karl Heinrich von Heinecken, curator of the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett,

All the Prints Described, 7 vols, London, 1938-48, vol. 1, pp. 99-116, cat. nos A.V.2 (1-19). These have
been discussed by many scholars, the most recent of which are Peter Keller, ‘The Engravings in the 1481
Edition of the Divine Comedy’, in Hein-Th. Schulze Altcappenberg, Sandro Botticelli: The Drawings for
Dante’s Divine Comedy, exh. cat., Austellungshallen am Kulturforum, 2000, Berlin, Scuderie Papali al
Quirinale, Rome, 2000, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2001, London, 2001, pp. 326-333 and Sally
Korman, ‘“Danthe Alighieri Poeta Fiorentina”: Cultural Values in the 1481 “Divine Comedy”’, in Gabriele
Neher and Rupert Shepherd (eds), Revaluing Renaissance Art, Aldershot, 2000, pp. 57-67.
7
For Botticelli’s role in the Dante engravings, see Keller, ‘The Engravings in the 1481 Edition of the
Divine Comedy, pp. 332-33.
8
Mark J. Zucker, Early Italian Masters, 4 parts, The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 24: Commentary, New York,
1993-1999, pt. 1, pp. 89-93. See below for a further consideration of the question about Baldini.
9
The unpublished documents discovered by Herbert Horne are summarised in Arthur M. Hind,
Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British
Museum, ed. Sidney Colvin, London, 1909-10, p. xxviii.
10
Giuseppina Carla Romby (ed.), Descrizioni e rappresentazioni della città di Firenze nel XV secolo, con la
trascrizione inedita dei manoscritti di Benedetto Dei e un indice ragionato dei manoscritti utili per la
storia della città, Florence, 1976, p. 70. See Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 89.
11
Gregory, Vasari, Prints and Printmaking, pp. 32, 77.
12
Ibid., p. 32.
13
See Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, cat. no. D.I.1.
10
scholars have continued to tussle with the knotty problem of attribution and dating.14 Central
to this effort in the twentieth century are Arthur Hind’s Early Italian Engraving (published in
seven volumes between 1938-48), the catalogue of the exhibition at the National Gallery of Art
in Washington, Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, by Konrad Oberhuber,
Jay Levenson and Jacquelyn Sheehan (1973), and the commentaries to The Illustrated Bartsch,
entitled Early Italian Masters and compiled by Mark Zucker (1993-1999).15
Beyond the problems of documentation and attribution, Florentine engravings have
also been fairly marginalised because their design, composition and style have been judged
negatively. This opinion was steered by Vasari’s judgement that the prints made after
Botticelli’s drawings were ‘badly engraved’ and that Baccio Baldini did not have ‘much design’.
This assessment has continued. In her study on the influence of Northern engravings on
Florentine art (1983), Megan Holmes suggested that Baldini and ‘his fellow early Florentine
engravers were not among the more innovative artistic personalities of the Quattrocento’ and
that ‘they pursued their craft in a fairly mechanical way characteristic of traditional medieval
workshop practice’. Baldini had, she continues, a ‘pedestrian manner’ that contrasted with the
more ‘inspired use of the engraved prototypes’ by Florentine painters. In a similar way, David
Landau and Peter Parshall, in their celebrated The Renaissance Print: 1470-1500 (1994), pay
little attention to the achievements of the first Florentine engravers, stating that their prints
are ‘crude and cheap’ in contrast with the ‘precious and highly finished nielli with considerable
formal ambition’.16 More recently, Evelyn Lincoln characterised Florentine printmakers as
‘copying stylised patterns from pattern books’ and almost completely ignored their prints in
her The Invention of the Italian Renaissance Printmaker (2000). 17
As a consequence, the technological, historical, anthropological, iconographic and
theological aspects of Florentine fifteenth-century prints have been neglected. A different
approach was pioneered by Aby Warburg who recognised their importance to cultural history
of Florence, although he – and scholars afer him – have focused on isolated prints or
considered them within broader iconographic studies. Warburg related several engravings to
contemporary literary, festive and social culture (especially of the Medici) in his essays ‘Sandro

14
François Basan, Dictionnaire des graveurs anciens et modernes, Paris, 1767, pp. 26, 77 and Karl
Heinrich von Heinecken, Nachrichten von Künstlern und Kunst-Sachen,2 vols, Leipzig, 1768-69, vol. 1, p.
nd
280; Johann Rudolph Füssli, Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon, 3 vols, 2 ed., Zurich, 1779, vol. 1, pp. 46, 238
st
(1 ed., Zurich, 1763, p. 29).
15
Hind, Early Italian Engraving; Jay A. Levenson, Konrad Oberhuber and Jacquelyn L. Sheehan, Early
Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1973,
Washington, 1973; Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pts 1-3.
16
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 67.
17
Evelyn Lincoln, The Invention of the Italian Renaissance Printmaker, New Haven and London, 2000, pp.
30-31.
11
Botticelli (1898)’, ‘The Picture Chronicle of a Florentine Goldsmith (1899)’, ‘Artistic Exchanges
between North and South in the Fifteenth Century (1905)’ and ‘On Imprese Amorose in the
Earliest Florentine Engravings (1905)’.18 His work undoubtedly influenced fellow scholars such
as Emile Mäle, Fritz Saxl, Edgar Wind and J. B. Trapp in their studies of the Prophets and Sibyls
(Hind, C.I.1-24, C.II.1-12), the Children of the Planets (A.III.1-7), images of Fortuna (such as fig.
3.23) and the Triumphs of Petrarch (Hind, A.I.18-23).19 More recently, Warburg’s interests and
methods have inspired more detailed responses. Dieter Blume, in his Regenten des Himmels:
Astrologische Bilder in Mittelalter und Renaissance (2000), places the Children of the Planets
engravings in the context of popular German astrological texts and Florentine festival culture.20
Adrian Randolph examines several round Otto prints in his Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics,
and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (2002), showing their links with contemporary love
poetry and gender politics.21 Finally, Charles Dempsey analyses the Sibyls in relationship to
vernacular poetry, the reception of astrological texts and civic rituals in Florence.22 Continuing
the lines of enquiry initiated by Warburg, there are also thoughtful catalogue entries by Alison
Wright in Renaissance Florence: Art of the 1470s (1999) and by Paula Nuttall in Firenze e gli
antichi Paesi Bassi, 1430-1530 (2008), where Otto prints are seen within the contexts of social
practice and cultural exchange.23

18
Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European
Renaissance, trans. David Britt, Los Angeles, 1999: ‘Sandro Botticelli’ (1898)’, pp. 157-64, ‘The Picture
Chronicle of a Florentine Goldsmith (1899)’, pp. 164-68, ‘On Imprese Amorose in the Earliest Florentine
Engravings (1905)’, pp. 169-83, ‘Artistic Exchanges between North and South in the Fifteenth Century
(1905)’, pp. 275-80.
19
Emile Mâle, ‘Une influence des mystères sur l’art italien du XVe siècle’, Gazette des Beaux-arts, vol.
35, 1906, pp. 89-94; Fritz Saxl, ‘The Literary Sources of ‘Finiguerra’s Planets’, Journal of the Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes, vol. 2, 1938, pp. 72-74; Edgar Wind, ‘Platonic Tyranny and the Renaissance Fortuna:
On Ficino’s Reading of Laws IV, 709 A - 712 A’, in Millard Meiss (ed.), De artibus opuscula XL: Essays in
Honor of Erwin Panofsky, 2 vols, New York, 1961, vol. 1, pp. 491-96; Joseph B. Trapp, ‘The Iconography
of Petrarch in the Age of Humanism’, Quaderni Petrarcheschi, vols 9-10, 1992-93, pp. 11-73 and Joseph
B. Trapp, ‘Illustrations of Petrarch’s Trionfi from Manuscript to Print and Print to Manuscript’, in Martin
Davies (ed.), Incunabula: Studies in Fifteenth-Century Printed Books, Presented to Lotte Hellinga, London,
1999, pp. 507-548. Both essays are reprinted in Joseph B. Trapp, Studies of Petrarch and His Influence,
London, 2003.
20
Dieter Blume, Regenten des Himmels: Astrologische Bilder in Mittelalter und Renaissance, Berlin,
2000, pp. 183-91. Some of Blume’s research on the Children of the Planets is reproduced in Dieter
Blume, ‘Children of the Planets: The Popularization of Astrology in the 15th Century’, in Nathalie
Blancardi (ed.), Il sole e la luna, Florence, 2004 (Micrologus, vol. 12), pp. 549-63.
21
Adrian W. B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century
Florence, New Haven and London, pp. 223-28, 269-77.
22
Charles Dempsey, ‘Baccio Baldini’s Sibyls and Albumasar’s Introductorium Maius’, in Philippe Morel
(ed.), L’art de la Renaissance entre science et magie, France and Rome, 2006, pp. 85-98 and Charles
Dempsey, The Early Renaissance and Vernacular Culture, Cambridge, MA, 2012, pp. 117-316.
23
Patricia Lee Rubin and Alison Wright, Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, exh. cat., The
National Gallery, London, 1999-2000, London, 1999, pp. 348-43, cat. nos 89-93; Bert W. Meijer, Firenze
e gli antichi Paesi Bassi: Dialoghi tra artisti: Da Jan van Eyck a Ghirlandaio, da Memling a Raffaelo, 1430-
12
 Florentine printed books with engraved illustrations have also stimulated several
studies. The illustrations for Dante’s Commedia of 1481 have been repeatedly examined, most
recently by Sally Korman in her article ‘“Danthe Alighieri Poeta Fiorentina”: Cultural Values in
the 1481 “Divine Comedy”’ (2000), where she explores the book and its prints in light of the
city’s celebration of their poet.24 Sean Roberts, on the other hand, devoted a doctoral thesis
and two related articles to Francesco Berlinghieri’s Geographia, printed in Florence in 1482,
and with maps possibly engraved by Florentine engravers.25 A more general assesment of
early Florentine prints is undertaken in ‘The Replicated Image in Florence, 1300-1600’ (2006),
Patricia Emison situates several early prints within the contemporary culture of copying
images, alongside cast medals, terracotta, stucco and carta pesta reliefs.26 She argues that
‘early Italian prints were used in two basic ways’, a hypothesis that will be contested in this
dissertation. One category, she writes, ‘provided visual information’ and would have
‘appealed to everybody’. Others, ‘prized for [their] designer’, in the ‘attributable art category’,
like Pollaiuolo’s Battle of the Nudes and the Dante illustrations, ‘aspired to be objects of
contemplation primarily on grounds of style’.27 Also worthy of mention, are two MPhil theses
written at the Courtauld Institute of Art that enrich our understanding of the artistic processes
of the engravers: Megan Holmes’ study of the influence of northern European engravings on
Florentine art (1983), cited above, and Lucy Whitaker’s analysis of the Florentine Picture
Chronicle, the album of drawings often attributed to Baccio Baldini (1986).28 Both works,

1530, exh. cat., Palazzo Pitti, Galleria Palatina, Florence, 2008, Florence, 2008, pp. 126-33, cat. nos 16-
20.
24
Korman, “Danthe Alighieri Poeta Fiorentina”.
25
Sean Roberts, Cartography Between Cultures: Francesco Berlinghieri's "Geographia" of 1482, PhD
Thesis, University of Michigan, 2006; Sean Roberts, ‘Poet and World Painter: Francesco Berlinghieri's
'Geographia' (1482)’, Imago Mundi: The International Journal of the History of Cartography, vol. 62, no.
2, 2010, pp. 145-160 and Sean Roberts, ‘Francesco Rosselli and Berlinghieri’s Geographia Re-Examined’,
Print Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 1, 2011, pp. 4-17. Though focused on woodcuts made much later than those
considered in this thesis, Sally Korman has also analysed the illustrations in the devotional books of Fra
Girolamo Savonarola in the final years of the Quattrocento and their relationship to his sermons and
writings. Sally Korman, ‘Reading with the Mind’s Eye: Sacred and Profane Devotion in Early Florentine
Printed Books’, in Jim Harris, Scott Nethersole and Per Rumberg (eds), ‘una insalata di più erbe’: A
Festschrift for Patricia Lee Rubin, London, 2011, pp. 101-12.
26
Patricia Emison, ‘The Replicated Image in Florence, 1300-1600’, in Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti
(eds), Renaissance Florence: A Social History, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 431-53, 606-13.
27
Ibid., p. 439.
28
Megan Holmes, The Influence of Northern Engravings on Florentine Art during the Second Half of the
Fifteenth Century, MPhil Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1983; Lucy Whitaker,
The Florentine Picture Chronicle. Parts of this thesis are reproduced in two articles: Lucy Whitaker,
‘Maso Finiguerra and Early Florentine Printmaking’, in Stuart Currie (ed.), Drawing 1400 - 1600:
Invention and Innovation, Aldershot, 1998, pp. 45-71 and Lucy Whitaker ‘Maso Finiguerra, Baccio Baldini
and the Florentine Picture Chronicle’, in Elizabeth Cropper (ed.), Florentine Drawing at the Time of
Lorenzo the Magnificent: Papers from a Colloquium held at the Villa Spelman, Florence, 1992, Bologna,
1992, pp. 181-96.
13
though very different, helpfully contextualise the artists’ techniques and methods of design in
Florence and Europe, offering insights into how they transformed models to compose new
designs and iconographies.
Despite this rich patchwork of shorter studies, none considers the prints within the
context of the newly invented medium of copperplate engraving; none investigates how the
printed image itself originated in, and transformed other types of image. Alternative ways of
looking at engravings and woodcuts more generally have been advanced by those that have
recognised the way that the multiple, printed image affected how people interact with images.
Probably the most cited work in this respect is Walter Benjamin’s ‘Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction’, which, though primarily concerned with the impact of film in Weimar Germany,
has useful insights for all replicated images, including engravings. Most relevant of his ideas is
his assertion that the reproduced image loses the ‘aura’ and ‘authenticity’ of a unique piece of
art and collapses the distance between object and the viewer. As a result, there is a shift in
the control of the work from its maker to its owner, which detaches ‘the reproduced object
from the realm of tradition’ and permits ‘the reproduction to meet the beholder in his own
particular situation’.29
Benjamin’s work seems to have been a point of departure for Hans Körner in his Der
früheste deutsche Einblattholzschnitt (1979), where he examines early devotional woodcuts
from Germany. Here he describes what he calls the Ortlosigkeit (‘unplacedness’) of woodcuts
and argues that because a print was usually impressed on a single piece of paper detached
from any context, the owner was necessarily implicated in defining its use, meaning and
relevance.30 According to Körner, the images had Unbestimmtheit (indeterminancy) and the
beholder individually determined their own response (‘individuell bestimmten
Rezeptionsverhalten’). For this reason, prints were especially suited to what Körner describes
as the individualisation of religious experience, whereby the image could stimulate interior,

29
Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Walter Benjamin,
Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn, London, 1970, pp. 217-51 (translation of ‘Das
Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’, in Walter Benjamin, Schriften, 2 vols, ed.
Theodor Adorno et al., Frankfurt, 1955, vol. 1, pp. 366–405). The essay was first published in shortened
form in 1936, in French, as ‘L’œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproduction mécanisée’, in Zeitschrift für
Sozialforschung, vol. 5, 1936, pp. 40–66. For a thoughtful consideration of the use of Benjamin’s essay
in relationship to the study of prints, see Peter Parshall, ‘Introduction: The Modern Historiography of
Early Printmaking’, in Peter Parshall (ed.), The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe, New Haven, 2009,
pp. 9-15, pp. 12-13. See also David S. Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval
Europe, Aldershot, 2010, pp. 9-10.
30
Körner, Der früheste deutsche Einblattholzschnitt, Mittenwald, 1979, p. 40. ‘Für das gedruckte Bild ist
die “ortlosigkeit” konstitutiv. Die Multiplizierbarkeit schließt a priori die Ausrichtung des Bildes auf einen
festen Ort aus’. (For the printed image is consituted by ‘placelessness’. Its multiplicablity a priori
excludes the image from being positioned in a fixed place).
14
personalised response to Christ, the Virgin or God.31 This general emphasis on the transfer of
power from creator to respondent is paralleled by Rezeptionästhetik, or reception theory
developed in the late 1970s and 1980s, which acknowledges the importance of the historical
viewer in interpreting the meaning of a text.32 The words of Hans Jauss and Elizabeth
Benzinger on literary texts, for instance, can be applied to pictorial prints: ‘In the triangle of
author, work and reading public the latter is no passive part, no chain of mere reactions, but
even history-making energy. The historical life of a literary work is unthinkable without the
active participation of its audience’.33 More than many art works, prints which are cut,
marked, coloured and pasted down provide exceptional insights into how picture could be
‘read’ – like literary texts – in historical moments.
Another important theoretical contribution is that of William Ivins, former curator of
prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in his Prints and Visual Communication
(1953). Ivins stressed the significance of the ‘exactly repeatable pictorial statement’ of a print
and its place in conveying ‘invariant visual information about things that words were
incompetent to describe or define’.34 Ivins’ emphasis derives from his belief that ‘the
importance of being able exactly to repeat pictorial statements is undoubtedly greater for
science, technology, and general information than it is for art’.35 With this in mind, Ivins
focuses mostly on early printed book illustrations and although his work is burdened by a
distinction between ‘information’ and ‘art’, it highlights the forms of visual rhetoric that were
often facilitated by the printed image. His conclusions can be seen as a parallel to influential
ideas about the cognitive and social implications of book printing such as those put forward by
Walter Ong, Lucien Febvre, Marshall McLuhan and Elizabeth Eisenstein.36 Many of the features

31
‘Das verstärkte Aufkommen privaten Bildbesitzes entspricht frömmigkeitsgeschichtlich der
zunehmenden Individualisierung des religiösen Verhaltens.’ Ibid., pp. 39-42. (The increased ownership
of private images corresponds, in the history of piety, to the increased individualisation of religious
experience). The relationship between the intederminancy and placeless of a private image (such as the
woodcut) and private prayer is summarised in the following comparison: ‘In diesem Spannungsfeld
zwischen dem jeweils individuell bestimmten Rezeptionsverhalten und der vorgängen Unbestimmtheit
und 'Ortlosigkeit' des privaten Bildes, zwischen einer persönlichen Frömmigkeitsform und einer
unpersönlich geworden Kunstvermittlung... (p. 41). (In the tension between the individually determined
reception of a private image and its indeterminacy and 'placelessness', and between a personal form of
piety and an impersonal communication of art....)
32
See, for example, Hans Robert Jauss and Elizabeth Benzinger, ‘Literary History as a Challenge to
Literary Theory’, New Literary History, vol. 2, no. 1, 1970, pp. 7-37.
33
Ibid., p. 8.
34
William M. Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication, New York, 1953, pp. 163-64.
35
Ibid., p. 2.
36
Lucien Febvre and Henri Martin, L’apparition du livre, Paris, 1958; Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg
Galaxy, London, 1962; Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change:
Communications and Cultural Transformation in Early-Modern Europe, Volumes I and II, Cambridge,
1979; Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, London and New York, 1982.
15
they have observed have been subsumed under the title ‘print culture’, a term that Peter
Parshall first traces to Marshall McLuhan, and subsequently employed by Elizabeth Eisenstein
and used to translate Rogier Chartier’s ‘les usages de l’imprimé’ (the uses of print).37 The latter
concisely describes the culture of print as both ‘the profound transformation that the
discovery and then the extended use of the new technique for the reproduction of texts
brought to all domains of life, public and private, spiritual and material’ and also ‘the set of
new acts arising out of the production of writing and pictures in a new form’.38 Although
several scholars have explored the impact of the printing press in fifteenth-century Florence
and Italy, (notably its effect on Florentine humanism and the failure of Vespasiano da Bisticci’s
manuscript business), little discussion of the role of the Florentine printed image in this
‘revolution’ – as Eisenstein terms it - of ‘print culture’ has been made.39
Some of these ideas lie behind more recent studies of European fifteenth-century
printmaking, which are much more empirical in their approach. One of the most
comprehensive is Landau and Parshall’s The Renaissance Print (1994), which surveys the
origins, forms and functions of woodcuts and engravings made between 1470 and 1550.
Possibly deliberately, the authors avoid the term ‘print culture’ and focus on presenting ‘an
integrated view of the Renaissance print as a social and artistic enterprise’ rather than an
account of how the printed image transformed methods of communication. As Landau and
Parshall comment, their work was a response to the ‘the need expressed among all parties for
a history which is built firmly upon the practical aspects of printmaking – not just technical
matters, but institutional and commercial ones’.40 Given that the book is so inclusive and
broad, it could not consider any localised centre of printmaking in any depth. But, in spite of a
fairly dismissive attitude towards early Florentine printmaking, Landau usefully analyses the
terms the ‘Fine Manner’ and the ‘Broad Manner’, often employed to describe the two main
engraving techniques used in Quattrocento Florence.41

37
Parshall, ‘Introduction: The Modern Historiography of Early Printmaking’, pp. 9-15. See McLuhan, The
Gutenberg Galaxy, p. 146. Eisenstein usefully describes what she considers to be the main ‘features of
print culture’, Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, pp. 43-159.
38
Rogier Chartier (ed.), The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, trans.
Lydia G. Cochrane, Princeton, 1989 (translation of Rogier Chartier (ed.) Les usages de l'imprimé: (XVe-
XIXe siècle), Paris, 1987), p. 1.
39
See, for example, Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, 1983, pp.
48-50; Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470-
1600, Cambridge, 1994; Peter Burke, ‘Oral Culture and Print Culture in Renaissance Italy’, in Arv: Nordic
Yearbook of Folklore, 1998, pp. 7-18; Melissa Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di
Ripoli (1476-1484): Commentary and Transcription, Florence, 1999.
40
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. vi.
41
Ibid., pp. 72-74.
16
 This dissertation seeks to complement and extend such studies, seeking a midway
point between the conceptual issues of ‘print culture’ and ‘visual communication’ and the
practical questions addressed by Parshall and Landau. Examining them from the perspectives
of manufacture, commerce, reception, and devotion, the extant prints, as catalogued by Hind
and Zucker, form the axis on which the following historical analysis spins. This thesis will show
how the new technology transformed methods of visual communication and afforded the
opportunity for invention, both the invention of new iconographies and designs, as well as in
the inventive use of local resources and traditions. The methodology is partly inspired by
Michael Baxandall’s The Limewood Sculptures of Renaissance Germany (1980), where he
memorably explores the impact of a specific medium in Germany. First he explores the
‘collective facts of the sculptors’ circumstance’, including their materials, the functions of pre-
reformation images, the market, the ‘period eye’ (‘some vernacular skills and habits of visual
discrimination’) and issues of artistic style and identity. 42 The second section of the book
considers a ‘few objects in a more sustained way’, partly ‘to soften the schematic simplicity’ of
his earlier chapters.43 Here, he takes sculptures of different types made by separate artists,
relating their unique sculptural forms to eclectic visual and textual evidence. Such sources
include woodcut broadsheets, book illustrations, drawings, calligraphy, devotional guides,
moral tales, a treatise on fencing, contracts, sermons, guild registration lists, Vasari’s Lives of
the Artists, antiphons, legends of saints, the rosary prayer and the writings of the physician
Paracelsus and his theory of signs.
The structure of this thesis is influenced by Baxandall’s bipartite framework. In the first
section, ‘Early Florentine Engravings: Creation to Reception’, three chapters examine the
earliest Florentine prints (those that were described by Hind as ‘Fine Manner’) from three
perspectives: that of the maker, the seller, and consumer. The first chapter, ‘In Bottega’
examines the making of the prints in the engravers’ workshops, providing a new terminology
for talking about the printmakers and an account of the practical and technical aspects of
designing, engraving and printing the images. Such insights rely on detailed visual analysis of
the prints, drawings, paintings and Tuscan metalwork and the study of inventories of
contemporary goldsmiths and stationers. It is also indebted to Landau and Parshall’s The
Renaissance Print and the analyses of Ad Stijnman that will be presented in his forthcoming
book on the history of printmaking intaglio printmaking processes (2012).44 The second

42
Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, New Haven, 1980, p. 164.
43
Ibid.
44
Ad Stijnman, Engraving and Etching 1400-2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio
Printmaking Processes, London, 2012. I am grateful to Ad Stijnman for sharing parts of this book with me
before its publication.
17
chapter, ‘On the Market’ considers the prints as commercial products and speculates on the
business enterprises formed to make them, the ways in which they were commissioned and
sold and how much they may have cost in the period. Given the lack of precise documentary
evidence for this process, the account is informed by comparisons with the much better
documented book printing trade in Florence and by the inventory of Alessandro Rosselli’s print
shop drawn up in 1528.45 The third chapter, ‘In Viewers’ Hands’, looks at some of the
functions of engravings and woodcuts and their adaption by Florentine consumers. After a
survey of the disparate ways that surviving prints were used across Europe, case studies
examine three Florentine manuscripts with prints pasted into them by their owners. Each
book demonstrates a distinct way that prints were absorbed into a local tradition of compiling
personal anthologies. This chapter complements a spate of recent research on the reception
and handling of prints, notably by Jan van Der Stock (1998), Peter Schmidt (2003), Richard Field
(2003), Ursula Weekes (2004), Robert Maniura (2004), Roberto Cobianchi (2006), David
Areford (2010) and several exhibitions, including Peter Parshall’s and Rainer Schoch’s, Origins
of European Printmaking at the National Gallery in Washington (2005-2006) and Suzanna Karr
Schmidt’s Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily life at the Art Institute of
Chicago (2011).46

45
Iodoco del Badia, ‘La bottega di Alessandro di Francesco Rosselli merciaio e stampatore (1525)’,
Miscellanea Fiorentina di erudizione e storia, vol. 2. no. 14, 1894, pp. 24-30.
46
Jan van der Stock, Printing Images in Antwerp: The Introduction of Printmaking in a City, Fifteenth
Century to 1585, Rotterdam, 1998; Peter Schmidt, Gedruckte Bilder in handgeschriebenen Büchern: Zum
Gebrauch von Druckgraphik Im 15. Jahrhundert, Cologne, 2003; Four articles in Studies in Iconography,
vol. 24, 2003: David S. Areford, ‘Introduction: Toward an Archaeology of the Early Printed Image’, pp. 1-
5, David S. Areford, ‘The Image in the Viewer’s Hands: The Reception of Early Prints in Europe’, pp. 5-42,
Peter Schmidt, ‘The Use of Prints in German Convents of the Fifteenth Century: The Example of
Nuremberg’, pp. 43-69 and Richard S. Field, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Woodcut of the Death of the Virgin in a
Manuscript of Der Stachel der Liebe’, pp. 71-136; Ursula Weekes, Early Engravers and Their Public: The
Master of The Berlin Passion and Manuscripts from Convents in the Rhine-Maas Region, ca. 1450-1500,
Turnhout, 2004; Robert Maniura, ‘The Images and Miracles of Santa Maria delle Carceri’, in Erik Thunø
and Gerhard Wolf, Rome, 2004, pp. 81-95; Roberto Cobianchi, ‘The Use of Woodcuts in Fifteenth-
century Italy’, Print Quarterly, vol. 23, no.1, 2006, pp. 47-54; Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image
in Late Medieval Europe. Arthur Hind briefly explores the ‘applied and decorative’ uses of woodcuts in
Arthur M. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut with a Detailed Survey of Work Done in the
Fifteenth Century, 2 vols, London, 1935, vol. 2, pp. 76-78. See also Mark P. McDonald, The Print
Collection of Ferdinand Columbus (1488-1539), 2 vols, London, 2004 for an important collection of prints
from the early sixteenth century. For the exhibitions, see Peter Parshall and Rainer Schoch, The Origins
of European Printmaking: Fifteenth-Century Woodcuts and their Public, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art,
Washington and Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, 2005-06, New Haven, 2005 and the
essays arising from it in Parshall, The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe; Suzanne Kathleen Karr
Schmidt and Kimberly Nichols (eds), Altered and Adorned: Using Renaissance Prints in Daily life, exh.
cat., Art Institute of Chicago, 2011, Chicago, 2011. See also Elizabeth Miller, ‘Prints’ in Marta Ajmar-
Wollheim and Flora Dennis (eds), At Home in Renaissance Italy, exh. cat., London, Victoria and Albert
Museum, 2006, London, 2006, pp. 322-31.
18
 The second part of the thesis, ‘Early Florentine Engravings: The Devotional Print’ is
centred on several case studies in which prints with innovative and unique forms and formats
are related to particular ways of looking at images and reading texts. In order to provide a
more focused account of ways that the medium developed, this section concentrates on
devotional prints, rather than the many secular or semi-religious prints, such as the Prophets
and Sibyls or the Dante illustrations. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, devotional
engravings are by far the most neglected by scholars. As noted, Aby Warburg, Dieter Blume,
Adrian Randolph, Charles Dempsey, Peter Keller and Sally Korman, amongst others, have
already provided insights into the forms and functions of the Dante illustrations, the Prophets
and Sibyls, the Children of the Planets and the Otto prints. More importantly, there is a wealth
of evidence for the cognitive processes associated with the beholding of religious imagery.
Sermons, spiritual guides, theological texts, poetry, and diaries, in manuscripts copied by
professional scribes, chapbook compilations and printed books, document the ways that
Florentines were encouraged to think about God, Christ, the Virgin and the Saints. Likewise,
there is a rich treasury of scholarly research on the role of images in para-liturgical devotion,
notably in the works of Sixten Ringbom, Hans Belting and Henk van Os.47 Others, including
Richard Trexler, Ronald Kecks, William Hood, Jill Burke, Anabel Thomas and Patricia Rubin,
have written about the use of pictures in personal prayer in Tuscany in both domestic and
conventual settings.48 This thesis will embrace all such evidence to ascertain how Florentine
citizens were trained and accustomed to look at prints with religious subject matter.

47
Hans Belting, The Image and its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the
Passion, trans. Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer, New Rochelle, 1990 (translation of Hans Belting, Das
Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter: Form und Funktion früher Bildtafeln der Passion, Berlin, 1981);
Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional
Painting, Doornspijk, 1984; Henk van Os, The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe 1300-
1500, exh. cat., Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1994-95, London, 1994.
48
Richard C. Trexler, ‘Florentine Religious Experience: The Sacred Image’, Studies in the Renaissance, vol.
19, 1972, pp. 7-41; John Kent Lydecker, The Domestic Setting of the Arts in Renaissance Florence, PhD
Thesis, The Johns Hopkins University, 1987; Ronald G. Kecks, Madonna und Kind: Das häusliche
Andachtsbild im Florenz des 15. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1988; William Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco,
London, 1993; Christiane Klapische-Zuber, ‘Holy Dolls: Play and Piety in Florence in the Quattrocento’, in
Sarah Blake McHam (ed.), Looking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture, Cambridge, 1998, pp. 111-27; Dale
V. Kent, Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron's Oeuvre, New Haven and
London, 2000 (‘Popular Devotion and the Perception of Images’, pp. 95-106); Roberta J. M. Olson, The
Florentine Tondo, Oxford, 2000; Geraldine A. Johnson, ‘Beautiful Brides and Model Mothers: The
Devotional and Talismanic Functions of Early Modern Marian Reliefs’, in Anne L. McClanan and Karen
Rosoff Encarnación (eds), The Material Culture of Sex, Procreation, and Marriage in Premodern Europe,
New York, 2002, pp. 135-62; Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in
Renaissance Florence, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2004 (‘Painted Prayers: Savonarola and the
Audience of Images’, pp. 155-87); Victor M. Schmidt, Painted Piety: Panel Paintings for Personal
Devotion in Tuscany, 1250-1400, Florence, 2005; Patricia Lee Rubin, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-
Century Florence, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 177-83; Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, Art, Marriage
19
 With this material in mind, each of the three chapters in the second section considers
prints that relate to three types of para-liturgical devotion that were practised in and around
Florence: veneration of the saints; meditation on the lives of Christ and the Virgin and
contemplation of God. Chapter Four examines a group of six engravings here designated vita
prints, because they display the life of a saint in way that is reminiscent of Byzantine vita icons
and Tuscan vita panels. The framework - one that continued to be popular for centuries –
allowed the engravers to compile pictures to suit various ways of venerating saints, whether by
honouring their status in Heaven, learning from their pious lives, entreating them for help or
intercession, or by celebrating a mendicant order. With the exception of the Catherine Vita
(fig. 4.10) studied by Annabel Thomas and the Anthony Abbot Vita briefly discussed by Carolyn
Wilson and Laurence Meiffret, these vita engravings have received minimal attention from
scholars.49
Chapter Five considers a selection of engravings that offered different ways of
meditating on the lives of Christ and his mother Mary: the Vienna Passion, a cycle of ten
engravings with textual captions, and four single sheet vita prints – two showing the Passion of
Christ and two depicting the life of the Virgin Mary. These fascinating prints have been largely
neglected, although Scott Nethersole had demonstrated their interest by looking at the
Flagellation in the Vienna Passion in relationship to the experience of sacred violence.50
Finally, Chapter Six examines Antonio Bettini’s Monte sancto di Dio, printed in Florence
in 1477 by Niccolò della Magna, which contains three engraved illustrations printed directly
alongside the text. The first two engravings of the book augment the text by visualising, with
differing levels of complexity, its words and themes, facilitating the journey of contemplation
that is described. Again, these engravings have received little scholarly treatment, with only
brief references to the first illustration. Maria Cali saw it as a precursor of Neoplatonic images
of spiritual ascent and Christian Heck referred to it in his history of the image of the ladder, but
neither paid close attention to how the image relates to the Bettini’s words.51

and Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace, New Haven and London, 2008 (‘The Madonna, Saints,
and Heroes for the Home’, pp. 190-228).
49
Anabel Thomas, ‘Images of St Catherine: A Re-evaluation of Cosimo Rosselli and the Influence of his
Art on the Woodcut and Metal Engraving Images of the Dominican Third Order’, in Gabriele Neher and
Rupert Shepherd (eds), Revaluing Renaissance Art, Aldershot, 2010, pp. 165-186; Carolyn C. Wilson, ‘Fra
Angelico: New Light on a Lost Work’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 137, no. 1112, 1995, pp. 737-40;
Laurence Meiffret, Saint Antoine ermite en Italie (1340-1540): Programmes picturaux et dévotion, Rome,
2004, pp. 155-58.
50
Scott Nethersole, The Representation of Violence in Fifteenth-Century Florence, PhD Thesis, Courtauld
Institute of Art, University of London, 2009, p. 209-30.
51
Maria Cali, Da Michelangelo all’Escorial: Momenti del dibattito religioso nell’arte del Cinquecento,
Turin, 1980, pp. 80-99; Christian Heck, L'échelle céleste dans l'art du Moyen Âge: Une image de la quête
du ciel, Paris, 1997, pp. 150-151.
20
 Each of the three chapters in this section examines prints that invite the viewer to
‘read’ them in structured ways, whether by the arrangement of images in sequence, by
captions or by complex visual allegory. Because of this, an understanding of the art of memory
is key, since mnemonic theories offered ways to structure mental experience through
imaginary visual schemas that parallel those in the engravings, such as blocks in a grid, bricks of
a building, steps of a ladder, cities in a landscape, or through simple marks or letters. This area
of study was pioneered by Frances Yates and Mary Carruthers, but of particular relevance to
the culture of late medieval and Renaissance Europe are Peter Parshall’s ‘The Art of
Memory and the Passion' (1999) and Lina Bolzoni’s The Web of Images (2002).52 Although
primarily concerned with the sixteenth century, Bolzoni’s The Galley of Memory (1995) is also
pertinent to this thesis, since it demonstrates how print technology facilitated the practices
related to the art of memory.53 Bolzoni’s comments on the impact of book-printing are also
appropriate for the invention of copperplate printing: ‘the perception of words and mental
faculties in terms of space and visualisation is enormously expanded by the phenomenon of
the printing press’.54

52
Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory, London, 1966; Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study
of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge, 1990, Mary J. Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation,
Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200, Cambridge, 1998; Peter Parshall, ‘The Art of Memory
and the Passion’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 81, no. 3, 1999, pp. 456-72; Lina Bolzoni, The Web of Images:
Vernacular Preaching from its Origins to St Bernardino da Siena, trans. Carole Preston and Lisa Chen,
Aldershot, 2004 (translation of Lina Bolzoni, Le rete delle immagini: Predicazione in volgare dalle origini
a Bernardino da Siena, Turin, 2001)
53
Lina Bolzoni, The Gallery of Memory: Literary and Iconographic Models in the Age of the Printing Press,
trans. Jeremy Parzen, Toronto, 2001 (translation of Lina Bolzoni, La stanza della memoria, Turin, 1995)
54
Ibid., p. xviii.
21
2. Connoisseurship and a Taxonomy of Style

Before this account can begin, it is imperative to fully understand the work of
connoisseurs in building the corpus of early Florentine prints, since it is they who have helped
decide which prints are Florentine, and how they should be classified. This process of
categorising has centred around observations of style or manners, characterised by vague
visual effects as well as more specific details such as hatching technique, recurrent figural,
ornamental and landscape motifs. In the account which follows, style is on the whole not
defined as a judgement of quality, originality or even artistic personality, but rather as uniform
set of distinct visual motifs and techniques observed throughout a corpus of works. In
accordance with this broad definition of style, students of Florentine engravings from the
nineteenth century have undertaken extensive visual analysis of prints, in a process which
Willibald Sauerländer had described as one where ‘the historian acts like the botanist; he has
to single out the marks of identification of the different species and to file them in a system of
classification which is sufficiently distinct’.55
The first significant contribution to this process, more than two hundred years after
the second edition of Vasari’s Lives was published, was the Dictionnaire des artistes dont nous
avons les estampes (1788-90) by Karl von Heinecken.56 Earlier writers had been aware of
Vasari’s account, and it had been paraphrased by Filippo Baldinucci in 1681, but they had not
linked any surviving engravings to Baccio Baldini, although the engraved Dante illustrations
had occasionally been attributed to Maso Finiguerra.57 But in 1768 Heinecken linked Baccio
Baldini to the nineteen engraved illustrations of Cristoforo Landino’s Comento sopra la
comedia di Dante of 1481, an opinion that he elaborated in his dictionary published twenty
years later. 58 Following Heinecken, other connoisseurs of Italian prints, including Josef Strutt,
Adam von Bartsch and Johann Passavant, continued to compile lists of Quattrocento
Florentine engravings, many of them included because of their perceived similarities to the
paintings of artists active in Florence between 1460 and the 1480s, such as Botticelli,

55
Willibald Saurländer, ‘From Stilus to Style: Reflections on the Fate of a Notion’, Art History, vol. 6, no.
3, 1983, pp. 253-70, 263.
56
Karl Heinrich von Heinecken, Dictionnaire des artistes dont nous avons des estampes, avec une notice
detailée de leurs ouvrages graves, 4 vols, Leipzig, 1778-90, vol. 2 (1788), pp. 57-58, vol. 3 (1789), pp.
208-16.
57
Filippo Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue in qua, ed. Ferdinando Ranalli, 6 vols,
st
Florence, 1845, vol. 1, p. 569 (1 ed. Florence, 1681-1728). For attributions of the Dante engravings to
Maso Finiguerra, see Keller, ‘The Engravings in the 1481 Edition of the Divine Comedy’, pp. 332, 348, n.
38.
58
Heinecken, Nachtrichten von Künstlern und Kunst-Sachen, vol. 2, pp. 279-80 and Heinecken,
Dictionnaire des artistes dont nous avons des estampes, vol. 2, pp. 57-58, vol. 3, pp. 208-16.
22
Verrocchio, Castagno and Pollaiuolo.59 A large number of these prints were, without much
hesitation, attributed to Baccio Baldini, including the illustrations for Antonio Bettini’s Monte
Sancto di Deo published in 1477 by della Magna, the Children of the Planets, the round ‘Otto’
prints named after Peter Ernst Otto who acquired many of them in 1783, and the Prophets and
Sibyls, as well as many prints not so obviously linked with the Dante illustrations. 60 Others
were left as anonymous, but described as having a Florentine style on the basis of their
iconography or the relationship of figures, architectural elements and ornamentation to those
found in work by Florentine artists.
Eduard Kolloff was the first scholar to provide a more systematic and rigorous visual
analysis that was based on the more ‘scientific’ connoisseurship associated with the works of
Giovanni Morrelli. He categorised the prints then linked with Florence according to the type of
hatching strokes and the consistent use of particular motifs.61 He described the technique
seen in the prints associated with Baccio Baldini as the ‘feine Manier’ or the Fine Manner, a
method that was principally characterised by thin, densely packed strokes crossed at angle (fig.
Int.2). This was contrasted with a technique seen in another category of engravings, the
‘Broad Manner’, in which shading is made from thicker parallel lines slanted in a diagonal
direction and spaced more broadly from each other (fig. Int.3). Kolloff associated a number of
other motifs with this technical characteristic, including the distinctive orthography with the
letters ‘N’ and ‘S’ often printed in reverse and the miniscule b and q used for B and Q
respectively. He also described recurrent types of vegetation and plants, including the star-
shaped plants or tufts of grass, the yew, pine, orange and peculiar mushroom shaped trees, as
59
In the section ‘Gravures des ancients maîtres anonyms d’Italie’, for example, Passavant says that the
artist of the Triumphs of Petrarch ‘seems to be Florentine and to have belonged to the school of
Verrocchio’. He describes the Assumption as ‘belonging’ to Sandro Botticelli on the basis of the style of
the figures. Johann David Passavant, Le peintre-graveur, 6 vols, Leipzig, 1860-64, vol. 5, pp. 7, 42-43. He
also attributes prints to Filippo Lippi for whom there is no evidence that he worked as a goldsmith or
engraver (pp. 42-45).
60
Scholars who attributed prints to Baccio Baldini in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries include
st
Josef Strutt, A Biographical Dictionary of all the Engravers, Geneva, 1972, p. 132 (1 ed. London, 1785-
86); Adam von Bartsch, Le peintre-graveur, 21 vols, Vienna, 1803-21, vol. 13, pp. 161-200; William Y.
Ottley, An Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving, London, 1816, pp. 350-437; Charles Le
Blanc, Manuel de l’amateur d’estampes, 4 vols, Paris, 1854-90, vol. 1 (1854), pp. 126-28; Passavant, Le
Peintre-Graveur, vol. 5, pp. 27-48; Eduard Kolloff, ‘Baldini’, in Julius Meyer (ed.), Allgemeines Künstler-
Lexikon, Leipzig, 1878, vol. 2, pp. 574-612; Henri Delaborde, La gravure en Italie avant Marc-Antoine
(1452-1505), Paris, 1882, p. 53; Paul Kristeller, ‘Baldini’, in Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker (eds),
Allgemeines Lexikon des bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1907-50, vol. 2
(1908), pp. 394-95. See also Richard Fisher, Introduction to a Catalogue of the Early Italian Prints in the
British Museum, London, 1886, pp. 48-147. Passavant included many of the prints now considered to be
by Francesco Rosselli and demonstrating a very different technique. Passavant, Le peintre-graveur, vol.
5, pp. 39-47, esp. nos. 93-96, 99a-b, 101-02, 114-16. For the Otto prints and their acquisition by Peter
Ernst Otto, see Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 85.
61
See Kolloff, ‘Baldini’, pp. 578-80. For a short account of Kolloff’s work, see Michael Zell, ‘Eduard Kolloff
and the Historiographic Romance of Rembrandt and the Jews’, Simiolus, vol. 28 no. 3, 2001, pp. 181-97.
23
well as the narrow, diagonal shaped clouds that feather to a point at each end. Despite the
specificity of Kolloff’s stylistic criteria, he attributed to Baccio Baldini many engravings that
have been subsequently given to the Master of the Vienna Passion and an engraver entitled
the Master of 1466, as well as the Tarocchi prints which are now believed to be by an
anonymous engraver from Ferrara.62
In their catalogue of early Italian engravings in the British Museum, Sidney Colvin and
Arthur Hind were clearly inspired by Kolloff’s taxonomy of style.63 The catalogue aimed to
revise the way that the Museum’s collection was organised and presented, creating with a
classification system which has been continued to be used in London and elsewhere.64 Under
their system, Italian prints were organised by the letters of the alphabet, A-G. Section A
contained the so-called Fine Manner engravings; B included the Broad Manner engravings and
C is comprised of both the Fine Manner and Broad Manner editions of the thirty-six Prophets
and Sibyls. ‘Other’ Florentine engravings, attributed to Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Cristofano
Robetta, Lucantonio degli Uberti and Gherardo di Giovanni, are grouped under category D;
section E contains prints attributed to North Italian schools, whilst all those of ‘miscellaneous
and uncertain schools’ were labelled under group ‘F’. Engraved maps formed the last group in
section G.65 One of the important developments from Kolloff was the dispensing of the name
Baccio Baldini, with Colvin and Hind recognising that he is ‘elusive’ and ‘nearly mythical’.
Instead they relate many of the prints to the workshop of Maso Finiguerra, and group them
under subdivisions of category A: A.II, A.III, A.IV and A.V.66 For these ‘Finiguerra’ prints, the
authors give an extensive list of features that constitute the ‘the special notes of style and
manner’ of Finiguerra and his ‘school’, and which they also observe in the Florentine Picture
Chronicle, the album of drawings illustrating the history of the world, which they attributed to
Finiguerra.67 These include the landscape, trees, rocks, water, and animals, the wrinkles and
frowns of old men, the folds and ‘forms’ of drapery and embroidery patterns, the ‘leaf-pattern’
on architecture and armour, the ‘heavy and ornate’ dress and ‘headgear’, the alla francese
costume of women, and ‘fantastical Oriental crowns, turbans and tiaras’. They continue with a

62
Kolloff, ‘Baldini’, pp. 580-608.
63
Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the
British Museum. For Richard Fisher’s preparatory introduction for such a catalogue, see Fisher,
Introduction to a Catalogue of the Early Italian Prints in the British Museum.
64
Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the
British Museum, pp. viii-ix.
65
For a description of this system by Sidney Colvin, see his introduction, ibid., p. xvii.
66
Ibid., p. 34.
67
For the Florentine Picture Chronicle, see Maso Finiguerra, A Florentine Picture Chronicle: Being a Series
of Ninety-Nine Drawings Representing Scenes and Personages of Ancient History, Sacred and Profane,
ed. Sidney Colvin, London, 1898 and Whitaker, The Florentine Picture Chronicle.
24
number of important identifying points: the ‘overloaded architectural enrichment’ and the
repeated use of the miniscule letters ‘b’ and ‘q’ for B and Q, and the frequent reversal of the
‘S’. 68 This analysis continues to be one of the best indexes for describing the style associated
with the so-called Baccio Baldini, many features of which can be seen in the print the Children
of Venus and the Children of Mercury (figs Int.4-5). Colvin also provides a detailed account of
Fine Manner engraving, highlighting the ‘effect of a misty patch’ in the shaded areas of cross-
hatching, derived from the burr – or residue metal from the incised lines – left on the copper
plate. The technique is compared with the art of niello engraving, in which large areas are
densely cross-hatched so that the surface will appear black in the final appearance.
The authors show the complexity of the Fine Manner category by acknowledging that
many of the prints included within it do not strictly coincide with the hatching technique they
describe. These prints, many not in the British Museum, are described as ‘the most primitive’
and of a ‘less distinctive’ style, and are only ‘roughly’ classed as Fine Manner engravings. For
this reason they are included in the large A.I. section.69 This group is subdivided into three
smaller groups, that of the Master of the Large Passion, the Master of the Small Passion, and
that of other ‘miscellaneous’ engravings, on the basis of a new set of stylistic criteria. The style
of the Master of the Large Passion is characterised as inspired by Andrea del Castagno, with
the ‘exaggeration’ of the muscles, the elaborate drapery, the ‘harsh energy of character and
intense expression in the heads’, and a ‘rigid and unpractised’ technique’ (figs. 1.47-50).70
Hind also identifies the orthography that distinguishes the prints ‘from those of the Finiguerra
school [...] and to some extent from each other’. The B is a majuscule Roman capital, and the Q
is seen as either a typical Roman Q or a more coiled shape. Sometimes the cross stroke of the
‘A is omitted, and a ‘3’ is used for ‘M’.71 Hind is much less specific about the second group
named after the small Passion scenes in the Albertina in Vienna, stating that technically they
have a ‘childish crudity’ and bear more resemblance to ‘primitive German engravings’ (fig.
1.51-52 ).
Although the comments of Colvin and Hind are among the most detailed and in this
respect the most helpful, the catalogue has been superseded by the much larger volumes on
early Italian engravings also written by Hind. In 1938 he published the first volume of his Early
Italian Engraving, where he sought to provide a comprehensive survey and categorisation of

68
Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the
British Museum, pp. xxi-xxii.
69
Ibid, pp. 5-6.
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid.
25
all Florentine and other Italian prints housed in European and North American collections.72
The project was initiated by Paul Kristeller who aimed to publish a study that paralleled the
extensive catalogues produced by Max Lehrs on the early engravings of Northern Europe.73
Kristeller never completed his study, but his notes were inherited by Hind who took over his
plan and reformulated it according to the taxonomy that he had developed together with his
Colvin for the catalogue of 1910.74 In most respects the classification system is the same, but
with the significant difference that he refrains from linking the majority of the prints with
specific masters, acknowledging the slender evidence for such attributions.75 He made
tentative attempts to put these ‘miscellaneous’ prints into an order defined by their style, and
describes a manner seen in the Vienna Passion prints (A.I.25-A.I.34), a style that had been
described in more detail by Colvin in 1910.76 These links, however, are deliberately
underplayed and masked by the large and general ‘A.I category’. Hind’s admission that his
‘“Florentine” group may embrace too much’, serves as a reminder of the unresolved status of
many of the prints it included.77
Since Hind’s catalogue, only a few scholars have revisited this outline of early
Florentine engraving. The first effort was made by John Goldsmith Phillips in 1955 in his Early
Florentine Designers and Engravers: Maso Finiguerra, Baccio Baldini, Antonio Pollaiuolo,
Sandro Botticelli, Francesco Rosselli. Phillips reintroduced the name Baccio Baldini for many of
the prints Hind had kept anonymous, but the work has been frequently, and rightly, criticised
for indiscriminately attributing many disparate engravings to the same individual.78 The next,
more convincing, account was offered by Konrad Oberhuber in the catalogue for the exhibition
of early Italian engravings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1973.79 Oberhuber
provided essays on Maso Finiguerra and his making of nielli and niello prints, Francesco
Rosselli, the author to whom most of the so-called Broad Manner prints have been attributed,
and on Baccio Baldini where he applies his close visual analysis of prints associated with ‘the

72
Hind, Early Italian Engraving.
73
Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the
British Museum, p. ix.
74
Kristeller’s notes are kept in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, and are
annotated with comments by Hind. I am grateful to Anthony Griffiths for alerting me to these.
75
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 8.
76
Ibid., vol. 1, p. 25. For Colvin’s comments, see Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in
the Department of Prints and Drawings, pp. x, xvii, 3-6.
77
Ibid., p. 2.
78
John Goldsmith Phillips, Early Florentine Designers and Engravers: Maso Finiguerra, Baccio Baldini,
Antonio Pollaiuolo, Sandro Botticelli, Francesco Rosselli, Cambridge MA, 1955. For criticisms, see
Levenson, Oberhuber and Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, p. 20;
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 30.
79
Levenson, Oberhuber and Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art.
26
style of the Planets’ and the Dante engravings.80 Although Oberhuber maintains the definition
of the Fine and Broad Manners, styles that are distinguished ‘on the basis of the thickness of
the modelling lines’, his definition of the Fine Manner – based on the ‘thickness of the
modelling lines employed’ is broader and more inclusive than that proposed by Kolloff, Colvin
and Hind. He recognises that another engraver also worked ‘in the Fine Manner’, but with a
slightly different technique, identified by ‘almost exclusively fine and delicate lines, very
regularly grouped, and often arranged so that no contour line is necessary’.81 Oberhuber also
shows that the Fine Manner is not simply identical with the ‘niello manner’, but has much in
common with pen draughtmanship, with Baldini’s ‘stronger lines’ imitating ‘the work of the
pen’, and the ‘blurred shading lines’ duplicating ‘the effect of the washes’. The question of the
Fine and Broad Manners has been resolved in Landau and Parshall’s The Renaissance Print
(1994), where they are not defined by the type of hatching, but rather by the tool used to
incise these lines.82 In the Fine Manner, a thinner burin, the ciappola (discussed here in
Chapter One), Landau argues, was used to create the hatches, but the Fine Manner was
superseded by the Broad Manner when Francesco Rosselli, employed a thicker, lozenge
shaped tool for the same purpose.
Because of Oberhuber’s broader definition of the Fine Manner, he is able to re-
emphasise the suggestion put forward in the British Museum 1910 catalogue but marginalised
in Hind’s 1938 study, that there was at least one other distinct group of engravers alongside
Baccio Baldini in Florence in the 1460s and 1470s: the ‘Master of the Vienna Passion’ and
engravers related to him. In extended footnotes to his essay on Baldini, he outlines the
distinctive features of these engravers, attributing prints to different hands clarifying that
Florentine engraving emerged from a network of several engravers working concurrently.83
The most recent examination of Fine Manner prints was undertaken by Mark Zucker in
his commentaries for the Illustrated Bartsch (1993 and 1999).84 With the addition of several
subsequently discovered engravings, the majority the prints included in his volumes are also
found in Hind’s catalogue.85 Zucker’s classification system is highly dependent on both Hind’s
and Oberhuber’s, and his groupings broadly reflect theirs. There are five principal categories,
the first of which is a selective catalogue of the niello prints discussed in Bartsch’s catalogue of

80
Ibid., pp. 13-21 (Baccio Baldini), pp. 47-59 (Francesco Rosselli).
81
Ibid., p. xvii.
82
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, pp. 72-73.
83
Ibid., pp. xviii, 20-21, ns. 12-14.
84
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24.
85
Ibid., pt. 1, pp. vii-viii.
27
1811 (2401).86 Further sections are entitled ‘Baccio Baldini’ (2403), ‘Francesco Rosselli’ (2404)
and ‘Anonymous Florentine Engravers’ (2405). Although there is no evidence for a Baccio
Baldini, he adopts the name, following Oberhuber, ‘for the sake of convenience’.87
Signficantly, he introduces a new category containing prints from Hind’s A.I section that
sprung from the attributions in Oberhuber’s footnotes: a group of engravings entitled ‘the
Master of the Vienna Passion and Related Engravers’ (2402).88 There are also categories in an
earlier commentary for The Illustrated Bartsch (volume 25) containing the few engravings
attributed to Antonio del Pollaiuolo (2501) and for the engravers believed to be active at the
end of the century, Cristofano Robetta (2520) and Lucantonio degli Uberti (2521).89
Such structure allowed Zucker to be a little more detailed than Hind in his attributions,
and more comprehensive than Oberhuber whose attention was primarily focussed on the
prints included in his exhibition. Moreover, his organisation of the sections reflects the
chronological development of printmaking in Florence. Unsurprisingly, niello prints are
considered first, as they were deemed to be the first experiments in printing designs on paper,
as stated by Vasari.90 Zucker also argues that Francesco Rosselli, who was active as an
illuminator in the late 1460s, began making prints from around 1485, the approximate date of
his Life of the Virgin and Christ rosary prints (Hind, B.I.1-15), until 1506, the date of the
engraved map he signed.91 As Zucker admits, the dating is hypothetical and conflicts with
Oberhuber’s dating of Rosselli’s earliest prints to the late 1460s when the artist began
illuminating manuscripts.92 Nevertheless, Rosselli’s prints probably date from a much later
period than those attributed to Baldini and the Master of the Vienna Passion. Even if the final
illustration for Landino’s Comento sopra la comedia di Dante was made as late as 1487, as

86
Nielli and niello prints have not been extensively studied since Eugène Dutuit, Manuel de l’amateur
d’estampes 4 vols, Paris, 1881- 88, vol. 1, pt. 2: Nielles (1888). A catalogue of nielli in the British
Museum was produced by Arthur M. Hind, Nielli, Chiefly Italian of the XV Century: Plates, Sulphur Casts
and Prints Preserved in the British Museum, London, 1936 and another of the niello prints in the
Rothschild Collection at the Louvre by André Blum, Les nielles du quattrocento, Paris, 1950. A short
study was also made by Lessing J. Rosenwald in Levenson, Oberhuber and Sheehan, Early Italian
Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, pp. 528-31. The study of niello prints has been restricted by
the problem of the existence of a number of forgeries produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. For this problem see Fisher, Introduction to a Catalogue of the Early Italian Prints in the British
Museum, pp. 37-47.
87
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 90.
88
Ibid., pp. 29-88. Zucker also described the Master of the Vienna Passion in Mark J. Zucker, ‘The
Madonna of Loreto: A Newly Discovered Work by the Master of the Vienna Passion’, Print Quarterly, vol.
6, no. 2, pp. 149-60.
89
Mark J. Zucker, Early Italian Masters, The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 25: Commentary, New York, 1984,
pp. 11-20 (Antonio del Pollaiuolo), 517-26 (Lucantonio degli Uberti), 527-70 (Cristofano Robetta).
90
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 2, pp. 1-28.
91
Ibid., pp. 3-4 and 7, ns. 32, 37.
92
Levenson, Oberhuber and Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings from the National Gallery of Art, p. 59.
28
Peter Dreyer suggests, they, and the project for commissioning them, are still much earlier
than dated engravings that can more firmly attributed to Rosselli: those in two illustrated
books published by Francesco Bonaccorsi and Bartolommeo de’ Libri in 1495. 93 Moreover,
according to the archival research of Gustavo Uzielli, Rosselli, who was dead by 1513, first
described himself as a ‘stampatore’in 1498, twenty years after practising as an illuminator.94
Zucker’s survey of the engravings gathered by Hind thus implies that there were two
main workshops producing prints from 1460 to around 1485: that of the more prolific ‘Baccio
Baldini’, and another of the Master of the Vienna Passion who seems to have been associated
with at least one other engraver, the Master of 1466 named after the Easter Table print in the
British Museum that bears that date (fig. 1.49). Recent, shorter catalogues of exhibitions and
collections have offered little further contributions to the questions of dating or attribution.95
A full list of Hind’s, Oberhuber’s and Zucker’s attributions for Fine Manner prints are found in
Appendix 1. Throughout this PhD, the groups adopted are broadly similar to those developed
by Zucker, except for a few instances where alternative attributions are made clear in the text.
Chapter One will examine more close the relationship between these terminologies and offer a
more appropriate terminology to describe them, one that gives a more accurate picture of the
circumstances in which the engravings were made.
These layers of study provide the bedrock for what follows in this thesis, which, taken
as a whole, seeks to demonstrate that the inventions of the Florentine printmakers should be
integrated into a general discussion of Florentine art and culture, rather than being confined to
general iconographic studies or to minute questions of connoisseurship. For, even though
Florentines did not invent printmaking technology, printmakers, patrons and consumers in the
city embraced it. Engravers could produce works which were comparatively less expensive
than paintings, could easily be diseminated widely, and used in a multitude of ways, but which
were of better quality and with more refined details than the woodcuts also available in the
city. Possibly because of these benefits, the intaglio engraving allowed printmakers to be
inventive in their pictorial compositions, transforming archaic layouts and designs into new
types of pictures that communicated with their audience in innovative ways. As will be seen,

93
Peter Dreyer, 'Botticelli's Series of Engravings "of 1481",' Print Quarterly, vol. 1, 1984, pp. 111-115.
See also, Keller, 'The Engravings in the 1481 Edition of the Divine Comedy', pp. 327-331. For the ‘Broad
Manner’ book illustrations, see Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, cat. no. B.IV. 1, 2.
94
Gustavo Uzielli, La vita e i tempi di Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, Rome, 1894, p. 526. Unfortunately
Uzielli does not provide a specific reference to his source.
95
Gisèle Lambert, Les premières gravures italiennes: Quattrocento – début du cinquecento: Inventaire de
la collection du départment des Estampes et de la Photographie, Paris, 1999; Catherine Loisel and Pascal
Torres, Les premiers ateliers italiens de la Renaissance: De Finiguerra à Botticelli, exh. cat., Musée du
Louvre, Collection Rothschild, Paris, 2011, Paris, 2011
29
the engravings exemplify some of the period’s most prominent features: the entrepreneurial
spirit of artisans and their business partners, the role of images in changing patterns of
religious devotion and inventive methods of visual communication.

30
 Part I

Early Florentine Engravings: Creation to Reception

31
Chapter 1. In Bottega: Production in the Printmakers’ Workshops

The ‘bottega’, or ‘workshop’, was the basic organisational unit of any Florentine
artistic enterprise. This was the place where products related to the craft were made, the
business was administered, workers were trained and sometimes the goods were sold.1 How
each workshop operated varied according to particular needs and resources of those who
worked there and the demands of the trade. In the absence of documented evidence
concerning the earliest printmaking workshops in Florence, it is possible to only hypothesise
how engravers made and sold their works. With this in mind, the following chapter assesses
different types of evidence to provide an account of how the workshops probably functioned.
The first section reconsiders the apparatus used to classify or attribute the prints and
questions whether they were made by single masters or artists working in collaboration. The
second part investigates the way engravers made their prints, and how they achieved this by
using local materials, tools and expertise.

1.1. Classification and Terminology of Early Florentine Prints

As noted, there are two broad, and generally convincing, categories that have been
employed to organise the prints discussed in this thesis, both sub groups under the umbrella of
the ‘Fine Manner’ engravings. The first is Zucker’s group of prints attributed to Baccio Baldini
and described by Hind as in the ‘style of the Planets’. The second is the more eclectic category
of engravings attributed by Zucker to the Master of the Vienna Passion, the Master of 1466
and related engravers, most of which are gathered together by Hind under the number A.I.
Both categories, however, remain problematic. Despite Vasari’s reference to Baccio Baldini,
attributing this first group to him is difficult for the reasons explained below. Equally
problematic is the habit of assigning authorship of the two main groups of prints to individual
masters. As will be argued here, it is more accurate to understand the prints as emerging from
a dynamic network of interlinked workshops in the city.

Baccio Baldini: The Dante Workshop

Since the nineteenth century, Baccio Baldini – the figure singled out by Vasari – has
been associated with the prints ‘in the style of the Planets’, as Hind described them, even

1
Annabel Thomas, The Painter’s Practice in Renaissance Tuscany, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 1-4.
32
though there is no other evidence for his existence or reason to connect them with this
particular style. An important print now in the Czech Republic, however, the Coronation of the
Virgin and Scenes from her Life (Žatec Virgin Vita, figs. 1.1-2), challenges this supposition and
the attribution of the prints ‘in the style of the Planets’ to Baldini, yet also validates Vasari’s
assertion that there was an engraver called Baldini who was influenced by Finiguerra. Pasted
inside a German manuscript dated to the 1470s, it includes an inscription printed in the lower
margin that seems to record the name of the print’s maker, ‘Maestro Piero di Doffo di Dofo di
Baldino Baldini’ (fig. 1.3).2 Because of the extended patronymic, Piero can be identified in the
Florentine tax records as the son of an apothecary, born around 1437 and dead by 1480.3 The
tax records for 1457 and 1469 do not state Piero’s profession or indicate if he rented a
‘bottega’, and his name does not appear in the matriculation records for the Arte della Seta, the
guild of goldsmiths.4 But these gaps in the evidence do not preclude him from working in this
field, since goldsmiths often practised their craft before matriculating into a guild. Antonio
Pollaiuolo, for example, worked as a goldsmith on several important commissions from 1457,
but did not join the Arte della Seta until 1466.5 Furthermore, like many goldsmiths, Piero was
a member of a family of metalworkers, one of whom - his cousin Simone di Guasparre Baldini –
worked as a goldsmith until the second decade of the sixteenth century.6 Although Vasari
makes no mention of this artist, it is possible that he intended to refer to Piero Baldini in his
discussion of early printmaking since in 1529 he briefly stayed with Simone’s grandson, the
goldsmith Bernardo Baldini.7 Perhaps Bernardo reported Piero’s involvement in early
printmaking to Vasari who mistakenly dubbed him ‘Baccio’. Such may have been prompted
through his acquaintance with Baccio Baldini, a humanist, physician and librarian to Duke

2
Hind and Zucker had been unable to decipher the inscription, and Zucker, never having studied the
impression first-hand, concluded that it must be a forged pen inscription added much later. Close
inspection of the original print, however, indicates that it was incised on the original plate. Both
examined the print from a photo in the Kupfertsichkabinett, Berlin (fig. 1.2). Hind, Early Italian
Engraving, pp. 9, 30; Zucker, Early Italian Masters, The Illustrated Bartsch, vol. 24, pt. 2, p. 123.
3
ASF, Catasto, 1457, vol. 2072, fol. 351r (Piero’s age is given as twenty-two); Catasto, 1469, vol. 927,
fol. 519r (Piero is described as aged thirty-five, and living with his widowed mother Gherardesca and his
younger brother Doffo); Catasto, 1480, vol. 1020, fol. 418r (only Doffo is listed, aged forty, and
described as suffering from gout).
4
For the matriculation records of the guild, see ASF, Arte della Seta, vol. 8.
5
Alison Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers: The Arts of Florence and Rome, London and New Haven, 2005,
p. 12.
6
Sharon Gregory, Vasari, Prints, and Printmaking, PhD Thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of
London, 1998, p. 77. For Simone’s matriculation to the Arte della Seta in 1462, see ASF, Arte della Seta,
vol. 8, fol. 205v.
7
Karl Frey (ed.), Der literarische Nachlass Giorgio Vasaris, 2 vols, Munich, 1923, vol. 2, p. 849.
33
Cosimo I to whom he refers in his Life of Filippino Lippi.8 Vasari made similar errors elsewhere
in his text, for example, calling Lorenzo Costa, Lorenzo ‘Cossa’.9
The print supports the possibility that Vasari confused Baccio with Piero, since it
confirms several aspects of his account of the origins of Florentine printmaking. The central
scene, the Coronation of the Virgin, is closely copied from a pax attributed to the goldsmith
Maso Finiguerra in the Museo del Bargello in Florence (fig. 1.4), suggesting that Piero Baldini
had some contact with Finiguerra and his workshop. There are subtle differences between the
two designs, such as the position of Augustine’s mitre in relation to the wreath above it, the
arrangement of the hair, facial expressions, drapery and the tiled floor patterns. Nevertheless,
they are sufficiently similar to indicate that Piero closely studied the original or drawing.
Furthermore, the print may have been pulled from an engraved plate that was originally
intended to be inlaid with niello, for the script in the banderoles held by the angels is reversed,
suggesting it was not intended to be printed. From this, it is possible to say that a printmaker
named Baldini existed, but that this engraver was not responsible for the prints often
attributed to Baccio Baldini. The Žatec Virgin Vita has none of the typical ornaments, costumes
and motifs linked with Hind’s ‘style of the Planets’, such as the idiosyncratic ‘b’. Furthermore,
Piero Baldini died by 1480, and most of the illustrations for Dante’s Commedia are thought to
have been made between 1481 and 1487. Although the broad category described by Hind as
‘in the style of the Planets’ should remain, the name Baccio Baldini should not be associated
with them. Therefore, the engravings attributed by Zucker to Baccio Baldini will here be
described as belonging to the ‘Dante Category’ because many characteristics of their style, as
described by Colvin and Hind, are visible in the illustrations for Landino’s Comento sopra la
comedia di Dante of 1481 (e.g. figs. 1.10, 1.36, 2.5). A full list of the prints placed in this group
is found in Appendix 1.
Rather than crediting these engravings to a single ‘Dante Master’, it is likely that they
were made by more than one person, probably working collaboratively together within a
workshop. As noted in the introduction, there is a remarkable consistency in the ornament
patterns and lettering in the prints indicating that they had a common origin. Hitherto
unnoticed is the correspondence of these motifs to engraved patterns on a reliquary of the

8
For the sixteenth-century Baccio Baldini, see Nancy G. Siraisi, History, Medicine, and the Traditions of
Renaissance Learning, Ann Arbor, 2007, pp. 94-96. For Vasari’s reference to the doctor, see Gaetano
Milanesi (ed.) Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, 9 vols, Florence, 1998 (repr. of Florence, 1906), vol. 3, p. 475:
‘maestro Baccio Baldini, fiorentino, fisico eccellentissimo ed amatore di tutte le virtù’ (Master Baccio
Baldini, Florentine, most excellent physician and lover of all virtues).
9
Patricia Lee Rubin, Giorgio Vasari: Art and History, New Haven, 1995, p. 127. ‘Verbal slips account for
some of Vasari’s more notable confusions.’
34
Virgin’s girdle produced for the Duomo of Prato in 1446 by Maso di Bartolommeo (figs 1.5-6).10
The ornament in the spandrels of the casket’s volutes (fig. 1.7) for example, appears on objects
and costumes in several prints (e.g. figs 1.8-12). The engraved scrollwork on the frame of the
reliquary’s lid (fig.1.13) is repeated in the border framing a print (fig. 1.14), on the architecture
of the throne in one of the prints depicting the Virgin and Child with Saints (fig. 1.15) and on
the costume of the Prophet Haggai (fig. 1.16). A comparable motif is found in St Mary
Magdalen and in some of the ‘Otto’ prints (figs 1.17-20), while the scrolled shape of the lid
itself is employed for many architectural elements in this group, such as the throne of the
Virgin (figs 1.21-22). And, as noted by Kolloff, Colvin, Hind and Zucker, the prints also display a
consistent type of lettering, in particular the distinctive minuscule ‘b’ and ‘q’ (figs 1.23-25,28).
This lettering is seen in the Florentine Picture Chronicle, where the words are written in pen
and ink and surrounded by decorative patterns (fig.1.26). A similar script also appears on
Maso di Bartolomeo’s reliquary, although it is not possible to provide a complete comparison
because none of the words include a ‘b’ or a ‘q’ (fig 1.27).
Despite these uniform characteristics, however, the prints within this group were
probably produced by more than one craftsman. This is particularly apparent in the first and
second editions of the Children of the Planets that, notwithstanding similarities in their
iconography, lettering and decoration, show clear differences in the quality of
draughtsmanship and engraving the plate. The first series was executed with a variety of
hatching methods and a relatively convincing background perspective (fig. 1.29). The second
series was engraved with thicker outlines, rougher and less varied hatching, and more basic
landscapes (fig. 1.30). Two small prints in the British Museum, the Lamentation of Christ with
Saints (fig.1.31) and St Sebastian, St Roch, Raphael and Tobias (fig. 1.32) were also engraved by
a less skilled engraver, a weakness visible in the rigid contours and hatching consistently
squared without modifying the angle of the strokes, even though the lettering and facial types
with squared noses and furrowed brows, are similar to more skilfully executed prints in the
Dante Category. The difference becomes clear through a comparison of Raphael and Tobias
(fig. 1.33.35) with the same figures in a circular print where they are far more delicately
outlined and subtly shaded (figs. 1.34).
The crudely executed prints stand out, but even amongst prints with better design and
engraving, there is a range of quality. In St Catherine of Siena and her Miracles (Catherine
Vita, fig. 4.10), for example, there are several slips of the burin, mistakes in the trees and less
intricate details than those in the Punishment of the Suicides (fig. 1.36) from Dante’s

10
See Giuseppe Marchini, Il Tesoro del Duomo di Prato, Prato, 1963, pls. 36-39.
35
Commedia (figs. 1.37-40). The latter, seen in a very good impression, shows neatly defined
branches and an array of surface textures, achieved through different types of linear shading.
Comparison of the Procession to Calvary (fig. 1.41) and Encounter with the Wild Family (fig.
1.42) also demonstrates contrasting depictions of space and the human figure. In the
Procession to Calvary, the Romans and Jews interact with each other in varied gestures, and
are set on a path that convincingly recedes according to perspective. In the Encounter with
the Wild Family, the characters of the story are clumsily placed across the pictorial plane and
out of proportion with each other. The horses in the foreground are incompletely executed
and the child at the front is awkwardly positioned in relation to the figures alongside it.
Finally, the figures in this print are composed with very similar shapes and gestures, as though
the same stock model has been repeated and only superficially adapted. The wild couple on
the right of the picture, for example, have identical legs and torsos.
Judging whether two or more artists engraved these prints is difficult since there are
several possible reasons for the variation in quality. It is feasible, for instance, that one person
engraved all prints, but copied the Procession to Calvary or the Punishment of the Suicides
from models or drawings by superior draughtsmen. Alternatively, each work may have been
made by the same engraver at different stages of his career. The St Catherine of Siena
Miracles, on the other hand, may appear weaker simply because it was pulled from a worn
plate, from which the finer hatches and details were rubbed away. A more convincing reason
for believing that at least two engravers produced these prints is the varied quality of the
lettering, despite the fact that the same type of script was employed. In the Children of the
Moon (fig. 1.24) the text is more neatly defined than in the St Sebastian, St Roch, Raphael and
Tobias (fig. 1.23), but less delicately than in Allegory of Pride and Humility (fig. 1.25).
This hypothesis concurs with the observations of Lucy Whitaker and Hugo Chapman in
their studies of the Florentine Picture Chronicle, the album of drawings that shares so many
decorative and iconographic features with the prints. Based on close visual analysis, they
argue that the book was completed by at least two and possibly five artists.11 As Whitaker
notes, the difference in their skill is seen in two angels, both inspired by Masaccio’s angel in
the Expulsion from Eden in the Brancacci Chapel. Compared with the angel in Abraham’s
Sacrifice of Isaac (fig. 1.43), the angel appearing to Gideon (fig. 1.44) is more awkwardly
composed with arms too big for his body, his hands and hair drawn imprecisely, his halo

11
Whitaker, The Florentine Picture Chronicle, pp. 14-18 and Hugo Chapman and Marzia Faietti, Fra
Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings, exh. cat., London, British Museum 2010 and
Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, 2011, London, 2010, p. 320, cat. no. 34, n. 6.
36
strangely askew, and the clouds and wings clumsily executed.12 Differences are also visible in
the presentation of the historical characters. Some men and women in the album, such as
Codrus on folio 48r (fig. 1.140), are shown with simple outlines, standing rigidly in an
abstracted setting, while others, such as the Apollo Medicus on folio 33r (1.45), are portrayed
in action, positioned against an architectural background and drawn with greater detail and
variety of light and shade. Since there is no continuous development from simple to complex
designs through the sequence of the book, it is probable that distinct artists with differing
levels of ability took turns in adding figures to the album.
The draughtsmen of the Florentine Picture Chronicle and the engravers of the Dante
Category prints – possibly the same people – evidently worked very closely with each other to
cultivate a shared workshop style, probably by sharing a model book from which they copied
and applied designs. Such practice had its roots in the artistic workshops of the fourteenth
century where artists used pattern books, stencils, and the technique of pouncing to replicate
ornaments.13 They may, for example, have acquired a model book from the workshop of the
goldsmith and sculptor Maso di Bartolommeo for his reliquary of 1446. The shared patterns
support the usual belief that the engravers came from the milieu of goldsmiths. For whilst it is
unlikely that the engravers worked directly with Maso, a caster of large scale bronzes, his
assistants may have trained the Dante Category engravers, worked alongside them, passed on
a pattern book, or even been the same people.14
Workshops with two or more craftsmen working in collaboration were very common
in the Quattrocento, especially amongst goldsmiths who could share the costs of expensive
materials.15 The brothers Ormanno and Matteo Dei were two members of an extended family
of goldsmiths, who in 1458, 1469 and 1480 rented a workshop together.16 It was probably
from within this partnership that Matteo was commissioned to make a niello pax for the
Baptistery in 1455.17 Less well known are the workshops of the brothers Salvestro, Giovanni

12
Whitaker, The Florentine Picture Chronicle, pp. 16-17.
13
Carmen Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop: Theory and Practice,
1300-1600, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 137-85.
14
Giuseppe Marchini, ‘Maso di Bartolommeo’, in Donatello e il suo tempo: Atti del VIII Convegno
Internazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, Padua, 1968, pp. 235-43 and Yael Even, Artistic Collaboration in
Florentine Workshops: Quattrocento, PhD Thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1984, p. 92.
15
For painters who formed partnerships and shared workings spaces, see Ugo Procacci, ‘Di Jacopo di
Antonio e delle compagnie di pittori del Corso degli Adimari nel XV secolo’, Rivista d'arte, vol. 35, 1960,
pp. 3-70 and Thomas, The Painter’s Practice, pp. 207-10.
16
ASF, Catasto, 1480, Santo Spirito, Ferza, vol. 998, fol. 148r-v. See Alessandro Guidotti, ‘Dei’, in
Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 74 vols, Rome, 1960-2010, vol. 38, 1988, pp. 243-49, p. 246 and Doris
Carl, ‘Zur Goldschmiedefamilie Dei mit neuen Dokumenten zu Antonio Pollaiuolo and Andrea
Verrocchio’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz,vol. 26, 1982, pp. 129-66.
17
Guidotti, ‘Dei’, p. 246.
37
and Francesco di Antonio who, like the Dei brothers, lived in the Quarter of Santo Spirito in
Florence. In 1480, Giovanni and Francesco rented half a goldsmith’s workshop together and
employed a ‘fattorino’, or errand boy, for three florins a year. 18 Salvestro, on the other hand,
entered into a partnership with Domenico di Bernardo, with whom he rented ten tables
(‘tavolegli’) and equipment (‘masserizie’) in the workshop of a third goldsmith, Giovanni di
Piero di Guccio.19 Ostensibly, resources were shared by several workers working
collaboratively or independently within one space.
Moreover, many artists also trained apprentices and employed assistants (‘garzoni’ or
‘discepoli’). The painter Neri di Bicci, for instance, employed up to six assistants at one time.20
Lorenzo Ghiberti and his father Bartolo di Michele hired, during the course of eight years from
1407-15, an unusually high total of nineteen assistants and three apprentices for the making of
north doors of the Baptistery.21 Ghiberti’s enterprise was established for an exceptional,
expensive and technically demanding civic commission not typical of most workshops, but it
appropriately exemplifies the way assistants and apprentices could be trained to follow and
imitate the techniques and designs of a leading artist or artistic partnership. In other words,
the unified style of the Dante Category prints does not necessarily indicate that they were
made by one person. For this reason, the prints of the Dante Category will be attributed to the
‘Dante Workshop’ rather than ‘Dante Master’ because they were probably made by engravers
in partnership with each other, or by a leading engraver supported by apprentices and other
workers. Not only does this nomenclature alter the way that the prints should be catalogued,
but it also places the engravers within a specific context of production as will be discussed in
the second part of this chapter.

The Master of the Vienna Passion and Related Engravers: The Vienna Category

Another set of problems hovers over the second category of prints discussed in this
thesis, since it is uncertain how many engravers were responsible for them, how these
engravers were linked and whether they were all Florentine. Within this group of engravings,
catalogued by Zucker under the numbers 2402 and 2405, scholars observed two main hands,

18
For the role of the fattorino in workshops see Thomas, The Painter’s Practice, pp. 81-82.
19
ASF, Catasto, 1480, Santo Spirito, Scala, vol. 993, fol. 255r and Ferza, vol. 997, fol. 182r. For the
contract between Giovanni di Piero and Salvestro di Antonio see ASF, Notarile Antecosimiano, vol.
15675 (1466-81), busta 0.50, II, cc.105-240, fol. 236r.
20
Thomas, The Painter’s Practice, p. 88. See pp. 64-93 for a detailed analysis of the workforce of
fifteenth-century workforces, especially that of Neri di Bicci.
21
Richard Krautheimer, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Princeton, 1956, p. 106 and Even, Artistic Collaboration in
Florentine Workshops, p. 55.
38
named as the Master of the Vienna Passion and the Master of 1466 (taken from the date in the
Easter Table (fig. 1.49). As they noted, the Master of the Vienna Passion’s prints are
characterised by extravagantly curled hair, elaborately folded drapery, strongly defined
musculature, and neatly applied hatches conveying light and shade (figs. 1.46-48, 5.1-10).22
The works of the Master of 1466 are centred around the Easter Table (fig. 1.49) and the Small
Vienna Passion (fig. 5.11-12), in which the hatches are very neatly laid out inside the contours,
usually in very small marks crossed at ninety degrees. The drapery is flatter, the hair is not as
wavy, and the modelling of figures is simpler and less varied than in the engravings associated
with the Master of the Vienna Passion. This group has been variously attributed to the ‘Master
of the Small Passion’, the ‘Author’ of the 1461 Resurrection and the Master of 1466. 23
Many other prints were rightly seen as being related to these two masters, but not
clearly attributable to them because of their different technical quality. A St Jerome in
Penitence, for example, with a floral border (fig. 1.51) is closely based on a print by the Master
of the Vienna Passion (fig. 1.50), and another print shows St Jerome in a slightly different
position, but with similarly rendered drapery folds, feet and coils of the cardinal’s hat (fig.
1.52). In each of the two derivative prints the hatching is rougher, the landscape much more
skewed and the contours less precise than in the Master of the Vienna Passion’s version. To
ascertain precise attributions for such prints is exceptionally difficult, since there is an
insufficient sample of surviving prints from which to construct artistic identities. Nevertheless,
this variety does indicate that the engravings catalogued by Zucker under ‘2402’, as well as
several prints under ‘2405’, are the product of at least three engravers – including the Master
of the Vienna Passion and the Master of 1466 – and possibly more.
These prints will be grouped together as the Vienna Category, on the basis of two
principal reasons, beyond the subtle correspondences between facial types and drapery folds.
Firstly, the prints have a number of common motifs. A sun pattern of circles with radiating
zigzags is seen, for instance, in several disparate engravings. The resurrected Christ in the
Easter Table attributed to the Master of 1466, St Catherine in the Virgin and Child with Saints
(not attributed to a specific master), a female in the Triumph of Chastity attributed to the
Master of the Vienna Passion and the leg of a soldier in the Resurrection are adorned with this
motif (figs. 1.53-54, 1.56-58). A similar moon pattern appears on the dress of St Dorothy in

22
Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the
British Museum, pp. 3-5; Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, pp. 25, 32-40; Zucker, Early Italian Masters,
vol. 24, pt. 1, pp. 29-30.
23
Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the
British Museum, pp. x, 5, Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol.1, pp. 25, 28; Zucker, Early Italian Masters,
vol. 24, pt. 1, p.30.
39
Virgin and Child with St Dorothy and a Female Saint (fig.1.55), a comparatively crudely
designed and engraved print. Other repeated patterns include criss-crossed lines (sometimes
comprised of double lines or interspersed with dots), cherubic faces with wings, circles and
simple geometric shapes like ovals and triangles (figs 1.59-63). As Hind and Colvin comment,
the lettering recurrently features distinctively coiled ‘Qs’ and ‘Gs’, but unlike the prints of the
Dante Workshop, the letters are executed in much less uniform way (figs 1.64-70).
Sometimes, but not always, the ‘A’ has a strong serif mark at the top or a ‘3’ is used for an ‘M’,
and the spacing of letters and length of the strokes vary.
Secondly, several prints repeat the iconographic schemes and compositions from
prints attributed to the Master of the Vienna Passion. As well as the secondary versions of St
Jerome in Penitence outlined above (figs 1.51-52), the general designs of Triumphs of Petrarch
were copied on a smaller scale in the Small Triumphs of Petrarch attributed to the Master of
1466 (figs 1.71-73), and there are second editions of Cupids at the Vintage (figs 1.158-59), the
Virgil and Sorcerer (fig. 1.97), and the Virgin and Child with St Julian and St Catherine of
Alexandria (fig. 1.106). In each case, the second version is simplified and some figures, such as
the saints in the Virgin and Child with St Margaret of Antioch and St Catherine, are substituted
for others, as the title of the print suggests. Nevertheless, the engraving betrays the
printmakers’ familiarity with the designs and techniques of the Master of the Vienna Passion.
The title ‘Vienna Category’ has been chosen to retain reference to the Master of the
Vienna Passion and reflects the fact that many prints in this group are held in the Albertina in
Vienna. The diversity of quality and style suggests that the engravers were not necessarily
members of a single workshop, but that they shared their expertise and resources through less
formal links. Craftsmen often moved between workshops and partnerships, and could absorb
techniques and models as they went. The career of the goldsmith Simone di Guasparre Baldini
exemplifies this transience. In 1469 he worked ‘a banchi’ (on benches outside of a workshop)
and kept his goods (‘mobili’) in a small workshop shared with Carlo di Cipriano.24 In 1480 he
rented a table in the workshop of Benedetto d’Antonio Betti and another goldsmith, Lorenzo
and in 1498, he had his own workshop in the parish of Santa Maria sopra Porto.25 Antonio
Pollaiuolo, on the other hand, entered a number of temporary partnerships with different
goldsmiths for specific commissions, including Betto di Francesco Betti, Piero di Bartolomeo
Sali, Maso Finiguerra and Paolo di Giovanni Sogliani.26 Wide-ranging circumstances and
collaborations allowed goldsmiths and engravers, even when working independently, to share

24
ASF, Catasto, 1469, vol. 928, fol. 443r.
25
ASF, Catasto, 1480, vol. 1022, fols. 334r-35r and ASF, Decima Repubblicana, vol. 33, fols. 411r-412r.
26
Even, Artistic Collaboration in Florentine Workshops, pp. 132-51.
40
working methods. It is possible that the engravers of the Vienna Category prints trained
together, were short or long term partners, or simply worked in a common workshop space
before moving elsewhere to continue their trade. With this in mind, this thesis will not refer to
a Vienna Workshop. Instead it will maintain the name ‘Master of the Vienna Passion’ for
works that very clearly align with the techniques and motifs seen in the Vienna Passion. Other
engravings, however, will be referred to as anonymous engravers associated with the Vienna
Category of prints.
Like the Dante Workshop, these engravers probably worked within the ambit of
goldsmiths. This is particularly clear in the Master of the Vienna Passion’s prints, whose men,
women and animals are formed with ornamental lines evocative of the exaggerated and
abstract patterns on metalwork objects. The extravagant throne in The Trial of Christ (fig.
1.102), for example, like that in the Florentine Picture Chronicle (fig. 1.103), can be compared
with bronze acanthus leaf details on Verrocchio’s Tomb of Giovanni and Piero de’ Medici of
1472 (fig. 1.104).27 In St Jerome in Penitence the lion is shown in a flat, two-dimensional
aspect, with an elaborately rounded tail, fur, and tongue (fig. 1.105). In the Virgin and Child
with St Julian and St Catherine (fig. 1.106), the stylised flowers can be loosely compared with
the intricate coils on the Croce dei Pisani (fig. 1.107) and the tall, monumental decorations
either side of the Virgin, in their general ornamental scope if not in specific details, with
candelabra and crosses like Antonio Pollaiuolo’s Baptistery silver cross (fig. 1.108).
There has sometimes been doubt expressed about whether all the engravings in the
Vienna Category were made my printmakers trained or working in Florence. Early scholars
hesitated whether to attribute the Small Vienna Passion (Vienna Christ Vita, fig. 5.11) to a
northern European engraver rather than a Florentine, on the basis that the hatching
technique, the treatment of the hair and the musculature had more in common with
Netherlandish engravers such as the Master of the Berlin Passion. The body of Christ as
rendered in the Small Vienna Passion and Easter Table (fig. 1.75), for instance, has limited
similarities with the Crucifixion by this northern printmaker (fig. 1.74), especially in the curls of
the hair and the pointed chin.28 Works attributed to the Master of the Vienna Passion also
display details that may be derived from a northern European workshop. The Master of the
Berlin Passion’s round print showing the Man of Sorrows (fig. 1.76), for example, has circles on
the cloak of God like those seen on the costumes in the Mass of Gregory by the Master of the

27
Andrew Butterfield, The Sculptures of Andrea del Verrocchio, New Haven and London, 1997, pp. 44-
49.
28
Hind, Catalogue of Early Italian Engravings Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the
British Museum, p. 5; Levenson, Oberhuber and Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings, p. 21, n. 14.
41
Vienna Passion (figs 1.77-78), while the diagonal floor tiles compare with details in the Master
of the Vienna Passion’s Life of the Virgin (fig. 1.79-80).
The Virgin and Child with Saints Dorothy and a Female Saint (fig. 1.81) is one of the
most problematic prints in this respect. The tiled floor that does not recede according to
perspective and the flat, angular drapery is characteristic of prints by the Netherlandish Master
of the Banderoles, active in Zwolle from the 1450s to the 1470s (fig. 1.82). Likewise, the
figurative and organic elements in the print’s border compare with shapes in the margins of a
second version of the Mass of Gregory from the Master of the Banderoles’ workshop (fig. 1.83-
87). Nevertheless, there are strong arguments to suggest it was made in Italy. The rounded
arches, capitals and pillars of the architectural setting, drapery, faces, hair, trees and hatching,
although very rudimentary, are different from the same elements of Northern prints, but
similar to prints with Italian text in them, notably St Sebastian with Scenes from his Life (fig.
4.9). In these cases, it can be argued that the engravers were inspired by northern
printmakers, either through training or through close observation of prints, but they modified
this influence to suit a Florentine market. No known documentary evidence proves that
Northern goldsmiths were active in Florence in this period, but it is plausible that itinerant
engravers came to the city given the number of foreign artisans present in Florence, including
weavers, and book printers.29 The book printer, Niccolò della Magna, for example, came to
Florence from Breslau and Albertus Alberti Liebkinkt, a bookseller, set up a shop in the early
1460s to sell books imported from Strasbourg.30 The chance for a printmaker to bring his trade
to the city may also have been an attractive proposition.
Striking evidence that the Vienna Category prints were made in Florence, or, at the
least for a Florentine market, is provided by the Combat between Women and Devils (fig. 1.88).
Although hitherto unnoticed, the original plate was engraved by two separate engravers. The
main foreground composition displays the hallmarks of the Master of the Banderoles, notably
the stiffly folded drapery, the tiled floor and angular facial details. The pattern on the blanket
beneath the devil corresponds with ornament on the altar of the Master’s Mass of Gregory
(figs 1.91-93), while the slanting floor, apparently suspended in air, is like that in his Fight for

29
Megan Holmes, The Influence of Northern Engravings on Florentine Art, pp. 15-18, Paula Nuttall, From
Flanders to Florence: The Impact of Netherlandish Painting, 1400-1500, New Haven and London, 2004,
pp. 93-102.
30
Roberto Ridolfi, ‘Contributi sopra Niccolò Tedesco’, La Bibliofilia, vol. 58, no. 1, 1956, pp. 1–14;
Roberto Ridolfi, ‘Le ultime imprese tipografiche di Niccolò Tedesco’, La Bibliofilia, vol. 68, no. 2, 1966,
pp. 140–151; Lorenz Böninger, ‘Ein deutscher Früdrucker in Florenz: Nicolaus Laurentii de Alemania (mit
einer Notiz zu Antonio Miscomini und Thomas Septemcastrensis)’, Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, vol. 77, 2002,
pp. 94-109. For Liebkinkt, see Lorenz Böninger, ‘I primi passi della stampa a Firenze: Nuovi documenti
di’archivio’, in Adolfo Tura (ed.), Edizioni fiorentine del Quatrrocento e primo Cinquecento in Trivulziana,
Milan, 2001, pp. 67-75.
42
the Breeches (fig. 1.90). Around this central group, a second engraver added a Tuscan-style
building on the left of the image with dentils, entablature and rounded windows. In the centre-
right background, he inserted an elegantly dressed woman and either side of her, two devils,
all with garbled Italian words inscribed next to their mouths. The left devil, hanging by his neck,
exclaims ‘OMMLA CHONPAGNIA [O mala compagnia] (O evil company) and the lady shouts
‘ASPETTA VPOHO [Aspetta un poco] (wait a bit) to the devil fleeing from her on the right.31
The spelling ‘poho’ for ‘poco’ reflects the Florentine dialect in which the ‘c’ was aspirated, or
pronounced with a voiceless fricative, a phenomenon known today as the Tuscan
‘gorgia’.32 Moreover, the hair, costume, whips and faces of the additional characters are
distinct from others in the engraving and correspond with the treatment of line in the works of
the Master of the Vienna Passion. This is notable in the pronounced curvature of the female’s
whips and the general similarity of her headdress and costume to clothing in the engraver’s
Triumph of Chastity (figs 1.94-95). Several works attributed to the Master of the Vienna
Passion, indeed, feature the same aspirated ‘c’ of the gorgia, including the Triumph of Fame
where Hercules and Africa are spelt ‘Erhules’ and ‘Afriha’ respectively (fig. 1.96).
Hypothetically, the engraver acquired the plate from the Netherlandish workshop, and made
alterations suitable for a Florentine audience.
Other prints also have such clues. Like the Combat between Women and Devils, the
Easter Table, Small Triumphs of Petrarch and Virgil and Sorcerer, all associated with the Master
of 1466, show Italian words with the aspirated ‘c’ of the Tuscan dialect, such as ‘chasella,
‘chuliseo’ (colosseum) and ‘faticha’. The two Virgil and Sorcerer engravings (fig. 1.97) include
words adapted from a Florentine poem, the ‘Contrasto dell donne’ by Antonio Pucci (1310-
90).33 The Resurrection displays the Medici emblem of the diamond ring with three feathers
on the shield of a soldier (fig. 1.100), like the crest on the costume of a young lover in a print
by the Dante Workshop (fig. 1.101). Dante as Poet of the Divine Comedy (fig. 1.99) is based on
Domenico di Michelino’s fresco in the Duomo (fig. 1.98), or Alessio Baldovinetti’s model for it,
and with the prominence of the city and its buildings, was especially suited to Florentines.34
Finally, as demonstrated more extensively in Chapter Five, the Vienna Passion incorporates
nude figures related to those designed by Florentine artists, including Andrea del Castagno,
Antonio del Pollaiuolo and Andrea del Verrocchio. Likewise, the architecture compares with

31
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 2, p. 150.
32
Robert A. Hall, ‘Review of Tuscan and Etruscan: The Problem of Linguistic Substratum Influence in
Central Italy by Herbert J. Izzo’, Language, vol. 50, no. 2, 1974, pp. 377-80.
33
Domenico Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. E. F. M. Benecke, New York, 1929, p. 335 and
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 86. For the poem, see Antonio Pucci, Il contrasto delle
donne: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Notes, ed. Antonio Pace, Menasha, 1944.
34
Rudolph Altrocchi, ‘Michelino’s Dante’, Speculum, vol. 6, no. 1, 1931, pp. 15-59, p. 21.
43
the fantastical all’antica buildings and furniture of the Florentine Picture Chronicle (figs
1.102-03) and with contemporary architecture and goldsmith work (fig. 1.104). In sum, the
prints considered within this thesis – notably the Vienna Passion (figs 1.102, 5.1-10) – so
strongly allude to contemporary Florentine works, that it is difficult to justify that their
production elsewhere.

Dating

Implicit within the catalogues of Hind and Zucker is the assumption that the Vienna
Category prints are dated earlier than those by the Dante workshop. This idea is partly
indicated by the order in which the prints are presented with most of the Vienna Category
prints in Hind’s A.I and Zucker’s 2402 groups, and the Dante Category works catalogued under
A.II-A.V and 2403. 35 This hypothesis is loosely appropriate, but merits inspection and
clarification.
The earliest date for the Dante Workshop’s activity has conventionally been
understood as 1465, the first date on an engraved calendar (fig. 1.49) which has always, in
human memory, accompanied the second edition of Children of the Planets now in the British
Museum (figs. Int.4-5, 1.30). The reason for connecting this print with the series, however, is
tenuous, and relies principally on the fact that they have always been placed together in this
collection – no other contemporary versions of the Children of the Planets include a calendar.36
There are persuasive reasons for seeing it as a wholly separate print made by the Vienna
Category, probably by the Master of 1466. The calendar’s lettering does not contain the
idiosyncratic ‘b’ and ‘q’ of the Dante group prints, and ‘Giovanni’ is spelt ‘Govanni’ as in the
Easter Table. The drapery is simpler and more pointed than that of comparable figures in the
Children of the Planets, (figs 1.109-10) and the thick strands of wavy hair are characteristic of
the Small Vienna Passion (Vienna Christ Vita, fig. 5.11) and the Easter Table (fig. 1.49).
If this idea is accepted, it significantly alters the dates associated with the Dante
Category prints, since no other engraving can definitely be associated with the 1460s and there
are good reasons to date them stylistically later. One exception is the Fight for the Breeches
(fig. 1.90) that was pasted in a manuscript completed in 1464 by the German humanist
Hartmann Schedel, which contains motifs, such as embroidery pattern of a swooping bird on

35
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, p. 25, Hind writes ‘The arrangement of these miscellaneous Prints is an
attempt at chronology, broken or qualified by related subjects’. Hind qualified this by saying ‘It must not
be inferred from their position in the catalogue that the early prints in this section are prior in date to
the earliest of A.II.’
36
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 77; Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, pp. 98-102.
44
the sleeve of a dress, that are repeated in other prints in the Dante Category (figs. 1.111-12).37
It is possible that the engraving was pasted in the book soon after the manuscript was finished,
but Schedel may also have put the engraving in the manuscript much later. The quality of the
print’s design and execution, however, differs from many of the Dante Category prints. The
postures and drapery are rigid and visibly dependent on the engraving with the same subject
by the Master of the Banderoles (fig. 1.89).38 It is possible that the print may be an early
product of the workshop, before it articulated its own style more fully. The St Catherine of
Siena and her Miracles (Catherine Vita, fig. 4.10), on the other hand, may have been made
before 1472 since it includes St Catherine’s stigmatisation, an iconography that was banned by
the Pope in that year. There is no proof, however, that engraver or other artists obeyed the
prohibition or that it was strictly enforced.39
On the whole, the Dante Category prints are appropriately dated to the 1470s. The
Monte sancto di Deo book illustrations (figs. 6.1-3) were probably begun sometime in the years
before 1477 when the book was printed. The Children of the Planets engravings were based
on Netherlandish block books dated to the late 1460s or 1470s, while the Prophets and Sibyls
can be dated to the late 1470s since Daniel (Hind, C.I.13a) is based on an engraving of around
1475 by Martin Schongauer.40 The latest date of the Dante Workshop’s activity is garnered
from the illustrations for Landino’s Comento sopra la comedia di Dante, the text of which
published in 1481. According to Peter Dreyer, many of the engravings were made after this
date and pasted the book in later, after its publication. 41 He argues that the final nineteenth
engraving was printed in around 1487 because only the first eighteen illustrations were copied
in woodcuts in an edition of Landino’s text printed in May 1487 by Bonino de Boninis. Dreyer
hypothesises that ‘the publisher knew that the drawing for the nineteenth Canto was being
prepared in Florence’, and before he received it, ‘used the the same block as that for Canto XI’.
This argument is not wholly convincing, since three copies of the 1487 edition contain a
nineteenth woodcut which is related to the nineteenth Florentine engraving, and these copies

37
Béatrice Hernad, Die Graphiksammlung des Humanisten Hartmann Schedel, Munich, 1990, p. 284, cat.
no. 99.
38
See Aby Warburg, ‘Artistic Exchanges between North and South in the Fifteenth Century’, pp. 274-80.
39
Diega Giunta, ‘La questione delle stimmate alle origini della iconografia cateriana e la fortuna del tema
nel corso dei secoli’, in Luigi Trenti, Bente Klange and Addobbo (eds), Con l’occhio e col lume: Atti del
corso seminariale di studi su S Caterina da Siena, Siena, 1999, pp. 319-47, esp. pp. 322-23.
40
Dieter Blume, ‘Children of the Planets, pp. 559, 561; Ulrike Heinrichs, Martin Schongauer Maler und
Kupferstecher: Kunst und Wissenschaft unter dem Primat des Sehens, Berlin, 2007, pp. 64- 80, 331.
41
Dreyer, ‘Botticelli’s Series of Engravings “of 1481”’, pp. 111-115. The argument is repeated in Peter
Keller, ‘The Engravings in the 1481 Edition of the Divine Comedy’, pp. 327-30.
45
may, as Lamberto Donati asserts, be earlier than the other version.42 There may be other
reasons for the different nineteenth woodcut in the Brescia edition, especially since it is
difficult to believe that the engravers made the nineteenth engraving over five years after the
first two illustrations were printed in around 1483.
In sum, it is likely that the Dante workshop was principally active in the 1470s and
early 1480s, a dating supported by the stylistic similarity of the prints to works of
contemporary artists like Botticelli and Verrocchio. This concurs with Whitaker’s dating of the
Florentine Picture Chronicle to the early to mid 1470s.43
Many of the Vienna Category prints were probably produced in the 1460s, especially
several associated with the Master of 1466, as the name suggests. The Easter Table (fig. 1.49),
from which the Master derives his name, seems to have been made around 1466, one of the
dates engraved in the print, and the Calendar, formerly associated with the Children of the
Planets as described above, begins in 1465.44 Other prints can be only approximately dated
through circumstantial evidence. Fragments of the Triumphs of Divinity – from a lost edition of
Triumphs related to that by the Master of the Vienna Passion – were pasted in the margins of a
manuscript composed by the Florentine Piero Bonaccorso in 1464.45 Domenico di Michelino’s
Dante in Florence that inspired the engraving of the same name (figs 1.98-99), was completed
in 1465. Both prints were feasibly made not long after.46
The prints associated with Master of the Vienna Passion are more difficult to date, but
based on their stylistic correlations with other Florentine art, they were probably made in the
1460s and early 1470s. Oberhuber, following Kurt Rathe, suggested that the engraver was
working in around 1460-71, since the trumpeting cupid at the top of Cupids at the Vintage and
the Round Dance (figs 1.163-66) is also seen in an illuminated manuscript of this date.47 The
engraver’s activity may have overlapped with that of the Dante Workshop in the 1470s, and he
may even collaborated with it to produce the round print Hercules and Deianira (fig. 1.47), that
visually echoes the framework of other ‘Otto’ prints by the Dante Workshop.48

42
Lamberto Donati, Il Botticelli e le prime illustrazioni della Divina Commedia, Florence, 1962, pp. 42-45,
144-50. See also Dreyer, ‘Botticelli’s Series of Engravings “of 1481”’, pp. 114-15, n. 18.
43
Whitaker, The Florentine Picture Chronicle, pp. 67-69.
44
Lamberto Donati, ‘Di un nuova Rota Paschalis calcografica del XV secolo’, in Miscellanea Giovanni
Mercati, 6 vols, Vatican City, 1946, vol. 6, pp. 350-97.
45
This manuscript is extensively discussed in Chapter Three of this thesis. For the engravings in the
manuscript see Claudio Ciociola, ‘Lo scrittoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino’, in Studi offerti a Gianfranco
Contini dagli allievi pisani, Florence, 1984, pp. 67-111.
46
Altrocchi, ‘Michelino’s Dante’, p. 18.
47
Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, p. 12.
48
Suzanne Kathleen Karr Schmidt, ‘A New Otto Print’, Print Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 2, 2008, pp. 162-65.
46
 This limited information permits a speculative timeline of early Florentine printmaking.
Perhaps as early as the 1450s, goldsmiths, possibly including Maso Finiguerra and Matteo Dei,
created small paper impressions from engraved silver plates before they were inlaid with
niello. Out of this environment, Piero Baldini, a member of an extended family of goldsmiths,
produced at a much larger signed print, the Life of the Virgin (Žatec Virgin Vita) based on a
copy of the pax, Coronation of the Virgin. Another group of engravers, probably trained
outside of Florence and including the Master of the Vienna Passion and Master of 1466,
produced prints in the 1460s and early 1470s. Their eclectic works include illustrations of
Petrarch’s Triumphs, mythological scenes, legends (such as Virgil and the Sorcerer), dances and
satirical scenes, all in varied shapes and sizes. They also created a many devotional prints,
consisting of representations of cultic sites (such as the Volto Sancto of Lucca), indulgenced
images (the Mass of Gregory), series Passion scenes, pictures of saints, calendars and a table
for calculating Easter.
The end of the 1460s saw the emergence of the Dante Workshop which created prints
in the 1470s and early 1480s with a highly uniform style, characterised by distinctive lettering
and recurrent ornamental motifs. They created a large and diverse stock of engravings, of
which over hundred unique impressions survive, but of which many more may have been lost.
These encompass a similar range of secular and religious works: pictorial prayer sheets,
narratives of saints’ lives, illustrations in printed books, representations of figures from
religious plays (the Prophets and Sibyls), allegorical and mnemonic images, astrological guides,
circular and oval prints with amorous and mythological subjects and pictures of comic tales
and caricatures.
Alongside these main centres of activity, but outside the focus of this thesis, other
artisans experimented with the technique of intaglio printmaking. Contemporary goldsmiths
may have been responsible for many of the unattributed prints catalogued under Zucker’s
group of anonymous Florentine engravers (catalogue group 2405), such as the Carnival Dance
signed by an elusive ‘SE’.49 Antonio del Pollaiuolo produced his exceptionally large and
ambitious Battle of the Nudes in the 1470s and the engravers of the maps in Berlinghieri’s
Geographia of 1482 were possibly Florentine.50 In the late 1480s and 1490s other manuscript
illuminators and goldsmiths, whose names survive in Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, through
signatures on the prints themselves and in contemporary documents, ventured into the

49
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 2, pp. 111-254.
50
Roberts, ‘Francesco Rosselli and Berlinghieri’s Geographia Re-Examined’, pp. 4-17.
47
business of making and selling engravings: Gherardo di Giovanni, Francesco Rosselli, Cristofano
Robetta and Lucantonio degli Uberti.51

1.2. Methods of Intaglio Printmaking

Producing engravings is a complex task, one that was equally, if not more challenging
to the earliest printmakers who had limited precedents for their practice. The principal
sources for understanding how the prints were made are the engravings themselves, but these
reveal only a limited amount of information about the materials, tools and techniques that
were deployed. An exception to this gap in the evidence is a rare remnant of the printmaking
process, a recently found plate engraved by the Master of the Vienna Passion with Petrarch’s
Triumph of Love, which confirms printing plates were made of copper (fig. 1.114).52 Even with
the lack of any more precise information, a range of evidence about goldsmiths’ and other
artisanal workshops in the city can be combined with visual analysis of the prints themselves
to show how the engravers adopted and adapted the resources and techniques already used in
the city.
Firstly, however, it is necessary to understand the general technical process of making
engravings in any period, a procedure more easily described from the evidence of sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century evidence. Workshop inventories, ink recipes, depictions of print
shops such as Johannes Stradanus’ Sculptura in Aes of 1591 (fig. 1.113) and Abraham Bosse’s
treatise on engraving of 1645, have allowed scholars to develop a fairly detailed picture of the
making of intaglio prints.53
The first step was to acquire copper for the printing plate, like that engraved by the
Master of the Vienna Passion (fig. 1.114) with the right combination of softness and durability

51
Zucker, Early Italian Masters,vol. 24, pt. 2, pp. 1-109, 219-10, Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 25, pp.
11-20, 517-70.
52
I am grateful to Femke Speelberg, Assistant Curator of Ornament Prints at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art for showing me an image of this plate when it came on the art market in 2011. Another example
from the north of Europe engraved by Israhel van Meckenem, in a private collection, is illustrated in
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 24, fig. 6.
53
For the inventory of the printer’s shop made in Menchen in 1540, see Prosper Verheyden,
‘Aanteekeningen betreffende Mechelsche Drukkers en Boekhandelaars’, Bulletin du cercle
archéologique littéraire et artistique de Malines, vol. 20, 1910, pp. 191-236, p. 195. For the inventories
of Antonio Lafreri’s print shop in Rome made in 1481, see Valeria Pagani, ‘The Dispersal of Lafreri’s
Inheritance, 1581-89, Print Quarterly, vol. 25, 2008, pp. 3-23 and 363-93. For a central Italian ink recipe
of 1570, see Fabio Frezzato and Claudio Seccaroni (eds), Segreti d’arti diverse nel regno di Napoli: Il
manoscritto It. III, 10 della Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana di Venezia, Saonara, 2010, p. 152 (fol. 157v-
158r). For Stradanus’ and other depictions of print shops, see Ad Stijnman, ‘’Stradanus’ Print Shop’,
Print Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 1, 2010, pp. 11-29. For Zonca’s description of the printing press see Vittorio
Zonca, Novo teatro di machine et edificii, Padua, 1607, pp. 76-78 and for Bosse’s manual see Abraham
Bosse, De la manière de graver à l’eauforte et au burin, Paris, 1645.
48
for engraving. This was typically bought in ingots or ‘cakes’ which had to be hammered into
sheets and polished to remove any dents.54 When sufficiently smooth, the plate was ready to
be engraved, but first a design had to be transferred onto its surface, normally by means of a
preparatory drawing. One way of doing this was to rub the verso of a drawing with red crayon,
a method described as ‘calquer’ in French or ‘calcare’ in Italian. The treated paper was placed,
verso side down, over a copper plate covered with a layer of wax. When it was fixed in place,
the drawing was traced with a stylus so that a red impression was left on the waxed copper.55
The resulting marks served as guidelines for the engraver to faintly scratch the composition
into the copper with a stylus, before melting the wax away.56 Engravers could also employ the
spolvero technique in which the lines of a drawing to be engraved were perforated with the tip
a needle. The pricked drawing was then placed over a copper plate covered with a removable
ground, after which a powdered charcoal would be pounced, or scattered, over it so that small
marks were left. In some cases a cartoon may have been pasted directly on to the plate itself
before being pricked by the needle so that a dotted outline was scratched immediately into
the copper.57
The outlines were next engraved more deeply and in greater detail with a burin, a
metal rod with a lozenge-shaped cross section, sharpened at an angle and mounted on a
rounded wooden handle (fig. 1.115).58 It was held in the palm of the hand and pushed
through the copper in a forward direction, thereby incising the copper. When the plate had
been engraved, ink was spread over it and pushed into the crevices by an ink ball or by hand,
after which the residue on the relief surface was wiped away. To make it the appropriate
viscosity, the ink had to be composed with an appropriate balance of pigment, usually a
carbon-based vineblack, and oil.59 If it was too thick it would become stuck in the crevices and
would not be absorbed on the paper; if it was too thin it would not hold the pigment together

54
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 24.
55
Bosse, De la manière de graver à l’eauforte et au burin, pp. 19-20: ‘manière de s’apprêter pour
dessiner, contretire ou calquer son dessein sur la planche’. For the tradition of calco copying
techniques, see Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop, pp. 333-40.
56
Stijnman, ‘Stradanus’s Print Shop’, pp. 13-18.
57
I am grateful to Ad Stijnman, from the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, for sharing his chapter
on transfer techniques from his forthcoming doctoral dissertation that will be published in Engraving
and Etching 1400-2000. Stijnman notes that Jacopo de Barberi’s Pegasus engraving includes several
‘dashes’ which may have resulted from needling a design directly on to the plate.
58
Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, vol. 2, pp. 7-8.
59
For vineblack see Annette Manick, ‘A Note on Printing Inks’ in Sue Welsh Reed and Richard Wallace
(eds), Italian Etchers of the Renaissance and Baroque, exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989, pp.
xliv-xlvii and Ad Stijnman, ‘Frankfurt Black: “tryginon appelantes, faex vini arefacta et cocta in fornace”,
in Jo Kirby, Susie Nash and Joanna Cannon (eds), Trade in Artists' Materials: Markets and Commerce in
Europe to 1700, London, 2010, pp. 415-25.
49
and would slip out of the engraved lines too easily.60 The paper, on which the design was to be
printed, was dampened to ensure that it retain the ink, laid against the copper plate and
covered with layers of cloth or felt to protect it.
There were two main methods for pressing the ink from the engraved lines onto the
paper. One procedure is recorded in a recipe for making engraving ink written around 1570,
probably for a convent in central Italy. It reads:

[...] do not print with it [the ink] as you would when printing books, but put it on the
copper plate and with a finger spread it into the incisions. Afterwards clean the surface
of the plate and put the paper on top of it. Above this, put two or three layers of serge
and then put a parchment drum [‘tamburo’], so that it touches the serge. Rub the
drum strongly with a burnisher and the image will be printed, as you know.61

The vigorous rubbing of the burnisher created the requisite pressure to force the serge or cloth
to expand, thereby pressing the paper into the grooves of the copper. 62 This technique
allowed an individual to make prints without a fully established print shop, but it was only
appropriate for plates smaller than about 40cm wide. For larger plates a roller press was
necessary to create sufficient pressure, and to spread this pressure quickly enough over the
whole plate before the ink dried.63 This machine, the earliest documented example of which is
from 1540 in the Flemish town of Mechelen, was made with a four-armed cross that rotated
two cylinders.64 The copper, paper and cloth were compressed against a wooden plank as they
passed between these rollers, and the ink was pushed onto the paper (fig. 1.124). Once
printed, the damp sheets were hung to dry before being displayed for sale, or being packaged
and sent elsewhere.
The processes described in Bosse’s manual of 1645, doubtlessly developed out of
decades of error, experimentation and refinement. But, with the exception of the roller press,

60
Manick, ‘A Note on Printing Inks’, pp. xliv-xlvii.
61
‘poi non si stampa in su questo come in su libri, ma se ne pone in sul rame et con le dita si va
mandando negli intagli, poi si nettano e pianj, poi si mette la carta in sul rame, et di sopra due o tre
doppi di saia, poi sopra la saia un tamburo di carta pecora che tocchi quella saia, poi si liscia forte col
lisciatoio et la pittura simprime ut scis’. Frezzato and Seccaroni, Segreti d’arti diverse nel regno di
Napoli, p. 152.
62
See Stijnman, Stradanus’s Print Shop, p. 17.
63
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p.70; Jacques Bocquentin, La gravure sur cuivre, ou taille-
douce, dans la problematique de l’image au XVe siècle: 1 La technique, le cuivre, l’encre et la presse au
XVe siècle, unpublished study, École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, 1993, pp. 39-63. I
have been unable to consult this study, but it is discussed by Ad Stijnman, ‘De ontwikkeling van de
houten etspers, 1460-1850’, Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis, nos. 1-2, 1997, pp. 2-40, p. 4.
64
For a history of the roller press, see Henry Meier, ‘The ‘Origin of the Printing and Roller Press’, Print
Collector’s Quarterly, vol. 28, 1941, no. 2, pp. 164-205, no. 3, pp. 338-84 and Stijnman, ‘De ontwikkeling
van de houten etspers, 1460-185’, pp. 2-40. For the documented press from Flanders in 1540, see
Verheyden, ‘Aanteekeningen betreffende Mechelsche Drukkersen Boekhandelaars’.
50
these techniques and materials were already common in disparate workshops of Florence in
the second half of the fifteenth century. Even the printing press could have been constructed
using the template of other machines employed in the city.

Materials and Techniques

Unsurprisingly, the workshops of goldsmiths were especially well equipped for

printmaking, since they were familiar with working with other metal-based objects. Fifteenth-
century documents show that such craftsmen frequently bought copper into their
workshops.65 In 1469, for example, Verrocchio went to Venice, the primary centre for selling
copper, to buy a quantity of the metal for his palla for the Duomo. The copper was then
shipped back to Florence to be hammered into shape in his workshop. 66 Earlier in the century
Ghiberti acquired copper from the same city to make statue of St Matthew commissioned by
the Arte del Cambio.67 Maso di Bartolomeo, on the other hand, gilded and engraved copper for
his reliquary for Prato’s Duomo of 1446, as discussed above (fig. 1.5-6). Copper was also made
into a range of smaller objects, both presitigious and commonplace: chalices, cauldrons, bowls,
patens, incense boats and balls.68 The goldsmiths Tommaso di Cristofano Bracci and Antonio
di Veneri whose workshop inventories were taken in 1431 and 1447 respectively, had stores of
different types of copper for such works, including ‘rame arso’ (burnt copper), ‘rame sottile’
(copper wire), scraps of copper (‘di ritaglio di rame’) as well as the finer red ’rame piloso’,
(‘rosette copper’). The latter form was recommended by Bosse for its smoothness, strength,
and easiness to incise.69

65
See Raffaele Ciasca, L’Arte dei Medici e Speziali nella storia e nel commercio fiorentino, Florence,
1927, p. 439 and Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, La Practica della Mercatura, ed. Allan Evans, Cambridge,
MA, 1936, pp. 380-81.
66
Dario A. Covi, ‘Verrocchio and Venice, 1469’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 65, no. 2, 1983, pp. 253-73, pp. 256-
57.
67
Ibid.
68
Gabriela Cantini Guidotti (ed.), Orafi in Toscana tra XV e XVIII secolo, 2 vols, Florence, 1994, vol. 2: ‘tre
chalice con chope d’ariento e piè di rame non chonpiuti’ (p. 39, no. 48), ‘tre patene di rame da chalicie
non dorate’ (p. 39, no. 52), ‘una naviciella di rame non dorata’ (p. 39, no. 56), ‘libbri 15 di rame tra
vagliuzi e bacino e chalderone e altro’ (p. 46, no. 57), ‘1 modono d’un apalla di rame col piè’ (p. 55, no.
70), ‘1.o chalderottino di rame’ (no. 71), ‘5 borchie di rame cho l’arme de’ Medici’ (no. 73), ’15 brochette
di rame con più lavori’ (p. 74).
69
Ibid., Inventory of Tommaso di Cristofano Bracci: ‘sette 1/2 di ritaglio di rame e d’ottone’ (p 38, no.
30), ‘ventisette libre di rame e ottone più fatte’ (p. 39, no. 39), ‘tredici libbre di rame inn una mezzina’
(p. 39, no. 40); ‘trentuna libbre di rame piloso (p. 41, no. 121), ‘due libre uncie vi da trafila di rame
sottile’ (p. 41, no. 122), tre libre uncie viii.o di rame arso’. Inventory of Antonio di Veneri: ‘libbre 3 oncie
2 di rame arso’ (p. 46, no. 44), ‘libbre 11 once 6 di rame piloso’ (p. 47, no. 86). For the term ‘rame
peloso’ see Antonia Boström, ‘Daniele da Volterra and the Equestrian Monument to Henry II of France’,
The Burlington Magazine, vol 137, no. 1113, 1995, pp. 809-820, p. 815 and n. 35: ‘“rame peloso” or
51
 As is well known, goldsmiths were also skilled in using burins to incise such metals.
Workshop inventories refer to the ‘bulino’, a tool with a pointed shaft, probably with a
lozenge-shaped cross section like the later burin, and the ‘ciapolla’ that was made in variously
shaped blades, including round or flat.70 These implements are depicted in the goldsmith’s
workshop in the Dante Workshop’s Children of Mercury, in which a worker holds a rectangular
plate and engraves a design onto it (fig. 1.116). The technique was integral to making a
number of metal objects, including the markings and inscription on Maso di Bartolomeo’s
reliquary (1.5-6). As noted, however, the incisions and hatching of the ‘Fine Manner’
engravers are particularly close to those employed in the making of silver objects inlaid with
niello, like the paxes by Maso Finiguerra and Matteo Dei (fig. 1.3). 71 In the same way, a silver
plate was engraved with a design, but instead of being wiped with ink, the lines were filled
with a black substance, similar to enamel, made from a powder of silver, lead, copper and
sulphur.72 The inventories of Antonio di Veneri (1447) and Bartolomeo di Piero (1472) include
items such as knives and belts that were decorated with niello patterns; a letter from Marco
Parenti to FIlippo Strozzi refers to a niello buckle commissioned from the goldsmith ‘il
Facchino’.73 Book covers, paxes, monumental crosses, cutlery, medallions and other items
decorated with niello patterns still survive today, testifying to the common application of the
method.74 An Italian belt buckle in the British Museum, for example, shows clearly the links
between the engraving of niello objects and copper printing plates (fig. 1.117). The thickly
engraved contour lines and thinner hatching lines of the belt buckle are comparable with the
lines engraved in the Dante Category prints such as St Catherine of Siena and her Miracles
(Catherine Vita, fig. 1.118).75 The goldsmith worked with two differently sized burins to incise
his design on the silver: a thicker blade was used for the outlines, perhaps the ciapolla, and a

rosette copper, refers to the crusts of copper skimmed off the refined metal as it solidifies, and sold in
cakes or “migliacci”; the Italian nomenclature, “peloso” (hairy), alludes to their rough surface’.
70
Guidotti, Orafi in Toscana tra XV e XVIII secolo, vol. 2. Inventory of Tommaso Bracci (1431), ‘nove tra
ciapole e bolini e rasoi’ (p. 39, no. 35); inventory of Antonio Veneri (1447), ’16 manichi da bulini’ (p. 47,
no. 79). See also Maria Grazia Ciardi-Dupré (ed.), L'Oreficeria nella Firenze del Quattrocento, exh. cat.
Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, 1977, Florence, 1977, pp. 208, 225-25.
71
Johannes Michael Fritz has shown how engraving in northern Europe grew out of a long goldsmiths’
tradition of engraving designs on metal. Johann Michael Fritz, Gestochene Bilder: Gravierungen auf
deutschen Goldschmiedearbeiten der Spätgotik, Cologne and Graz, 1966, pp. 383-86.
72
Hind, Nielli, p. 7.
73
John Russell Sale, ‘An Iconographic Program by Marco Parenti’, Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 3,
1974, pp. 293-299.
74
See Cyril G. E. Bunt, ‘A Florentine Nielloed Cross’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 65, no. 376 , 1934, pp.
26, 28-30.
75
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, pp. 3-4.
52
narrower tool, a burin (bulino) or drypoint was employed for the shading and for smaller
details.76
To transfer the design on paper on to the copper, the engravers may have used either
of the two techniques practised in the sixteenth- and seventeenth- centuries. The spolvero
pouncing method, for instance, was employed in the Florentine painters’ workshops of Paolo
Uccello, Domenico Veneziano, Andrea del Castagno, Andrea del Verrocchio and Antonio del
Pollaiuolo.77 If engravers covered a plate with a layer of wax or another temporary ground, a
drawing could be pounced over it, leaving dotted outlines. These marks could then be
scratched into the copper and the ground removed. They may also have adopted the
technique of calco described by Bosse, since styluses were employed to trace designs onto wet
plaster and other surfaces from the 1460s and 1470s. 78 A sheet of drawings attributed to
Desiderio di Settignano, for example, shows lines marked with a stylus when placed under
raking light (fig. 119-20). It is plausible that the engravers also adopted this method for
transferring designs onto metal by rubbing the verso of the cartoon with chalk in order to
leave a chalk impression on a plate. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, artists such as
Andrea del Sarto definitely did this.79 The designs of Andrea Mantegna were probably copied
onto printing plates in one of these ways in the 1470s, not long after his visit to Florence in
1466. 80 As Landau and Parshall have noted, several of his drawings can be superimposed
exactly over the engravings and faint marks at the prints’ corners were probably scratched on
the plate to ensure that the cartoon was appropriately positioned during the transfer process.
The other elements of printmaking – printing ink and methods for printing impressions
– were not so readily a feature of goldsmiths’ workshops but could be acquired elsewhere.
Instead of the metal-gall inks used by draughtsmen and scribes whose sulphates and vegetal
extracts corrode copper, the engravers composed their ink with carbon pigments also

76
As noted here in the Introduction, this argument was put forward by David Landau in Landau and
Parshall, The Renaissance Print, pp. 72-73.
77
Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop, p. 12. Pollaiuolo’s tapestry
design for Zacharias at the Door of the Temple, for instance, was pricked to create a version now held in
the Uffizi drawn in pen and ink over a spolvero underdrawing (p. 316). Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e
Stampe degli Uffizi, inv. no. 98F
78
Ibid., p. 334, 346 and Lisa Pon, Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian
Renaissance Print, New Haven and London, 2004, pp. 20-21.
79
Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian Renaissance Workshop, pp. 12, 338. Bambach notes
Andrea del Sarto’s St Francis cartoon of about 1517, which is ‘harshly incised, but with a fineness of line
almost that of a hair’s breadth, while the verso reveals an extensive area of charcoal, boldly drawn in
curving strokes and rubbed like carbon’.
80
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 112. The visit is documented in a letter to the
Marchese Lodovico from Giovanni Aldobrandi, July 5, 1466. See Carlo D’Arco, Delle arti e degli artefici di
Mantova: Notizie raccolte ed illustrate con disegni e con monumenti, Mantua, 2 vols, 1857-59, vol. 2, p.
12, doc. 12.
53
employed by painters. 81 As Cennino Cennini in his painter’s handbook written in Padua at the
end of the fourteenth century, these pigments included vineblack from charred vine twigs,
black made from almond shells or burnt peach stones, and lampblack, the soot collected while
burning oil in a lamp.82 This pigment was then mixed with a varnish composed of an oil that
was thickened to the appropriate viscosity, normally linseed oil (‘olio di linseme’), and non-
drying agents such as resin and turpentine.83
By the seventeenth century, engravers, especially those in northern Europe, favoured
vineblack pigment, but it is likely that the Dante workshop and other early Florentine
engravers used lampblack as the base of their ink.84 Although the ink may have changed
colour over the centuries, the majority of the engravings display a grey-toned ink that probably
results from a low concentration of black pigment in the varnish. This may be because a thin,
highly fluid oil was used, one that would not have so successfully ‘carried’ the pigment, but is
also characteristic of ink formed from lampblack which absorbs oil much more easily than
vineblack.85 But this low concentration of black pigment Lampblack was a fairly easy pigment
for the engravers to procure. Fra Domenico from the San Jacopo a Ripoli printing press bought
it, and other necessary ingredients, linseed oil (‘olio di linseme’), resin and turpentine, from
the city’s speziali (apothecaries).86
Paper was acquired from the city’s cartolai (stationers) who acquired large stocks of it
from nearby paper mills at Colle di Val d’Elsa, Prato, Campo Corbolini and the larger mill at
Fabriano.87 Two workshop inventories of fifteenth-century Florentine cartolai, taken in 1426
and 1476, record paper in the standard sizes established at Bologna papermills in 1398.88

81
Joseph Meder, The Mastery of Drawing, trans. Winslow Ames, 2 vols, New York, 1978, vol. 2, pp. 43-
44. As Meder notes, artists often used the acidic, gall based ink for their pen and ink drawings, which
because of the acidic element turns brown over a period of time.
82
Cennino Cennini, Il libro dell’arte o trattato della pittura, ed. Fernando Tempesti, Milan, 1984, pp. 50-
51, ch. 37: ‘Il modo di sapere far di più maniere di colori’.
83
Jo Kirby ‘Varnish’ in Kirby, Nash and Cannon, Trade in Artists' Materials, p. 459.
84
For vineblack see Manick, ‘A Note on Printing Inks’ and Stijnman, ‘Frankfurt Black’, pp. 415-25. It is
also suggested as an ink for printing on cloth by Cennini, Il libro dell’arte o trattato della pittura, p. 138,
ch. 173: ‘Il modo di lavorare colla forma dipinti in panno’. For lampblack see Jo Kirby, ‘Lampblack’, in
Kirby, Nash and Cannon, Trade in Artists' Materials, p. 464.
85
Manick, ‘A Note on Printing Inks’, p. xlv-xlvi. See also Shelley R. Langdale, Battle of the Nudes:
Pollaiuolo’s Renaissance Masterpiece, exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 2002,
Cleveland, 2002, pp. 30-32, where the author discusses the different inks used to create impressions of
Pollaiuolo’s Battle of the Nudes (D.I.1).
86
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli, p. 321.
87
Albinia C. de la Mare, ‘The Shop of a Florentine “cartolaio” in 1426’, in Berta Maracchi Biagiarelli and
Dennis E. Rhodes (eds.) Studi offerti a Roberto Ridolfi, Florence, 1973, pp. 237-48, p. 239; Conway, The
Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli, pp. 327-31.
88
De la Mare, ‘The Shop of a Florentine “cartolaio” in 1426’, pp. 243-48. Giovanni di Michele Baldini’s
inventory is found in ASF, Archivio Notarile Antecosmiano, G. 24, vol. 1, fols. 51-52. For Gherardo and
Monte di Giovanni’s inventory see Giuseppe Sergio Martini, ‘La Bottega di un cartolaio fiorentino de la
54
These include royal (‘reale’, 438-40 x 605-06 mm), median (‘mezzana’, 341-44 x 491-94 mm)
and chancery (‘comune’ or ‘rezzuta’, 311-12 x 440-41 mm). They were packaged in reams
(‘risme’ or ‘lisime’, 500 sheets) or quires (‘quaderni’, 25 sheets) and had watermarks that also
appear in some of the earliest Florentine engravings, such as the ladder, the cardinal’s hat, the
eagle and the mountain.89 It was from such cartolai that the Ripoli press acquired its paper,
usually in chancery size, in quantities ranging from two hundred to twenty-four thousand
sheets at a time, and in 1471 Alessio di Baldovinetti must have purchased his sixteen quires of
royal paper for a cartoon from a similar source.90 The size of paper that the engravers most
often used was chancery (‘comune’), which could be cut in half or to the size of the plate. The
plates from which impressions of the Children of the Planets (Hind, A.III.1-9) were pulled
measured approximately 325 x 218mm, for which the printmakers had to slightly trim the
paper. But for certain prints such as the Judgement Hall of Pilate (Hind, A.II.9) measuring 598 x
434 mm, the engravers needed royal (‘reale’) paper. How much paper the printmakers used is
unresolved, since it is not known precisely how many impressions were successfully pulled
from one plate. Suggestions range from fifty to three thousand impressions of widely varying
quality, though there are many variable factors that could influence these figures.91

fin du XVe siècle’, Bibliofilia, vol. 58, 1956, pp. 1-82, Doc. 2, pp. 59-64. ASF, Archivio Notarile
Antecosmiano, C 392 (1471-1481), fols. 57v-59v.
89
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, pp. 15-16; Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian
Renaissance Workshop, p. 364. For the watermarks, see De la Mare, ‘The Shop of a Florentine
“cartolaio” in 1426’, p. 243, nos. 1-3, 5-8 and Martini, ‘La Bottega di un cartolaio fiorentino de la fin du
XVe siècle’, pp. 60-61. The problem of using watermarks to identify the dates and locations of the mills
at which the paper was made is outlined by Landau and Parshall, pp. 17-19. The ladder (cf. Br. 5904-10)
is found in Vienna Christ Vita (Hind, A.I.8), the cardinal’s hat (cf Br. 3369-3517) in Hind, A.I.39, A.IV.23,
the illustrations for Antonio Bettini’s Monte sancto di Deo (Hind, A.V.1), the Sibyls (Hind, C.II.1-12a) and
the Florentine Picture Chronicle. The eagle (Br. 73-212), in various forms, is seen in the London/Hamburg
Christ Vita (Hind, A.I.9), the illustrations of the Monte sancto di Deo and Landino’s Comento sopra la
Comedia di Dante (Hind, A.V.1-2). The mountain (Br. 11648-11951) is found in Otto prints (Hind, A.IV.6,
14) and the Florentine Picture Chronicle and certain of the Prophets (Hind, C.I.1-24a). Other commonly
used watermarks in the prints of the Dante Workshop are the cow (Br. 2746-70), seen in the Monte
Sancto di Deo, crossed arrows (Br. 6269-83) for the same book; the flower (Br.6659) for the original
Children of the Planets (Hind, A.III.1-7), and the fleur de lis (Br. 6887-6892) for the Children of the Planets
and the Dante illustrations. The letters ‘M’ and ‘R’ are found in the Children of the Planets and the
Florentine Picture Chronicle and the hand (Br. 10637) is seen in an Otto print (Hind, A.IV.5) and several
of the Prophets and the Sibyls. The Master of the Vienna Passion used paper with the flower (Br. 6339)
for several prints in the Vienna Passion and the large Triumphs of Petrarch (Hind, A.I.18, 20, 23, 25, 26,
29-31). ‘Br’ refers to the watermarks as recorded in Charles-Moïse Briquet, Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire
Historique des Marques du Papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600, 4 vols, Paris, 1907. See
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, pp. 319-28.
90
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli, pp. 327-31. Alessio Baldovinetti
acquired ‘sedici quaderni di fogli reali da straccio per soldi 5 el quaderno per fare gli spolverezi de’
profeti e altri spolverezi achaggiono in detta volta’. The cartoon in question was for the painting of the
Gianfigliazzi Chapel at Santa Trinita. Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy, Alessio Baldovinetti: A Critical and
Historical Study, New Haven and London, 1938, p. 246.
91
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, pp. 32-32.
55
 The most innovative aspect of printmaking was the pressing of the inked plate onto
paper, a procedure more complex than the printing of woodcuts with a screw press.92 What
method fifteenth-century engravers used to do this has been the subject of scholarly debate.
Vasari, in his Life of Marcantonio Raimondi, offered one possibility, a theory elaborated by
Henri Meier in his account of early printing presses. Discussing the art of Maso Finiguerra,
Vasari wrote that ‘of every work engraved by him in silver, he took an impression in clay [... ].
He did the like with a damp sheet [...], going over it with a round cylinder [“rullo”]’.93 This led
Meier to believe that Florentine engravers printed impressions manually with a cylindrical
implement, the ‘rullo’, which he related to a ‘triblet’ described in the inventory of a goldsmith
from Draguignan from 1498.94 He hypothesised that the ‘3 tanburi’ mentioned in the
inventory of Alessandro Rosselli of 1525 must have been large hand rollers – heavy-weight
versions of the ‘rullo’. This is not unreasonable, since the word ‘tamburo’ is still used in Italian
printing terminology for a cylinder. Meier therefore envisioned the printmakers placing the
plate and paper on a long wooden table, with an assistant applying pressure by rolling these
tanburi over them.
Analysis of modern printing presses and printing, however, reveals that hand rollers do
not create the required pressure - two hundred kilograms per square centimetre – to force ink
from the grooves of a plate onto the paper. 95 Only a fully developed double roller press like
that seen in Stradanus’ print can supply sufficient force over the surface area of the roller. In
advance of such technology arriving in Florence, it is likely is that the engraver printed
impressions by rubbing a burnisher over the ‘tamburo’ – or parchment sheet – laid over the
plate and paper as recommended in the ink recipe of 1570. Because a burnisher has a small
surface area, it can be used to apply a greater force over a concentrated area than with a hand
roller with which the pressure is spread much more thinly. The blurring of a print in the British
Museum, Grotesque Couple in a Wreath of Cupids (figs. 1.121, 1.154), suggests that it was
rubbed in this way, for although a plate can be jolted in a fixed double roller press, it is only
pushed in one direction. In this print the paper shifted in several directions, indicating that it

92
Meier, ‘The Origin of the Printing and Roller Press’, pp. 9-55.
93
Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, p. 68. The Italian is: ‘tutte le cose che
intaglio in argento per empierle di niello, le improntò con terra... onde a oilo mostravano il medesimo
che l’argento: e ciò fece ancora con carta umida e con la medesima tinta, aggrandovi sopra un rullo
tondo, ma piano per tutto’. Milanesi, Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, vol. 5, pp. 395-96.
94
Meier, ‘The Origin of the Printing and Roller Press’, pp. 185-87.
95
Again I am grateful for this information from Ad Stijnman who has discussed this question with
manufacturers of modern printing presses. See Stijnman, Engraving and Etching 1400-2000, p. 287.
‘The estimated minimum pressure needed for intaglio printing using a press with a roller of 50 cm long
compares to roughly 100 kg (c.1000 N) exerted on each axle of the upper roller. In book printing,
pressure is distributed over the total surface of the platen, while in intaglio printing pressure is
concentrated on the line where the top roller touches the engraving.’
56
was rubbed gradually in irregular movements. To do this engravers could use a variety of
tools, such as a burnisher like the one depicted by Niklaus Manuel in 1515 in his
representation of the goldsmiths’ workshop of St Eloy, where it is used to polish a ring (fig.
1.122).96 Antonio di Veneri’s workshop inventory features ‘brunitoi’ (burnishers), and other
items, such as the ‘tassellino tondo da pianare’ (small round blocks for smoothing) from
Tommaso Bracci’s workshop may have served a similar function.97 Engravers could also have
used a burnishing stone like that described by Cenino Cennini for polishing gold, a tool made
by mounting a haematite stone (‘amatito’) on a wooden handle.98
At a certain point the Dante Workshop must have built or acquired a roller press to
print large engravings such as the Judgement Hall of Pilate (434 x 598mm), since the lengthy
process of rubbing the paper manually would have caused some of the ink on the plate to dry
before it was properly printed.99 On the basis of this reasoning, Jacques Bocquentin suggested
that roller presses were used in Mantua, by Mantegna, and in Florence from the 1470s, having
been introduced in the Upper Rhine between 1460 -1465.100 This theory is supported by prints,
such as the Chastisement of Cupid (fig. 1.123) that show printing creases, narrow, linear gaps
that reveal where the paper buckled on the press and was flattened by the roller as it moved
over the plate before the ink was printed. This is much more likely to have occurred under the
speedily applied weight of a printing press than through the slower and more deliberate action
of rubbing.101
Engravers may have learned of such a machine from itinerant merchants or craftsmen
from the Upper Rhine area, as Bocquentin implies. But there were other, related devices made
in Florence that were possibly transformed for printing copper plates, as Meier has outlined.
The mechanism of roller printing press is related to the mangle (‘manghano’) and the calender
– machines employed for squeezing and compressing textiles. In 1312 the Florentine mangler
Neri Spiliati sold his ‘manghano’ with ‘subiis’ (cylinders) and ‘ferris’ (pieces of iron),
that were presumably mounted so that they would rotate and press cloth that was passed

96
Stijnman, ‘Stradanus’ Print Shop’, p. 17.
97
Guidotti, Orafi in Toscana tra XV e XVIII secolo, vol. 2: ‘18 taselini e foghora e brunitoi’ (p. 47, no. 64);
‘uno tasselino tondo da pianare’ and ‘una tassetto da pianare chonfitto’ (p. 38, nos. 23, 25).
98
Cennini, Il libro dell’arte o trattato della pittura, pp. 106-107, chs. 135-36: ‘Che pietre son buone a
brunire il ditto oro mettuto’ and ‘Come si fa la pietra da brunire oro’, pp. 138-39, ch. 173.
99
Bocquentin, La gravure sur cuivre, ou taille-douce, pp. 39-63, discussed in Stijnman, ‘De ontwikkeling
van de houten etspers, 1460-1850’, pp. 4-5. For such reasons, Landau and Parshall have argued that
Bernardo Prevedari’s Interior of a Ruined Church, of 1481, measuring 705 x 513 mm, was made with a
roller press. Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, pp. 106-07.
100
Bocquentin, La gravure sur cuivre, ou taille-douce, pp. 39-63 and Stijnman, ‘De ontwikkeling van de
houten etspers, 1460-1850’, pp. 4-5.
101
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 70.
57
between them.102 In the last decades of the fifteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci drew larger
industrial calenders that may have been developments of machinery already used for pressing
linen (fig. 1.125).103 The sketches bear only a limited resemblance to the roller press seen in
Stradanus’ Sculptura in Aes (fig. 1.113), but it was not difficult to adapt this basic machinery to
printing from a copper plate, especially in a Florence where the textile industry was so
important.104 Local carpenters and blacksmiths were able to construct new machines
according to a specified model: Fra Domenico of the Ripoli printing press commissioned such
men to make his typographic press in the 1470s. He contracted Jacopo d’Antonio, a
legnaiuolo (carpenter) who worked at Piazza di Madonna, to create a spindle – the screw and
bolt shaped mechanism in the typographic press – and he ordered new metal elements from a
local smith (‘fabbro’). 105
Pieces of flattened parchment to protect the paper during the printing process, were
also available locally. In the diary of the Ripoli printing press, for example, Fra Domenico notes
the acquisition of a frame (‘telaiuzo’) for a 'tamburo'.106 Here, ‘tamburo’ refers to the tympan
of a typographic press, a sheet of parchment stretched over a wooden frame, filled with paper
and cloth and which cushioned the paper on a press.107 ‘Tre casse di tamburi da radere’ (three
boxes of drums for shaving or flattening) are also mentioned in the inventory of Giovanni di
Michele Baldini’s stationery shop.108 These may have been pieces of stretched parchment
needing to be shaved and polished before sale or protective layers of padding positioned to
protect leather when stamping designs onto book covers in a bookbinding press.109 The

102
See Robert Davidsohn, Forschungen zur Geschichte von Florenz, 3 vols, Berlin, 1896-1908, vol. 3, p.
212, no. 1050 and Meier, ‘The Origin of the Printing and Roller Press’, p. 341.
103
Meier, ‘The Origin of the Printing and Roller Press’, pp. 344-48. The version formerly on folio 161v
annotated and describes the ‘subii’, although the overall structure of the machine does not bear much
resemblance to later mangles and calenders. See Augusto Marinoni (ed.), Il Codice Atlantico della
Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano, 12 vols, Florence, 1980, vol. 5, fol. 435r. The machine, formerly on
folio 16v, shows greater resemblance to roller presses for printing (vol. 1, fol. 56r).
104
Meier, ‘The Origin of the Printing and Roller Press’, pp. 347-48.
105
For the screw: ‘Ricordo chome a di 25 dottobre Antonio venitiano fe per noi mercato duna vite
echiociola e sue apertinenti per uno strettoio nostro di patto gli dessi lire cinque cioe con in Jacopo
dantonio legniauolo all piazza di madonna’, fol 101v: 2, in Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San
Jacopo di Ripoli, p. 237. See also pp. 21-22 and ns. 13-16. Later in the book the writer records ‘e a di
ditto nicolo fabro per parte di ferri entro in questa vite chiociola soprascripta’ (fol. 99r, pp. 96, 233).
106
Ibid., p. 96: fol. 2v, no. 2: ‘pel telaiuzo del tamburo da nicholo fabro’ (for the frame of the drum by
Nicholo the blacksmith).
107
Ibid., p. 325.
108
De la Mare, ‘The Shop of a Florentine “cartolaio” in 1426’, p. 246, no. 82: ‘tre casse di tanburi da
radere’. ‘Tanburi’ are also recorded in Gherardo di Giovanni’s inventory, Martini, ‘La Bottega di un
cartolaio fiorentino de la fin du XVe siècle’, p. 63: ‘tre tanburi’.
109
In Il Libro dell'Arte, Cennini describes how parchment should be polished by stretching it over a board
before burnishing it with a stone, and compared this to the parchment of a drum (‘a modo di carta di
tamburo’). Cennini, Il libro dell’arte o trattato della pittura, pp. 38-39, ch. 17: ‘Come tu dèi tingere la
careta di cavretto, e in che modo la debbi brunire’. For reference to the preparing of parchment by
58
parchment sheets could have been adapted by intaglio printmakers by covering it with cloth
and placing it on the damp paper to protect it from the roller-press or the rubbing of a
burnisher.110

Design and Pastiche

As important as the technology and materials for printmaking were the components of
artistic invention, composition and design. Some engravers focused primarily on the engraving
and printing of the plate and did not have a significant role in designing the image. The
contract between the goldsmith Bernardo Prevedari and the painter Matteo de’ Fedeli for the
reproduction of Bramante’s Interior of a Ruined Church of 1481 (fig. 1.126), demonstrates this.
It specifies that the engraver had to produce ‘a plate with buildings and figures following a
drawing on paper made by Master Bramante da Urbino and to engrave the plate properly
following the said drawing so that the plate would print the good work and the good
figures’.111 In a similar way Francesco Rosselli’s Moses and the Serpent closely reproduced,
with the same dimensions, a drawing attributed to Maso Finiguerra, barely altering the original
composition (fig. 1.127-28).112 The engraver’s role here compares with the makers of
tapestries, mosaics, stained glass, and intarsie in Florence who translated designs of other
artists into a medium in which the primary artist was not trained.113

cartolai, see Anna Melograni, ‘The Illuminated Manuscript as a Commodity: Producton, Consumption
and the Cartolaio’s Role in Fifteenth-Century Italy’, in Michelle O’Malley and Evelyn Welch (eds), The
Material Renaissance, Manchester, 2007, pp. 197-221, p. 199. The inventories of the cartolai refer to
stamps, as well as to ‘strettoi’, probably simple bookbinding presses. See De la Mare, ‘The Shop of a
Florentine “cartolaio” in 1426’: ‘una stanpa da forare’ (p. 246, no. 97); ‘una stanpa da forare coverte’;
‘dua paia di stretoia da coverte’ and ‘quarto paia di stretoia da tondare tra pichole et grandi’ (p. 245, nos
66-67). See also Gherardo di Giovanni’s inventory, Martini, ‘La Bottega di un cartolaio fiorentino de la fin
du XVe siècle’, p. 63: ‘uno paio di strectoie’ (small screw presses); ‘uno paio di sexte da stampare’ and
‘diciocto ferri da stampare’ (irons and compasses for stamping covers); ‘diciotto traverse’ (instrument
for stamping on covers); ‘dua focolari di ferro’ (two stoves for heating the iron stamps). As Szirmai
notes, there is uncertainty about when a press began to be used for stamping book covers, or what
these presses looked like. An eighteenth-century wooden press for this purpose was illustrated in René
Martin Dudin, L’Art du relieur-doreur de livres, Paris, 1772, pl. 11, in which the blocks for printing had a
lining of several layers of card that Szirmai suggests may have been to give an even distribution of the
pressure. John A. Szirmai, The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding, Aldershot, 1999, pp. 246-47.
110
Frezzato and Seccaroni, Segreti d’arti diverse nel regno di Napoli, p. 152
111
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 104. The contract records: ‘stampam unam cum
hedifitiis et figuris lotoni secundum designum in papiro factum per magistrum Bramantem de Urbino et
illam stampam bene intaliare secundum dictum designum ita et taliter quod dicta stampa stampeat
bonum laborem et bonas figuras’. Ibid., p. 386, n.9).
112
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 2, p. 81.
113
See Nicoletta Pons, ‘L’unità delle arti in bottega’, in Mina Gregori, Cristina Acidini Luchinat, and
Antonio Paolucci (eds), Maestri e botteghe: Pittura a Firenze all fine del quattrocento, exh. cat., Palazzo
59
 In some instances, the Dante Workshop may have very closely reproduced a drawing
supplied by another artist, such as the composition of the Triumph of Bacchus, thought to
have been designed by Botticelli (fig. 1.129-30). 114 The revelling Maenads with their curved
sinuous outlines and flowing drapery are typical of Botticelli’s dancing women, and the
narrative is organised in a horizontally moving line as seen, for example, in the Primavera (fig.
1.132) or in the illustrations of the Earthly Paradise in Botticelli’s drawings of Dante’s
Commedia (figs. 1.133-35). Moreover, the women contrast with other dancers depicted by the
Dante Workshop, such as the rigidly postured females in alla francese costumes in the Children
of Venus with their more angular drapery and movements (fig. 1.131). Likewise, the Hercules
and the Hydra (Hind, D.I.3) is so intimately related to paintings on canvas by Antonio Pollaiuolo
that a cartoon may have been employed to transfer the image directly to the copper, to which
the engravers simply added a banderole.115
On the whole, however, early Florentine engravers seem to have had a creative role in
composing their images and probably drew their own cartoons. The Dante Workshop
considered drawing an important practice, visible in the Florentine Picture Chronicle with its
pen and ink illustrations.116 There, men and women are composed with simple, fluid outlines
with little internal modelling, and evoke the technique of pen, ink and wash in the many
drawings attributed to Maso Finiguerra, celebrated as a ‘maestro di disegno’.117 Firstly,
however, compositions were sketched in chalk before being finalised in pen. Pyrrha on folio
29r, for instance, was first outlined in chalk in one position, but in the final picture she was
moved to another area of the page.118 The draughtsmen also made preliminary sketches to try
out different architectural and landscape settings: chalk underdrawings reveal that Hector, on
folio 36v, was originally set within a courtyard rather than in front of a palazzo as he is shown
in ink (fig. 1.136-37).119
The individual elements of each design were usually adapted from pre-existing
sources. As Whitaker has demonstrated in the Florentine Picture Chronicle, the draughtsmen
relied on a stock range of motifs which were sketched on the page with chalk and then

Strozzi, Florence 1992-93, Florence, 1992 pp. 251-70 and Bambach, Drawing and Painting in the Italian
Renaissance Workshop, pp. 219-20.
114
See, for example, Aby Warburg, ‘Sandro Botticelli’, p. 161. Zucker presents a counter-argument,
doubting the crediting of the invention to Botticelli. Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt.1, p. 270
115
Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, p. 75
116
Whitaker, The Florentine Picture Chronicle, pp. 47-50.
117
For Finiguerra as ‘maestro di disegno’, see Alessandro Perosa, (ed.), Lo Zibaldone di Giovanni Rucellai,
2 vols, London, 1960-81, vol. 1, pp. 23-24 and Alison Wright, ‘Antonio Pollaiuolo: “Maestro di Disegno”’,
in Cropper, Florentine Drawing at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, pp. 131-46. See also Whitaker,
‘Maso Finiguerra and Early Florentine Printmaking’.
118
Whitaker, The Florentine Picture Chronicle, p. 37.
119
Ibid.
60
transformed and refined in pen and ink to arrive at the new composition. Several of the
animals in both the drawings and engravings, for example, were closely copied from a model
book dated to the 1450s and described as the Rothschild Album (fig. 3.13). Human figures
were also based on models: Shem, David and Codrus, portrayed on different pages (figs. 1.138-
40), are all derived from the same outline, visible in the chalk underdrawing.120 In the final pen
drawing each figure is given unique clothing such as tunics, armour and mantles, so that the
generic type was altered into a specific character within the narrative.
This method of pastiche was fundamental to designing the engravings. Many of the
prints in the series of Prophets and Sibyls are adapted from the Master ES’s Apostles
engravings, altered for their new context.121 The drapery and pose of Ezekiel (fig. 1.141) is
derived from the northern engraver’s St John the Evangelist (fig.1.142-43), while the head is
taken from his St Peter (fig. 1.144) which was presumably more appropriate for the aged
Prophet than the curly haired young Evangelist. The engraver assembled these components to
create a new image, with two banderoles, with richly decorated all’antica ornamentation on
the seat and hem of the costume, possible inspired by recent civic spectacles.122 This ‘pastiche
approach’ is particularly visible in the ‘Otto’ prints, where the engravers imitated motifs from
various sources. Some feature hunting scenes, heraldic shields and amorous imagery related
to painted details found on contemporary marriage boxes (figs. 3.7-9).123 Others are
characterised by motifs similar to those on the glazed terracotta roundels from the della
Robbia workshop, such as swags of foliage, fruit and vegetables (fig. 1.145-48) and a fish-scale
pattern (figs 1.149-52).124 The engravers may have also found inspiration in round prints from
Northern Europe, such as the circular John the Baptist surrounded by emblems of the
Evangelists and Church Fathers (fig. 1.153), in which an ornamental swirling border encircles
images within it. An all’antica frame of a comparable shape is seen in two prints: the
Grotesque Couple and the Fat Lute Player where acanthus leaves twist around the central
circle (figs. 1.154-56). The Dante Workshop then integrated eclectic figures within these
frames. The music-making putti in both borders are reminiscent of Donatello’s cherubs on the
Cantoria of the 1430s for the Duomo of Florence, but the cupid playing cymbals is almost
identical to a putto on Maso di Bartolommeo’s 1446 reliquary (fig. 1.157). The central figures
of the Grotesque Couple (fig. 1.154), on the other hand, with their caricatured faces, were

120
Ibid., p. 34.
121
Dempsey, The Early Renaissance and Vernacular Culture, pp. 167-204.
122
Ibid., p. 155. See also, Warburg, ‘The Picture Chronicle of a Florentine Goldsmith’, pp. 167-68.
123
Georg Swarzenski, ‘A Marriage Casket and its Moral’, Bulletin of the Boston Museum of Arts, vol. 45,
no. 261, 1947, pp. 55-62.
124
See Rubin and Wright, Renaissance Florence, pp. 276-77.
61
probably derived from a drawing from the workshop of Verrocchio.125 The Fat Lute Player (fig.
1.146) is likewise unique in the Dante Category prints, and, as suggested by Hind, may have
been copied from Northern European designs such as the ‘French cloth painted with a fat man
playing a lute’ recorded in the inventory of the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano.126 As these
examples show, the workshop appropriated visual sources in a variety of ways. Sometimes
they must have traced a composition from a cartoon very precisely, sometimes they loosely
copied a source through visual observation making subtle modifications to the original, and
sometimes they took very free inspiration from a model or group of models, making
substantial changes.
The engravers’ approach to design was similar to that practised by certain other
workshops in Florence and in the North of Europe, notably those who sold their products
speculatively as well as on commission. The painter Neri di Bicci created domestic tabernacles
that have been described as ‘eclectic pastiches’, in which he assembled ‘components’ copied
from other images.127 Motifs ‘from the family shop repertory’ were combined with figures
derived from the works of Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Pesellino, Veneziano, Castagno,
Pollaiuolo and Baldovinetti and Verrocchio, according to which artist was most popular at the
time.128 Like the engravers, especially those of the Dante Workshop, Neri then enhanced his
works with numerous ornaments, particularly fashionable all’antica motifs.129 The aims and
methods of the engravers can also compared with the those of the Master of the Banderoles,
who has been derogatively described as a ‘sort of artistic Robin Hood who robbed from near
and far’ to make his engravings.130 But he was also a commercially successful businessman
who inventively exploited an entrepreneurial opportunity. He creatively took popular

125
The grotesque couple can be compared with the drawings associated with Verrocchio’s workshop in
Gianvittorio Dillon, ‘Una serie di figure grottesche’, in Cropper, Florentine Drawing at the Time of
Lorenzo the Magnificent, pp. 217-230. See also the drawing attributed to the circle of Verrocchio Old
Man Dancing in the Uffizi, Florence, cat. no. 2323 F, discussed in Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, pp.
111, 449, ns 108-09.
126
The canvas is described in the Medici inventory of 1492 as being at Poggio a Caiano, ‘panno franzese
dipintovi uno grasso che suona il liuto’. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 93.
127
For the notion of a ‘component picture’, see Megan Holmes, ‘Copying Practices and Marketing
Strategies in a Fifteenth-Century Florentine Painter’s Workshop’, in Stephen J. Campbell and Stephen J.
Milner (eds), Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation in the Italian Renaissance City, Cambridge, 2004,
pp. 38-74, esp. pp. 52-60.
128
Thomas, The Painter’s Practice in Renaissance Tuscany, p. 236 and Megan Holmes, ‘Neri di Bicci and
the Commodification of Artistic Values in Florentine Painting (1450 - 1500)’, in Marcello Fantoni, Louisa
C. Matthew, Sara F. Matthews-Grieco (eds), The Art Market in Italy: 15th - 17th Centuries, Modena,
2003, pp. 213-223, p. 219.
129
Ibid., pp. 213-23.
130
Max Lehrs, Geschichte und kritischer Katalog des deutschen, niederlandischen und franzosischen
Kupfertischs im XV. Jahrhundert, 9 vols, Vienna, 1908-34, vol. 4, pp. 1-24; Anne I. Lockhart, ‘Four
Engravings by the Master with the Banderoles,’ The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 60,
1973, pp. 247-254, p. 247.
62
elements from the engravings of the Master of the Playing Cards, the Master ES and Israhel
van Meckenem, and celebrated paintings of Rogier van der Weyden, Robert Campin and
Stefan Lochner.131 A print acquired by the Florentine Tieri family, discussed in Chapter Three,
presents a slightly modified version of Rogier van der Weyden’s Deposition from the Cross (fig.
3.81).
A ‘pick and mix’ effect is also seen in prints from the Vienna Category. The general
layout and iconography of the two versions of Cupids at the Vintage (figs 1.158-59) is possibly
inspired by a drawing attributed to the Verrocchio workshop (fig. 1.161) or similar
composition. In the prints, the cupid playing the trumpet in the centre at the top of the vines,
however, is identical to a figure in an illuminated manuscript of 1460 (fig. 1.162).132 The cupid
was evidently a stock motif that could be applied to distinct compositions, since the same
putto reappears, this time also hitting a percussive instrument, in a third print, the Round
Dance (fig. 1.160, 1.63-66. The iconography of this third engraving, with nude men dancing
energetically around a central female nude, was inspired by another source, possibly
Pollaiuolo’s dancing nudes at Villa La Gallina (fig. 1.167). All these motifs were integrated in
the second Cupids at the Vintage, for the engraver inserted a smaller version of the dancers
from the Round Dance in the lower right corner alongside the vintage, drunken putti and the
trumpeting cupid on the top of the vines.
In the Mass of Gregory (fig. 1.168), the Master of the Vienna Passion imitated the
general layout of a print by the Master of the Banderoles, with certain individual elements,
such as the clothing, posture and hair of the attendant of Gregory on the lower left, copied
fairly closely, though not exactly, from original. 133 The engraver transformed the image for the
local Italian market by replacing the Gothic script with Roman capitals on a tablet, inserting
classical columns, and substituting the angular body of Christ on the altar with a more virile
and anatomically detailed body of Christ. Just as Neri di Bicci strategically redeployed archaic
motifs with fashionable, contemporary ornaments, so the engravers dressed up foreign images
in local attire.

131
Ibid.
132
For the drawing, attributed to the circle of Verrocchio, see Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, Gabinetto
disegni e stampe degli Uffizi: Inventario Disegni di figura, 2 vols, Florence, 1991, vol. 1, p. 67, cat. no.
148F. For the illuminated manuscript, see Kurt Rathe, ‘Sulla classificazione cronologia di alcuni
incunabula calcografici italiani’, Maso Finiguerra, vol. 5, no. 1, 1914, pp. 3-13.
133
Zucker argues that the the souls in Purgatory in the lower left of the Florentine engraving were added
by the Florentine engraver, but the motif is found in pictures of the Mass of Gregory in northern Europe.
It is more likely that the Master of the Banderoles and his workshop produced a now lost version in
landscape format and more similar to the Florentine print seen today. It is certain that he produced at
least two versions of the Mass of Gregory. See Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 67. For
other versions of the Mass of Gregory, see Esther Meier, Die Gregorsmesse: Funktionem eines
Spätmittelalterlichen Bildtypus, Cologne, 2006, figs 2, 60, 72.
63
 In many ways, the engravers’ compositions do not display the virtuosic skills of disegno
exemplified in Maso Finiguerra’s Coronation of the Virgin niello pax (fig. 1.3) or Antonio del
Pollaiuolo’s Battle of the Nudes engraving (Hind, D.I.1). But with the artistic method of ‘eclectic
pastiche’ and the technical procedures of making the prints, the engraving workshops were
marked by their resourcefulness. The bedrock for their enterprise was the training and
expertise found in goldsmith workshops, with their emphasis on drawing and design as well as
the preparation, handling and engraving of copper. But, the goldsmith-engravers then
exploited the city’s busy flux of mercantile activity to acquire other necessary tools and
supplies from local and itinerant carpenters, stationers and other tradesmen. Finally, the fluid
network of painters, sculptors, goldsmiths and illuminators in Florence permitted the
printmakers to synthesise a range of archaic, innovative, familiar and foreign visual ideas in
inventive ways. As a result, they established the most prolific engraving enterprises in Italy in
the 1460s, 1470s and 1480s.

64
Chapter 2. On the Market: The Commerce of Engravings

Like all craftsmen, printmakers needed initial capital and continued revenue to fund
their business. This was more of a challenge for engravers in Florence than for other
established artisans, since they had to carve out a space in the city’s market by attracting
investors, partners and customers for their innovative products. That this was a risky process
is suggested by the fate of early book printers who faced similar hurdles and were not always
successful. Bernardo Cennini, the first book printer in Florence, made only one incunable in
1471, an edition of Servius’ commentary on the works of Virgil, before abandoning the venture
and returning to work as a goldsmith, and Niccolò della Magna, printer in Florence in the 1470s
and 1480s, suffered several financial crises and was consequently imprisoned.1 Nevertheless,
the proximity of diverse workshops within the city, the flexibility of guild regulations and the
capacity of engravers to form partnerships and links with other merchants allowed new
enterprises to flourish if they were successfully managed, as was the San Jacopo di Ripoli press
under the leadership of Fra Domenico (1477-84).
This chapter will explore, in three sections, how the Dante Workshop and Vienna
Category engravers may have positioned themselves and their prints within the commercial
environment of Florence. Firstly it will suggest how the workshops may have boosted their
income by forming business partnerships with financial backers and making a range of
additional, more conventional products. The second section will investigate how the prints
were sold, who sold them and where they could be acquired. The final part will consider the
cost of prints and how such prices compared with those of other goods on sale in the city.

2.1. Capital and Revenue

Raising money to fund the business was not always easy. In 1480 Cennini, for
example, in his role as a goldsmith, complained in his tax declaration that he lacked capital and
he would not be able to work anymore unless he was supplied with materials.2 As
demonstrated in Chapter One, one way of alleviating costs was to share workshop spaces or

1
For Cennini, see Giuseppe Ottino, Di Bernardo Cennini e dell’arte della stampa in Firenze: Nei primi
cento anni dall’invenzione di essa, Florence, 1871, p. 28; Doris Carl, ‘Il Contratto per una compagnia
orafa fra Betto di Francesco di Duccio e Bernardo Cennini’, Rivista d’Arte, vol. 37, 1984, pp. 189-202.
Böninger, ‘I primi passi della stampa a Firenze: nuovi documenti di’archivio’, pp. 69-70; Lorenz
Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa fiorentina (1471-1473), La Bibliofilia, vol. 105, no. 3, 2003, pp.
225-48, p. 226, n. 4. For Niccoló della Magna, see Ridolfi, ‘Contributi sopra Niccolò Tedesco’, pp. 1-14;
Böninger, ‘I primi passi della stampa a Firenze’, pp. 71-71; Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa
fiorentina, pp. 227-35.
2
Carl, ‘Il Contratto per una compagnia orafa’, p. 193.
65
enter into partnership with another goldsmith, just as the Salvestro brothers worked together
and with other goldsmiths. Another strategy was to produce a range of well-established
products alongside more risky pursuits. Between 1464 and 1482 Cennini, for instance, was
employed by the Florentine mint, cast seals for the University of Pisa, created a monumental
silver crucifix, made a relief for the Baptistery’s silver altar as well as printing the ‘Servius’. 3
That the Dante Workshop also diversified their practice in this way is suggested by the
depiction of the goldsmiths’ workshop the Children of Mercury (fig. 2.1) where an artist
engraves a printing plate in a shop stocked with belts, pitchers and plates, conventional
elements of a goldsmith’s workshop.
An instance of this diversification is the Florentine Picture Chronicle attributed to the
Dante Workshop. This luxury illustrated book of world history shows the influence of
contemporary manuscript illumination and is a type of object normally associated with
illuminators and stationers. The title pages at the beginning of each Age of Man, for example,
loosely compare with the illuminated dedication by Francesco di Antonio del Chierico in
Donato Acciaiuoli’s Vita Caroli of 1461 (figs. 2.2-3). Although different ornamental motifs are
employed, each includes a circle upheld by cherubs surrounding a short text in Roman capitals
to presage the text and images that follow in the book. It is not clear whether the engravers
decided to make this book alongside their normal prints, or whether it was a product of
collaboration with stationers. Whatever the method, the Dante Workshop was not the only
contemporary workshop to illustrate books as a sideline to their main work. A number of pen,
ink and wash drawings in a manuscript of Geta and Birria now in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in
Florence were commissioned in 1462 from the workshop of Andrea del Verrocchio in Via
Ghibellina (fig. 3.34).4 In 1457 Verrocchio had considered abandoning the goldsmith trade
because of lack of commissions and perhaps book illustration was likewise a way for his
workshop to draw in more revenue.5
Money was also raised from non-artisan investors or by collaborating with other types
of merchant. In 1474 in Bologna, for example, the miniaturist Taddeo Crivelli formed a
partnership with Francesco dal Pozzo of Parma, a humanist scholar at the Studio in Bologna, to

3
Ibid.; Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa fiorentina, p. 226, n. 4. For the silver cross and the
silver dossal see Giulia Brunetti, ‘Oreficeria del Quattrocento in Toscana’, Antichità viva, vol. 26, no. 4,
1987, pp. 21-38, pp. 26-27.
4
Adriana Di Domenico, ‘Il “Cantare del Geta e Birria” visualizzato (e un ritratto del Burchiello) nelle
illustrazioni di un codice Magliabechiano’, Rivista di storia della miniature, vols 1-2, 1996-97, pp. 123-30.
Payments were made to ‘addre del verrocchino esta acchapo a via Ghibellina’ on ‘12 di ferraio 1462’.
5
Günter Passavant, Andrea del Verrocchio als Maler, Düsseldorf, 1959, p. 4; Carl, ‘Zur
Goldschmiedefamilie Dei’, p. 140, 155, n. 135. See also Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, pp. 26-27.
66
engrave and print maps, with Francesco providing the capital for materials.6 In Florence, in
1460, on the other hand, Cennini received an investment of five-hundred florins from the silk
merchant Betto di Francesco di Duccio for setting up his goldsmith workshop, four-hundred of
which comprised of silver and other workshop tools (‘masserizie’).7 The partnership was
intended to last three years and in return for the capital, Betto was to receive a proportion of
the profits received from the work produced by Cennini. In 1470, Cennini shared the cost of
rent by sharing a workshop with a ‘rigattiere’ (second-hand dealer), Filippo di Bracci.8 He may
also have worked with a certain Zanobi di Zanobi del Cica who in 1472 was involved in bringing
a case to the tribunal of the Mercanzia regarding a batch of Cennini’s ‘Servius’.9
Such arrangements were common amongst other printers. Niccolò della Magna
entered into a series of partnerships with investors, including the poet and singer Antonio di
Guido (c. 1471-73), the merchant Cappone di Bartolomeo Capponi (1475-81), the apothecary
Antonio di Luca di Betto (1482), and the priest Ser Lorenzo di Girolamo Tinghi (1483).10 Under
Fra Domenico, the San Jacopo di Ripoli press formed eight partnerships of varying lengths, also
with an eclectic mix of people.11 These included an unidentified Don Ippolito (1476-77), Fra
Domenico’s garzoni (workers) Matteo and Giovanni Ferretti (1477), the printer Giovanni
Tedesco (1478), the stationer Bartolo di Domenico and humanist Bartolomeo Fonzio (1478-
79), the editor and bookseller Ser Piero Pacini da Pescia (1480-83) and Lorenzo Venetiano, Fra
Domenico’s most experienced assistant (1483-84). Such collaborations allowed distinct
craftsmen and merchants to pool their resources and sell goods; on other occasions they
simply served as an opportunity to invest money and reap profits.
Given the technical complexity of making engravings and the newness of the printed
image as a commercial product, it is possible that printmakers formed similar links with people
who could provide practical as well as financial support. The most likely candidates for such a
role were stationers (cartolai) and illuminators who extensively worked with the San Jacopo di
Ripoli printing press, providing Fra Domenico with commissions, financial investments,
supplies of paper, networks of distribution and the services of binding and decorating books

6
Lino Sighinolfi, ‘I mappamondi di Taddeo Crivelli e la stampa Bolognese della Cosmographia di
Tolomeo’, La Bibliofilia, vol. 10, 1908, pp. 241-69, esp. doc. 2, pp. 264-65.
7
Carl, ‘Il Contratto per una compagnia orafa’, p. 189.
8
Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa fiorentina’, p. 226, n. 4.
9
Ibid., p. 226.
10
Böninger, ‘I primi passi della stampa a Firenze’, pp. 71-72; Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa
fiorentina, pp. 228-35.
11
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press, p. 33, n. 79.
67
produced at the press.12 Stationers had a number of commercial interests that overlapped
with those of engravers: they traded in inks and paper, used the tamburi (parchment drums)
described in Chapter One and sold similar paper objects, such as printed or hand-illuminated
painted playing cards (‘naibi’) like the woodcut trionfi (triumph cards) now in the National
Gallery of Art in Washington (fig. 2.9).13 Involvement in the trade of intaglio prints was
evidently a compelling strategy for Florentine stationers and illuminators. If Vasari is correct,
Gherardo di Giovanni engraved copper plates for printing, as well as running his cartolaio shop
and illuminating manuscripts. Although the inventory of his shop in 1476 does not mention
any prints, several engravings have been persuasively attributed to him (Hind, D.IV.8-9).14
Likewise, Francesco Rosselli worked as an illuminator before extending his craft to engrave
maps and other images.15

2.2. Sales and Distribution

Whether in a conventional goldsmith shop, a specialised print shop or a combined

stationer-printmaking enterprise, printmakers probably created and sold engravings with the
principal methods common in other trades: commission or speculative production.

Commission

The first of these – the making of bespoke products for clients – was dominant in
goldsmith practice, since it offered the security of income to the maker and, above all,
provided the capital for expensive materials.16 It was also a key method for book printers: the
San Jacopo di Ripoli press executed a large number of their works on the request of stationers,

12
Ibid., pp. 32-47. Two of the most active collaborating stationers included Giovanni di Nato and
Bartolo di Domenico.
13
For playing card makers see Lodovico Zdekauer 'Sull'organizzazione pubblica del giuoco in Italia nel
medio evo', Giornale degli economisti, vol. 2, 1892, pp. 40-80, p. 75, n. 2; Werner Jacobsen, Die Maler
von Florenz zu Beginn der Renaissance, Munich, 2001, pp. 484, 510, 549, 552, 554, 588. The cartolaio
Antonio di Luca, ‘specializzato nel fare naibi’ (specialist in making playing cards) was one of the clients
referred to in the account books of the Badia in Florence. Alessandro Guidotti, ‘Indagini su botteghe di
cartolai e miniatori a Firenze nel XV secolo; in Emanuela Sesti (ed.), La miniatura italiana tra Gotico e
Rinascimento: Atti del II Congresso di Storia della Miniatura Italiana, Cortona 24 - 26 settembe 1982,
Florence, 1985, pp. 473-507, p. 487.
14
See Melli, ‘Gherardo di Giovanni, poliedrico artista alle prese col “David” del Verrocchio’. For the
inventory of his shop, see Martini, ‘La Bottega di un cartolaio fiorentino de la fin du XVe siècle’.
15
Annarosa Garzelli, Miniatura fiorentina del Rinascimento, 1440-1525: un primo censimento, 2 vols,
Florence, 1985, vol. 1, p. 173 and Diego Galizzi, ‘Rosselli, Francesco’ in Milvia Bollati (ed.), Dizionario
biografico dei miniatori italiani: secoli IX-XVI, Milan, 2004, pp. 914-916.
16
Carl, ‘Il Contratto per una compagnia orafa’, p. 193.
68
street-sellers, scholars and religious institutions such as the Dominicans at San Marco.17
Without a record of transactions, it is unclear to what extent Florentine printmakers made
bespoke prints. Many of the religious prints may have been created this way, for mendicant
orders and confraternities across Europe often commissioned printed images to promote
themselves, as discussed in Chapter Four.18 The Dominicans were particularly active in this
respect, and had many woodcuts and engravings designed to publicise a saint recently
canonised and the new rosary devotion.19
It is likely that the engraving St Dominic (fig. 2.4) by the Dante Workshop presents such
a case, since many its details indicate specialist knowledge of Dominican doctrine. The book
held by Dominic, for instance, displays the words said on his deathbed to his fellow friars:
‘Have charity, preserve humility, and possess voluntary poverty’.20 The crowns above
Dominic’s head represent the crowns of chastity and of writing and preaching, symbols that
were discussed in contemporary sermons and described in Dominican prayers.21 They are
explained by the Latin text in the lower margin of the print, derived from a Dominican
antiphon: ‘Fulget in choro virginum, doctor veritatis / Sertum honoris gemium gerens cum
beatis’ (Bearing a jewelled crown of honour with the blessed, the teacher of truth is
resplendent among the choir of virgins).22 St Peter and St Paul stand either side of side of
Dominic’s head, with the words ‘Vade predica’ (Go and preach), and ‘Quia ad hoc electus es’
(Because for this you were chosen). These inscriptions refer to a vision recounted first by
Constantin d’Orvieto in his Legenda Sancti Dominici of 1247 and repeated in the Golden

17
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press, pp. 30-32.
18
See Mark J. Zucker, ‘Early Italian Engravings for Religious Orders’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol.
56, no. 3, 1993, pp. 366-84.
19
Marie-Hyacinthe Laurent, Il Processo Castellano, Fontes vitae S. Catharinae Senensis historicae, vol. 9,
Milan, 1942, pp. 92-93; Lidia Bianchi, ‘Il carattere dottrinale della santità di Caterina da Siena nella
iconografia del primo Quattrocento’ in Congresso internazionale di studi Cateriniani, Rome, 1981, pp.
563-95; Henri Dominique Saffrey, ‘Ymago de facile multiplicabilis in cartis. Un document méconnu, daté
de l’année 1412, sur l’origine de la gravure sur bois à Venise’, Nouvelles de l’estampe, vol. 74, 1984, pp.
4-7. For images of the rosary commissioned in Florence and Italy, see Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the
Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages, University Park, PA, 1997; Esperança Camara,
Pictures and Prayers: Madonna of the Rosary Imagery in Post-Tridentine Italy, PhD Thesis, Johns Hopkins
University, 2003, pp. 45-50.
20
Zucker, ‘Early Italian Engravings for Religious Orders’, pp. 369-70.
21
Edwin Hall and Horst Uhr, ‘Aureola super Auream: Crowns and Related Symbols of Special Distinction
for Saints in Late Gothic and Renaissance Iconography’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 67, no. 4, 1985, pp. 567-
603.
22
This is the fifth antiphon of Lauds. See Henri Dominique Saffrey, ‘Les images populaires de saints
dominicains à Venise au XVe siècle et l’édition par Alde Manuce des ‘Epistole’ de Sainte Catherine de
Sienne’, in Henri Dominique Saffrey, Humanisme et imagerie aux XVe et XVIe siècles: Études
iconologiques et bibliographiques, Paris, 2003, pp. 9-71, p. 20.
69
Legend, in which the saints appeared to Dominic, presenting him with a staff and a book.23
Given the complexity of the iconography, a Dominican presumably described the required
layout of the print to the engravers who then transformed it into the finished image.
The Dante Workshop was also commissioned to engrave the illustrations for two
books printed by Niccolò della Magna in 1477 and 1481: the Monte Sancto di Deo by Antonio
Bettini and Cristoforo Landino’s Comento sopra la comedia di Dante. As explained in Chapter
Six, at least two of the engravings in Bettini’s Monte Sancto di Deo were envisioned in the
preliminary stages of the book’s production since spaces were intentionally left in the text for
them (figs 6.1-3). Similarly, spaces were left between canti in the Commedia for engravings
either to be pasted in or printed on the page (fig. 2.5). 24 Such illustrations were probably
organised by the author of the book (or his representative) or by the book printers. In 1476,
for example, Francesco Berlinghieri wrote to book printers in Rome, enquiring where he could
find suitable engravers to make the thirty-one maps for his Geographia, printed by Niccolò
della Magna in 1482.25 In 1484 Cristoforo Landino wrote to Bernardo Bembo stating that he
had had over a thousand copies of his commentary printed. Given his personal involvement in
the project, therefore, it is possible that he commissioned the illustrations. 26 Alternatively,
Niccolò della Magna may have subcontracted the engravers to produce the illustrations, just as
the San Jacopo di Ripoli press enlisted a woodcutter to create the historiated initials for the
Decameron in 1481.27

Speculative Production

A second way of generating income was to make prints speculatively and then sell
them individually to the public or wholesale to merchants who transported them elsewhere.

23
Constantin d’Orvieto, Legenda Sancti Dominici, ed. Heribert Christian Scheeben (Monumenta Ordinis
Praedicatorum Historica, vol. 16), Rome, 1935, p. 304, ch. 25: ‘De visione quam vidit in basilica
Apostolorum Petri et Pauli in Urbe’, and Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the
Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols, Princeton, 1993, vol. 2, p. 47.
24
Korman, ‘“Danthe Alighieri Poeta Fiorentino”’, pp. 57-67; Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa
fiorentina, p. 229. Böninger cites archival evidence that Landino was directly involved with the selling of
the books in 1481.
25
Roberts, Cartography Between Cultures, p. 137. The letter, now lost, is summarised in Emil Jacobs,
‘Zur Datierung von Berlinghieris Geographie’, Gutenbergfestschrift zur Feier des 25-Jährigen Bestehen
des Gutenbergmuseums in Mainz, Mainz, 1925, pp. 248-263, p. 249, n. 1. The attribution of the
engraved maps, and the problematic attribution of them to Francesco Rosselli, is discussed by Roberts,
Cartography Between Cultures, pp. 171-89.
26
Letter printed in Eugène-Gabriel Ledos, ‘Lettre inédite de Cristoforo Landino à Bernardo Bembo’,
Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, vol. 54, 1893, pp. 721-24, p. 723: ‘... comentarios quos in illius
poema scripseramus jam mille ac ducentis voluminibus impressos edideram’.
27
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press, pp. 57, 61, n. 57.
70
This was a strategy for many artists in the city. The workshops of Luca della Robbia, Neri di
Bicci and the medallist Niccolò Fiorentino, for example, employed ‘assembly-line’ methods so
that they could quickly produce a large number of works to sell to potential customers at a
comparatively low cost.28 By recycling stock motifs and designs in varied combinations it was
easier and quicker to make goods with proven commercial success than to generate new
compositions. The new technology of making multiple prints from one copper plate was
doubtlessly seen as a fruitful way to make objects for an open market, saving on the time and
expense that would be required to create individual drawings.
Prints produced in this way were probably kept in the engravers’ workshops ready to
sell to potential customers, just as contemporary goldsmiths stored belts, pitchers, cutlery and
jewellery on site and stationers stocked paper and books for retail. Illustrations of goldsmith
and silk merchant shops show how the architecture of the workshops facilitated exchange with
customers, with openings onto the street so that potential clients could observe products
being made, as well as interact directly with sellers (figs. 2.1, 2.6-8). Prints may have been
displayed in special boxes and cabinets inside the shop, as well as in the outer part of the
workshop that opened out onto the street as occurred in contemporary cartolaio shops. The
stationer Giovanni di Michele Baldini, for example, owned several cabinets, chests and stands
for exhibiting products inside the shop, and a ‘predella da tener fogli fuori’, a stand to show
sheets of paper on the street, covered by a protective ‘vela trista’ (an old cloth).29 The print
shop of Alessandro Rosselli was similarly arranged: there were ‘palchetti’ (cabinets and
stands), ‘schafale’ (shelves) with over a hundred ‘chassette’ (drawers), in addition to two
cabinets ‘da teneri furoro’ and two boxes ‘da metere fuora’ (to put outside).30
Simultaneously, engravers probably disseminated their works, like the printers at San
Jacopo di Ripoli, through middlemen who bought them wholesale or took them on
consignment to be returned if not sold.31 Such salesmen encompassed impoverished
charlatans, mountbanks and street vendors, local stationers and booksellers, and wealthy
merchants. Cerretani (charlatans), for instance, sold potions and sang songs in local streets,
but they also sold broadsides with poems and prayers, and could easily have carried prints

28
Thomas, The Painter’s Practice¸ pp. 59-60; Bruno Santi, ‘Una bottega per il commercio: Repertori,
vendite, esportazioni’, in Giancarlo Gentilini, (ed.), I Della Robbia e l’arte nuova della scultura invetriata,
exh. cat., Basilica di Sant’Alessandro, Fiesole, 1998, Florence, 1998, pp. 87-96, p. 88; Holmes, ‘Neri di
Bicci and the Commodification of Artistic Values in Florentine Painting (1450-1500)’, pp. 213-23, 60;
Arne R. Flaten, ‘Portrait Medals and Assembly-Line Art in Late Quattrocento Florence’ in Fantoni,
Matthew, Matthews-Grieco, The Art Market in Italy, pp. 127-39.
29
De la Mare, ‘The Shop of a Florentine”Cartolaio”’, pp. 239, 245.
30
Del Badia, ‘La bottega di Alessandro di Francesco Rosselli’, pp. 24-30.
31
Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, Cartolai, Illuminators, and Printers in Fifteenth-Century Italy: The
Evidence of the Ripoli Press, Los Angeles, 1988, pp. 40-48.
71
too.32 Richer merchants took objects in larger quantities further afield. Cappone di
Bartolomeo Cappone and Girolamo Strozzi, for example, sold printed books across Europe, in
Rome, Venice, Bruges and London.33 Likewise, in Rome in the 1470s Bernardo Tornaquinci
took eight dozen ‘carte pichole da giochare' (small playing cards) to Rome, whilst another
Florentine merchant imported a bundle of ‘carte stampate da jogare’ (printed playing cards).34
Foreign traders also picked up consignments as they passed through the city: in 1473, a
travelling book merchant from Trent, ‘magister Augustinus quondam Iohannis de Caballis’
carried 444 copies of Servius’ Virgil printed by Bernardo Cennini.35 Probably through such
merchants Florentine prints reached destinations across Europe, where they were pasted in
manuscripts or albums by their owners, as demonstrated in the next chapter. Piero Baldini’s
Zatec Virgin Vita engraving (fig. 1.1), for instance, was pasted in a book completed in 1478 by
Johann Roesler from Wunsiedel in Bavaria.36 An album of Florentine prints in Istanbul was
possibly taken to Turkey by a merchant like Benedetto Dei, where it ultimately became the
property of Sultan Mehmed II (1431-81).37 Prints could be taken as far as merchants could
travel, which, judging from the fourteenth-century book on trade by Francesco Balducci
Pegolotti, incorporated an extremely large area of Europe and the Middle East.38
Prints were commonly sold in the shops of stationers and booksellers, who, as noted
above, also dealt in playing cards, woodcuts, sheets of paper, manuscripts and printed books.
In Florence in the early 1460s, the librarius Albertus Liebkinkt, for example, sold printed books
and other printed material such as maps imported from Strasburg.39 Likewise, around 1471 the
poet Ludovico Lazzarelli acquired a set of Tarocchi cards, probably prints, from a ‘bottega di

32
Susan Noakes, ‘The Development of the Book Market in Late Quattrocento Italy: Printers’ Failures and
the Role of the Middleman’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, vol. 11, nol. 1, 1981, pp. 23-
55, p. 45; Rouse and Rouse, Cartolai, Illuminators and Printers, 1988, p. 37, n. 40; David Gentilcore,
‘Tutti i modi che adoprano i ceretani per far bezzi’: Towards a Database of Italian Charlatans’ Ludica, vols
5-6, 2000, pp. 201-15. The singer Antonio di Guido also formed a partnership with Niccolò della Magna,
Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa fiorentina, pp. 231-34.
33
Böninger, ‘I primi passi della stampa a Firenze’, p. 71; Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa
fiorentina, pp. 228-29. For Girolamo Strozzi and his involvement with the market for printed books, see
Angela Nuovo, Il commercio librario nell'Italia del Rinascimento, Milan, 1998, p. 73.
34
Arnold Esch, ‘Roman Customs Registers 1470-80: Items of Interest to Historians of Art and Material
Culture’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 58, 1995, pp. 72-87, p. 78.
35
Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa fiorentina’, p. 226.
36
For this manuscript see Chapter Five of this dissertation.
37
Landau and Parshall speculate that the Benedetto Dei took the collection of prints, now in Istanbul, to
the city when he resided there for seven years from 1460. As yet, there is no way to prove this theory,
however. Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1994, p. 94.
38
Balducci Pegolotti, La Practica della Mercatura.
39
Böninger, ‘I primi passi della stampa a Firenze, pp. 67-75.
72
librajo’ (bookshop) in Venice.40 But prints were also found at other locations. In 1444 a
Flemish trader persuaded a skin dyer in Padua to sell over three thousand woodcuts on his
behalf.41 In Rome, on the other hand, several German merchants acquired licenses to sell
‘veronicas’, probably printed images of the Holy Face, at stalls around the basilica of St Peter
(fig. 2.10).42 It is conceivable that the Volto Sancto of Lucca (fig. 2.11) and the Madonna of
Loreto (fig. 2.12) were sold to pilgrims at the respective sites of these images, the Cathedral of
San Martino in Lucca and the shrine of the Santa Casa in Loreto.43

2.3. Price and Value

The prices of prints in Florence in the 1460s, 1470s and 1480s are unknown. Limited
information can be garnered, however, from two documents related to Alessandro Rosselli’s
print shop: the workshop inventory that records the prices of various prints in 1528, and a
shorter assessment of the shops’ prices made in 1527.44 For several reasons, the prices in
these documents may be very different from those of equivalent prints made fifty years
earlier. On the one hand, money of account (lire, soldi and denari) was subject to inflation
between 1460 and 1527.45 In 1475, 112 soldi (1344 denari) bought a gold florin; in 1527, the
florin was equivalent to 140 soldi (1680 denari).46 On the other hand, the general appetite for
engravings had undoubtedly evolved: by 1527 engravings were produced more widely and
were more familiar to consumers. Nevertheless the documents are useful for giving a very
rough guide to prices and for understanding the variation in the value between woodcuts and
engravings, small and large prints, and prints by different artists.47

40
Lamberto Donati, ‘Le fonti iconographiche di alcuni manoscritti urbinati della Biblioteca Vaticana’, La
Bibliofilia, vol. 60, 1958, pp. 48-129, p. 50 and Oberhuber, Levenson, Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings,
pp. 83-84. See also Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 295.
41
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 8.
42
Esch, ‘Roman Custom Registers 1470-1480’, p. 77.
43
For the cult of the Madonna of Loreto and the print, see Zucker, ‘The Madonna of Loreto: A Newly
Discovered Work by the Master of the Vienna Passion’.
44
See Del Badia, ‘La bottega di Alessandro di Francesco Rosselli’. The document of 1527 records the
prices given by the cartolaio Jacopo di Marcho de’ Pechia and Bernardo di Salvadore istanpatore.
45
Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History,
Baltimore, 1980, pp. 301-03.
46
Ibid., p. 430. 1 lira = 20 soldi; 1 soldo = 12 denari. Henceforth, all prices will also be given in denari for
ease of comparison.
47
The inventory was examined with similar results by Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, pp.
295-97.
73
Engravings and Paper Goods

In 1528 the average price of a woodcut was very low: at 2 denari it was a tiny portion
of the daily wage earned by an unskilled labourer the year before (108 denari).48 It was
roughly equivalent to the cost of volti santi (images of the Holy Face) in 1474, probably
woodcuts imported from northern Europe (e.g. fig. 2.10), which were valued by customs
officials in Rome at half a Roman ducat for 300. If this amount is converted very approximately
into contemporary Florentine denari, it equates to just under 2 denari per image. 49
Engravings, on the other hand, had a far greater value than woodcuts, but one which varied
according to its size, who designed the image or how recently it was printed. In 1527, those
printed by the pupillo (Lorenzo, Alessandro’s son), presumably from the plates owned by the
workshop, were valued at 8, 16 and 20 denari, at least four times the price of an average
woodcut.50 The different print sizes were described as foglio comune, foglio mezano and
foglio reale, although, as Hind and Landau and Parshall have demonstrated by correlating
plates with identifiable prints, these terms do not refer to the standard Bolognese
measurements frequently used in Florence that are translated as chancery, median and
royal.51 The dimensions of a foglio comune in the inventory can be calculated as about 142 x
213 mm, slightly smaller than half the size of chancery paper and about the same as the
‘ordinary’ paper mentioned by Charles-Moïse Briquet. Likewise, a foglio reale measures

48
The document of 1527 records that woodcuts are valued at a third of a denaro (on average). See Del
Badia, ‘La bottega di Alessandro di Francesco Rosselli, p. 29. For the wages of skilled and unskilled
labourers in the building industry, see Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence, p. 437.
49
Arnold Esch, Economia, cultura materiale ed arte nella Roma del Rinascimento: Studi sui registri
doganali romani 1445-1485, Rome, 2007, p. 413. The amounts charged were recorded in Roman ducats
(ducati auri di camera), bolognini and denari, with 72 bolognini to a ducat, and 16 denari per bolognino.
The Roman ducat was equivalent to the Florentine florin (fiorino di suggello). By 1471, in Florence, the
fiorino di suggello was mostly replaced by the fiorino di largo which had a greater value. Nevertheless,
using the exchange rate between the fiorino di sugello and the fiorino largo which was set at 120:100 in
1464, it is possible to very approximately translate the Roman prices into Florentine prices of soldi and
nd
denari. William A. Shaw, The History of Currency 1252-1894, 2 ed., New York, 1967, (1st ed., 1896), pp.
303-04, 308. Half a Roman ducat was therefore approximately 0.42 of a fiorino largo, which in the
1470s, was equivalent to about 48 soldi, or 576 denari. If 300 volto santi were 576 denari, a single volto
santo was 1.92 denari. This price reflects the estimated values, rather than the actual market value, and
the conversion here is very approximate.
50
Del Badia, ‘La bottega di Alessandro di Francesco Rosselli, p. 29.
51
Hind Early Italian Engraving, p. 305: ‘It is probable that the folio comune is a small size, possibly, the
same as the ordinary paper noted by Briquet [...] from standard Arabian sizes, i.e. 142 x 213 mm [...] To
judge from six of the identified engravings (Hind, B.III.1-6, Items III.39,37 and 38 below), a folio reale
must be somewhat more than 295 x 434 mm[...] i.e. not very different from the royal size in use today
[...] Quarto foglio would thus be about 217 x 148 mm.,... and octavo foglio about 148 x 108 mm. Landau
and Parshall clarify this further, see Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 376, n. 51. They
argue that ‘the terms used in the Florentine inventory simply distinguish large from small, or full from
half-sheets.
74
around 295 x 434 mm, about half the normal royal size. In what follows, Rosselli’s fogli comuni
and fogli reali will be referred to as ‘ordinary’ and ‘half-royal’ sized sheets.52
The difference between the value of woodcuts and engravings is partly attributable to
the cost of materials and the labour involved in working with them. Copper has always been
fairly expensive: the copper acquired for the matrices of the printing press at San Jacopo di
Ripoli cost around 10 soldi (120 denari) per pound (12 ounces), more than the daily wage of an
unskilled worker in 1476. 53 The preparation and engraving of a copper plate also generally
took longer than the cutting of a woodblock. In 1496, a woodcutter in Florence was asked by
Piero Pacini to cut five woodblocks every week for a year, each measuring approximately 91
mm in length.54 The goldsmith Bernardo Prevedari, in contrast, was allocated two months to
engrave the plate after Bramante’s design, The Ruined Temple (fig. 1.132), during which time
he had to work ‘day and night’.55 At around 705 x 315 mm, this plate was substantially larger,
and engraved with more intricate details, than most Florentine prints made at the same time.
But, as Landau and Parshall have estimated, ‘probably one did not make a good engraving,
even of small size in less than a week’.56 In 1459, Bertold Borsteld in Lübeck was
commissioned to produce ten copper engravings or metalcuts in fourteen and a half months,
while it has been suggested that Marcantonio Raimondi, at his quickest, took two weeks to
make an engraving.57
The prices of Alessandro Rosselli’s shop also reveal the considerable value attached to
the recent designs of renowned artists like Raphael and Baccio Bandinelli. Small, ordinary,
half-median and half-royal sized prints after Raphael’s drawings were highly valuable at 48, 72,
96 and 120 denari each. An ordinary print after Raphael’s work was therefore nine times more
expensive than the same sized print pulled from an older workshop plate.58 Most costly was
Marco Dente’s print after Baccio Bandinelli’s Massacre of the Innocents, printed from two
plates and priced at 240 denari. These elevated prices are partly explained by the fact that the
Raphael’s and Bandinelli’s prints were acquired from merchants rather than being pulled by
the Lorenzo Rosselli in the shop. But they also indicate how consumers were willing to pay

52
Considering the general pattern, it is also likely that a foglio mezano worked out as half a median
sheet, and so will be referred to as ‘half-median’.
53
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press, p. 324. For wages of workers, see Richard Goldthwaite, The
Building of Renaissance Florence, pp. 436.
54
Gustav Bertoli, ‘Documenti su Bartolomeo de' Libri e i suoi primi discendenti’, Rara Volumina, vol. 8,
no. 2, 2002, pp. 19-56, pp. 29, 48. The woodcutters are asked to make four blocks with ‘un sesto di
braccio fiorentino’ and ‘la quinta di un ottavo’. A braccio fiorentino is equivalent to 583 mm.
55
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, p. 30.
56
Ibid.
57
Ibid.
58
Del Badia, ‘La bottega di Alessandro di Francesco Rosselli, p. 29.
75
higher prices for more recent engravings of apparently higher quality and by artists of greater
renown. The prices are laid out in table in Appendix 2.1.59
It is extremely difficult to calculate how highly the designs of the Dante Workshop and
Vienna Category were valued, though it is unlikely their prints were as expensive as Raphael’s
designs, since they are not signed, nor did the engravers have the painter’s extraordinary
reputation. In the 1470s, the Dante Workshop’s prints, currently designed and engraved,
were probably more valuable than the impressions pulled by Lorenzo Rosselli which were
probably printed some time after the plate was first incised. The ‘giuocho di pianeti cho loro
fregi’ (a set of Planets with their borders) listed in the inventory, for example, probably refers
to the series of the Children of the Planets engraved around fifty years earlier by the Dante
Workshop (fig. 1.29). 60 Taking such evidence into account, it is plausible that an ordinary sized
print was worth somewhere between 8 and 72 denari in the 1470s.

Engravings and Other Goods on the Market

Accepting the prices of Alessandro Rosselli’s print shop as very rough guidelines, the
cost of engravings can be situated within the wider commercial context of Florence between
1460 and 1485. If an ordinary sized print cost 8 denari in 1476, it was just over 5 denari more
expensive than a sheet of lined chancery paper, worth approximately 2.4 denari when bought
in a quire of twenty-five sheets from the shop of Gherardo and Monte di Giovanni.61 It would
have been far less expensive than the piece of fish recorded in the diary of the San Jacopo di
Ripoli press as costing 54 denari in 1478, but only marginally cheaper than a bushel of oranges,
bought for 12 denari.62 Such a print would have been similar in value to the Geta and Birria
pen and wash illustrations by the workshop of Verrocchio of 1463, when each drawing cost, on
average, nearly 12 denari.63 It would have been more expensive than half-folio sheets with
printed prayers dedicated to the Archangel Raphael. These were nearly 2 denari each when
acquired in a consignment of 500 (for 960 denari) from the San Jacopo di Ripoli printing

59
This is discussed by Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, pp. 295-97.
60
Del Badia, ‘La bottega di Alessandro di Francesco Rosselli’, pp. 24-30. See also Hind, Early Italian
Engraving, p. 83, cat. no. A.III.9a.
61
Martini, ‘La bottega di un cartolaio fiorentino de la fin du XVe siècle’, p. 61.
62
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press, pp. 21, 162, fol. 48r ‘per una mezasoldo per aranci soldo 1’,
‘per pesci in due volte – 9 soldi’.
63
See Maria Luisa Scuricini Greco, Miniature Riccardiane, Florence, 1958, pp. 247-48, no. 244, MS Ricc.
1591. The owner of the manuscript paid 3 lire, 5 soldi for the 71 illustrations in the book.
76
press.64 Quarter-folio prayer sheets commissioned in 1480 cost a local street-seller almost 1
denaro each in a group of 1000 (for 840 denari), and 1000 prayers to San Giuliano cost 490
denari, (approximately half a denaro each) in 1481.65 Unsurprisingly, paintings on panel and
reliefs in stucco, terracotta and papier mâché were considerably more expensive than both
woodcuts and engravings. According to Suzanne Kubersky-Piredda, the least costly devotional
paintings and reliefs produced in Florence between 1451 and 1500 ranged from 58 to 117 soldi
(696-1404 denari) each.66 Therefore, even if an ordinary sized engraving reached the value of
72 denari, like prints after Raphael’s works in 1527, it was vastly cheaper than paintings.
These hypothetical prices support the assumption that prints were affordable to a wide
range of people. In 1476, an unskilled labourer in the building industry might expect 8.5 soldi a
day (102 denari), and a skilled worker would collect an average of 15 soldi (180 denari) a day.67
An engraving of exceptional quality, therefore, would still have cost less than the daily wage of
even the least skilled workers in the city. A full comparison of contemporary prices in this
period is made in the table in Appendix 2.2.
The commerce of Florentine prints was possible not only because the city had such
well developed patterns of artistic practice and trade but also because the city nurtured
technical innovation and entrepreneurship. Thanks to the burgeoning book-printing trade and
the established markets for playing cards, paper, book illustrations and goldsmith
merchandise, there were existing channels for launching a printmaking enterprise. Likewise,
there were avenues through which to sell prints, either within the city, abroad or directly to
patrons, and precedents for partnerships with financial backers. Engravings stood out from
other comparable products, not only because of their novelty, but also because of their price,
since, in all likelihood, they were less expensive than paintings and more artistically refined
than the cheaper woodcuts. As will be seen in the next chapter, they were acquired by a range
of people, including clerics, craftsmen and scholars who took advantage of the flexibility of the
single sheet prints to used them in personal and sometimes idiosyncratic ways.

64
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press, p. 228, fol. 96r, no. 2. ‘Antonio cerretano madato afformare
una oratione dellangniol Raffaello di 13 stanze va nelluna uno mezo foglio a mia fogli me ne a addare di
500 lire quattro’. For a reproduction of a similar broadside printed by the press, the Lauda di Sancta
Maria della Carcere, see Stefano Zamponi (ed.), Le devote carte: Esegesi, devozione, culto mariano nei
manoscritti di enti ecclesiastici pistoiesi, Pistoia, 1988, pp. 15-16, cat. no. 5, pl. III.
65
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press, p. 193, fol. 73v, no. 7 (1/4 folio sheet); pp. 220-221, fol. 90v,
no. 1 (San Giuliano sheet). The ‘orazione di S. Giuliano’, of which 3000 copies were printed, used
probably less than 100 sheets of paper. Conway concludes that this was a very short prayer, with 30
prayers per sheet of paper. Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press, p. 53, ns 18,19.
66
Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, ‘Immagini devozionali nel Rinascimento fiorentino: Produzione,
commercio, prezzi’ in Fantoni, Matthew, Matthews-Grieco, The Art Market in Italy, pp. 115-125, p. 119,
tab. 1.
67
Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence, pp. 436, 438.
77
Chapter 3: In Viewers’ Hands: The Reception and Use of Prints

In his study of German woodcuts, Der früheste deutsche Einblattholzchnitt (1979), Hans
Körner developed the term ‘Ortlosigkeit’ (placelessness) to describe how single sheet
woodcuts were not fixed within a specific position, but could be adapted and personalised in a
multitude of ways.1 Although his argument is sometimes overly generalised, Körner pinpoints
the important fact that the function of prints was determined by the preferences of the
consumer as much as by the intentions of the artists and the iconographies of the images. As
a number of recent studies have shown, the places in which prints were positioned varied:
prints were affixed to objects, to walls, stored separately, pasted in manuscripts, coloured, cut,
and combined in complex arrangements.2 Very few of the surviving fifteenth-century
Florentine prints give any indication for how they were used. An understanding of how
Florentines might have adopted prints will be developed in two ways in this chapter. Firstly, a
survey of the use of woodcuts and engravings across Europe in the fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries will provide a picture of the many possible ways in which prints were
employed by their owners and placed in different spaces. This analysis is dependent on the
efforts of scholars who have accumulated and published a wealth of evidence during the last
century. Secondly, an in depth examination will show how engravings and woodcuts of Italian,
Netherlandish and German origins were pasted by Florentines in manuscripts. This will be
built around three principal case studies that reveal how owners incorporated engravings into
culture of collecting, compiling, marking and illustrating texts in manuscripts.

3.1 The Application of European Prints

Contemporary pictorial evidence indicates that prints were affixed to the walls of
domestic interiors. In Hans Memling’s St Benedict, painted as the wing of a triptych for
Benedetto Portinari in 1487 (fig. 3.1), for example, a hand-coloured woodcut depicting the

1
Körner, Der früheste deutsche Einblattholzchnitt, p. 40.
2
The placement of prints has been the subject of a number of recent studies, cited in the Introduction.
These include Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, vol. 2, pp. 76-78; Schmidt, Gedruckte Bilder
in Handgeschriebenen Büchern; the four articles in Studies in Iconography, vol. 24, 2003: Areford,
‘Introduction’, pp. 1-5, Areford, ‘The Image in the Viewer’s Hands’, pp. 5-42 Schmidt, ‘The Use of Prints
in German Convents of the Fifteenth Century’, pp. 43-69 and Field, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Woodcut of the
Death of the Virgin’, pp. 71-136; Weekes, Early Engravers and Their Public; McDonald, The Print
Collection of Ferdinand Columbus; Parshall and Schoch, The Origins of European Printmaking; Miller,
‘Prints’; Cobianchi, ‘The Use of Woodcuts in Fifteenth-century Italy’; Parshall, The Woodcut in Fifteenth-
Century Europe; Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe; Karr Schmidt and
Nichols, Altered and Adorned.
78
Crucifixion with Mary and John the Evangelist is pasted on the wall behind the saint.
Memling’s representation is one of several Netherlandish paintings that show prints and
prayer sheets in such locations, either in an area set aside for devotion or above a fireplace.3
The pictorial evidence, which is conditioned by its own iconographic imperative, is supported
by household inventories that document that paintings and sculptural reliefs were fixed on
walls.4 By the sixteenth century the display of prints on walls, often in frames, was certainly
widely adopted practice.5
To give such works greater durability and to simulate more expensive paintings, they
were also pasted on vellum, canvas or panels. The 1528 inventory of Alessandro Rosselli’s
shop records that many prints were mounted on canvas, such as the ‘19 fogli in tela reali fra
bianchi e dipinti’ (nineteen royal sheets on canvas either blank or painted). 6 Several
engravings from Francesco Rosselli’s series of the Life of the Virgin in the Hamburg Kunsthalle
survive on canvas, while other examples in the British Museum, London (fig. 3.2) and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York are mounted on wood. All of them were richly
coloured in imitation of illuminated manuscripts and paintings.7 A further twelve prints from
the same series were pasted in sequence, on the wooden ‘predella’ of what Hind describes as
an ‘altarpiece’, destroyed in Berlin in World War II (fig. 3.3).8 Likewise in Nuremburg, an
extended cycle of Venetian and German woodcuts was pasted on wood to create a triptych
suitable for meditation.9
Prints were not only inexpensive substitutes for conventional altarpieces, domestic
tabernacles or framed pictures, but were also positioned on furniture such as cassoni (chests),
boxes, doors and even church furniture. A north Italian cassone was decorated with red and

3
See Meijer, Firenze e gli antichi Paesi Bassi 1430 – 1530, pp. 182-85, cat. no. 41. The representation of
woodcuts in Netherlandish paintings is considered in Parshall and Schoch, Origins of European
Printmaking, p. 41 and David Areford, ‘Multiplying the Sacred: The Fifteenth-Century Woodcut as
Reproduction, Surrogate, Simulation’ in Parshall, The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe, pp. 119-47,
esp. pp. 119-20; Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe, pp. 1-2.
4
Lydecker, The Domestic Setting of the Arts in Renaissance Florence, pp. 61-79; Kecks, Madonna und
Kind, pp. 18-34 and Donal Cooper, ‘Devotion’, in Ajmar-Wollheim and Dennis, At Home in Renaissance
Italy, pp. 190-202. An important example of the positioning of such an image in a domestic context is
seen in Giovanni Morelli’s account of his devotion stimulated by a painted image of the Crucifix,
discussed in Richard C. Trexler, ‘Studies in Ritual Communication’, in Public Life in Renaissance Florence,
New York, 1980, pp. 172-86. For the entire text, see Giovanni di Pagolo Morelli, Ricordi, ed. Vittore
Branca, Florence, 1956, pp. 475-91
5
Michael Bury, ‘The Taste for Prints in Italy to c. 1600’, Print Quarterly, vol. 2, 1985, pp. 12-26, p. 21 and
Gregory, Vasari, Prints and Printmaking, pp. 63-69.
6
Del Badia, ‘La bottega di Alessandro di Francesco Rosselli’, pp. 24-30. For example, the ‘charte da
navichare in tela cholorite di minore stanpa’ (p. 25).
7
For the prints in Hamburg, London and New York, see Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, pp. 120-21.
8
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 121.
9
Richard S. Field, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Picture Panel from the Dominican Monastery of Saint Catherine
in Nuremberg’, in Parshall, The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe, pp. 205-37.
79
black colour woodcuts apparently made to imitate intarsia (fig. 3.4); similar use of Northern
Italian woodcuts was noted by Hind on a cassone in the Berlin print room.10 The Venetian
painters’ guild even created sanctions to stop sellers from fraudulently sticking hand-coloured
prints to such furniture (‘forzieri’ and ‘casse’).11 An exceptionally large coloured Italian
woodcut depicting the Virgin and Child in the British Museum was taken from a door in
Bassano and another print pasted on wood with a comparable size and iconography in the
Victoria and Albert Museum seems to have come from a similar location (fig. 3.5).12 Numerous
northern woodcuts have also been found inside the lids of boxes or pasted on portable
devotional objects (fig. 3.6).13 The round ‘Otto’ prints were suited, among many other
purposes, to being pasted on the inside or outside of circular boxes, for their shape and
decoration is sometimes closely related to contemporary marriage caskets (figs. 3.7-9).14 On
other occasions prints were attached to much larger ecclesiastical furniture. A fragment of a
print showing the Adoration of Christ was found on the reverse of a Trecento painted panel by
Lippo Vanni (figs. 3.10-12), while woodcuts from the Passion by Jacob of Strasbourg were
glued on the choir stalls of the church of San Damiano near Assisi.15
Other prints were bound together in booklets. Several series of the North Italian
‘tarocchi’ engravings (Hind, E.I.1-50) were joined to form a picture book, while an agreement
coordinated by Alessandro Rosselli’s uncle Jacopo di Marco del Pecchia in 1528 states that
‘lavoro istanpato in forma legente’ (printed work in bound form) remaining in Rosselli’s
workshop.16 In a reading list of religious books compiled by Fra Marco da Monte Santa Maria
in Gallo (1425-96) in 1494 the author refers to ‘el libro delli mysterii della vita di Christo in

10
Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, p. 77 and Miller, ‘Prints’, p. 327.
11
Bury, ‘The Taste for Prints in Italy to c. 1600’, p. 12.
12
Campbell Dodgson, Woodcuts of the XV Century in the Department of Prints and Drawings British
Museum, 2 vols, London, 1934-35, vol. 1, p. 150, Hind, An Introduction to a History of the Woodcut, vol.
1, p. 162, Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe, p. 4.
13
See Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, vol. 1, p. 76 and Parshall and Schoch, Origins of
European Printmaking, pp. 171-72, cat. no. 42.
14
Swarzenski, ‘A Marriage Casket and its Moral’, pp. 55-62. See also Andrea Bayer (ed.), Art and Love in
Renaissance Italy, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Kimbell Art Museum,
Fort Worth, 2009, New York, 2008, pp. 107-08.
15
For the woodcut pasted to the back of Lippo Vanni’s painting, see Ulrich Middeldorf, ‘Two Sienese
Prints’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 116, no. 851, 1974, pp. 104, 106-10. Middeldorf states that the
print is an engraving, though from the photograph it looks more like a woodcut. For the woodcuts of
San Damiano at Assisi, see Paul Kristeller, ‘Un blocco di’una silografia antica italiana’, Bollettino d’Arte,
vol. 3, 1909, pp. 429-32, p. 430 and McDonald, The Print Collection of Ferdinand Columbus, vol. 1, p. 471,
figs 399-400, vol. 2, pp. 495-96, inv. no. 2721.
16
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 229. The impressions in Paris, Pavia, Naples, Chantilly are all
presented in book form. The Paris impressions are bound in their original fifteenth-century vellum
binding. For the agreement on the stock of Alessandro Rosselli, see Del Badia, ‘La bottega di Alessandro
di Francesco Rosselli’, p. 29.
80
pictura’ (book of mysteries of the life of Christ in pictures).17 Since Fra Marco also indicates
that they were available with Francesco Rosselli the illuminator and ‘perhaps elsewhere’, these
books were unlikely to have been one-off illuminated editions, and were probably made with
engravings or woodcuts. Editions of the Florentine Vienna Passion (Hind A.I.25-34) with its
succession of narrative images may have been compiled in such a way, since it suited the
sequential reading that the book format provides. Even if earlier prints were not sold in this
format, it was not difficult for customers to have their sheets bound in this way by local
cartolai who specialised in such services. Prints may also have been collected in albums. An
exceptional collection of prints, many of them associated with the Master of the Vienna
Passion, was possibly compiled by the Florentine merchant Benedetto Dei and ended up in the
collection of the Sultan Mehmed II (1431-81).18 In the next century, several Florentine
fifteenth-century engravings were pasted in an album once in Milan (see Appendix 3.1).19
Many of the examples cited above have survived because they were secured to
surfaces more durable than paper, but a large numbers of woodcuts and engravings may have
been stored away in ‘luoghi ritirati’ (places away from easy access) as they were in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, kept in drawers so that they could be pulled out at
important moments.20 In Seville, Ferdinand Columbus (1488-1539) stored his extensive
collection of prints in chests (‘arcas’), while Gabriele Vendramin (d. 1552) kept prints and
drawings in rolls as well as displaying them framed on walls and glued in albums.21 Playing
cards, in particular, may have been stored in boxes or drawers rather than being on public
display, while religious images might be carried on the owner’s body or in special containers.

17
The references are found in the reading list of 19 religious books recommended by Fra Marco in his
two books printed in Florence in 1494, the Libro delli commandamenti and the Tabula della salute. A
fuller description is given by Fra Marco of the book: ‘Ellibro delli quara[n]ta mysterii della vita di Xpo in
neltestame[n]to nuovo con due figure deltestamento vecchio p[er] ciascheduno mysterio, & co[n]
quattro decti di propheti per mysterio facto in p[er]spectiva o vero pentura... Troveraili a Maestro
Fra[n]cesco Roselli miniatore in Firenze et forse altrove’ (‘The book of the forty mysteries of the life of
Christ in the New Testament with two figures of the Old Testament for each one of the mysteries and
four sayings of the prophets for each mystery, done in perspective or true painting. [...] You will find
them at Master Francesco Rosselli, miniaturist, in Florence, and perhaps elsewhere.’) See Lessing
th
Rosenwald, The 19 Book: Tesoro de poveri, Washington, 1961, pp. 62, 102-03.
18
For the codex owned by Mehmed II, now in the Saray Museum, Istanbul, vol. 1720, see Arthur M.
Hind, ‘Fifteenth-Century Italian Engravings at Constantinople’, Print Collector’s Quarterly, vol. 20, 1933,
pp. 279-96 ; Julian Raby, ‘European Engravings’, Islamic Art, vol. 1, 1981, pp. 44-49; Landau and Parshall,
The Renaissance Print, pp. 91-95.
19
The album was formerly in the Biblioteca Trivulziana, MS. 2143, but is now separated. See Bury, ‘The
Taste for Prints in Italy’, p. 16.
20
Michael Bury, ‘Giulio Mancini and the Organization of a Print Collection in Early Seventeenth-Century
Italy’, in Christopher Baker, Caroline Elam and Genevieve Warwick (eds), Collecting Prints and Drawings
in Europe, c. 1500-1750, Aldershot, 2003, pp. 79-84.
21
McDonald, The Print Collection of Ferdinand Columbus, vol. 1, p. 120 and Bury, ‘The Taste for Prints in
Italy’, p. 21.
81
The inventory of the estate of the Sienese doctor Bartolo di Tura Bandini (1391-1477) of 1483,
records three small bags of ‘brevicciuoli’, small scrolls with prayers or depictions of saints that
could be rolled up and placed in small pouches, sometimes hung around the neck.22 Others
were probably ‘cherished to destruction’ as Jan van der Stock puts it in his analysis of the print
trade in Antwerp. 23 Some of the surviving smaller prints, such as the Lamentation with Saints
(fig. 1.31), measuring 129 x 93 mm, may be examples that have fortuitously, and exceptionally,
avoided damage. Van der Stock also recorded a sixteenth-century woodcut was preserved in
the archives of Antwerp as a paper casing for a wax seal.24
Loose sheets were also employed within artisans’ workshops, since copperplate
engravings, with their potential to show fine details and modelling, were effective
replacements for the model books, drawings and sulphur casts that frequently were copied
and adapted by other artists. They may have been used in the same way as the many
drawings and sulphur casts by Maso Finiguerra that were often borrowed and copied.25
Several early Florentine prints showing animals hunting were suitable for this, since they
provided a visual compendium of animals like those in the Florentine ‘Rothschild Album’ dated
to the middle of the fifteenth century (fig. 3.13-15).26 As noted above, the engravers
themselves frequently obtained prints by artists such as the Master ES, the Master of the
Banderoles and Schongauer as templates for their own designs. Likewise, Megan Holmes has
noted a remarkable number of poses in the works of Quattrocento painters’ workshops that
were adopted from Northern European prints.27 Although a number of the links she draws
could be coincidental resemblances, some of her examples provide convincing evidence of the
way prints were used as pattern sheets. A sheet attributed to the Maestro Esiguo, active in

22
‘Una tascuccia lina, dentrovi più pezuoli di panno e di seta e d’oro, e cordelline, con agnusdei di cera, e
tre vesticciuole di cuoi di brevicciuoli’. Schmidt, Painted Piety, p. 85 and p. 102, n. 38. The inventory and
this specific reference is published in Curzio Mazzi, La casa di maestro Bartalo di Tura, Siena, 1900
(offprint from Bulletino Senese di Storia Patria, vol. 3), p. 41, no. 139.
23
Stock, Printing Images in Antwerp, p. 174.
24
Ibid., p. 179.
25
Doris Carl, ‘Documenti inediti su Maso Finiguerra e la sua famiglia’, Annali della Scuola Normale
Superiore di Pisa, vol. 13, no. 2, 1983, pp. 507-554, p. 540, doc. 19. A document concerning Pierantonio
Finiguerra, Maso’s son and his ward and uncle Francesco cites ‘certa sulfura picta et seu impromptata et
picturas et seu disegnj supra certos foleos’ and ‘XIIII volumina librorum pictorum et seu disegnatorum’.
These were probably, as Carl shows, lent to other goldsmiths and artists (p. 519).
26
For the Rothschild Album, see Bernhard Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der Italienischen
Zeichnungen 1300-1450, 2 vols, Berlin, 1968- 1982, vol. 1.1, pp. 256-62, cat. no. 154, vol. 1.3, cat. no.
154, pls. 185c-190b; Francis Ames-Lewis, ‘Modelbook Drawings and the Florentine Quattrocento Artist’,
Art History, vol. 10, 1987, pp. 1-11; Robert W. Scheller, Exemplum: Model-book Drawings and the
Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900 – ca. 1470), trans. Michael Hoyle,
Amsterdam, 1995, pp. 330-40, cat. no. 32 and Albert Jan Ellen, Italian Late-Medieval and Renaissance
Drawing-Books from Giovannino de’ Grassi to Palma Giovane: A Codicological Approach, Leiden, 1995,
pp. 205-07, cat. no. 18.
27
Holmes, The Influence of Northern Engravings on Florentine Art, esp. pp. 106-20.
82
the late fifteenth century, for instance, shows figures copied with subtle changes from
Schongauer’s St Thomas and St John the Evangelist (figs 3.16-17) juxtaposed with a drawing of
one of the fourth-century Horse Tamer sculptures in Rome.28 Together they witness how both
antique sculptures and contemporary engravings were seen as objects equally worthy of
study.29 A more famous example of this process is a painting now in the Kimbell Art Museum
in Texas, copied from Martin Schongauer’s print The Temptation of Anthony. 30 This work is
possibly that celebrated by Condivi and Vasari as being by the young Michelangelo when he
was in the workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio and ‘made a pen drawing’ of the engraving and
‘then painted it’.31 By the end of the century this had become so common a practice in
Florence that Girolamo Savonarola utilised it as a metaphor in a sermon, saying: ‘if a pupil has
a print from a painter, which he has to paint, if he does not follow the order of that print, the
painter says: “you have made a mistake”’.32 But it was not only painters and engravers who
utilised such models: decorators of earthenware may have copied engravings as they did so
extensively in the sixteenth century for maiolica plates.33 A capped, bearded figure in the top
roundel an engraving probably inspired the bust on a maiolica drug jar from Montelupo in the
Florentine district (3.18-19).34 The central part of this print was completed in the sixteenth
century with a portrait of Aretino, but its border is from the fifteenth century, and probably by

28
Ibid., p. 114. For the drawing see Annamaria Petrioli Tofani (ed.), Tofani, Gabinetto disegni e stampe
degli Uffizi: Inventario 1: Disegni esposti, Florence, 1986, pp. 54-55, cat. no. 125 E.
29
For another drawing by Benozzo Gozzoli in metalpoint after the Horse Tamers (Dioscuri) sculptures,
see Chapman and Faietti, Fra Angelico to Leonardo, pp. 118-19, cat. no. 14.
30
Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, Critina Acidini Luchinat, James David Draper and Nicholas Penny (eds),
Giovinezza di Michelangelo, exh. cat., Palazzo Vecchio, Sala d’Arme, Florence, 1999-2000, Florence,
1999, pp.329-31; Nuttall, From Flanders to Florence, New Haven and London, pp. 140-42.
31
Milanesi, Le opere di Giorgio Vasari, vol. 7, p. 140: ‘...per che in Michelagnolo faceva ogni dì frutti più
divini, come apertamente cominciò a dimostrarsi nel ritratto che è fece di una carta di Martino Tedesco
stampata, che gli dette nome grandissimo: imperochè, essendo venuta in Firenze una storia del detto
Martino, quando i diavoli battano Santo Antonio, stampata in rame, Michelagnolo la ritrasse di penna di
maniera, che non era conosciuta, e quella medesima con i colori dipinse...’(‘To this Michelagnolo added
study and diligence so that he made progress daily, as we see by a copy of a print engraved by Martin
the German, which brought him great renown. When a copper engraving by Martin of St Anthony
beaten by the devils reached Florence, Michelagnolo made a pen drawing and then painted it’. Vasari,
The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 4, p. 110).
32
Landau and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, 1470-1500, p. 297.
33
Catherine Hess, Maiolica in the Making: the Gentili/Barnabei Archive, Los Angeles, 1999, pp. 13-14.
See also the maiolica plates in Bayer, Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, pp. 68-92. Some of the examples
cited here are dated to the 1470s and 1480s, and as Dora Thornton notes, bear iconographic similarities
with several Otto prints.
34
Dora Thornton and Timothy Wilson, Italian Renaissance Ceramics: A Catalogue of the British Museum
Collection, 2 vols, London, 2009, vol. 1, pp. 51-53, cat. no. 27. Thornton also notes other maiolica
objects possibly inspired by the Master of the Vienna Passion’s engraving, El Gran Turco (Hind, D.I.5), p.
52. For a recent assesment fo this print see Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 137. Zucker
disagrees with Hind that the roundels around the central portrait are a sixteenth-century copy of a
fifteenth-century print, suggesting that the impression is an extremely late second state from 1535-38,
for which an engraver added the portrait to the older plate.
83
an engraver from the Vienna Category. Impressions like the small round Fortune, on the other
hand, may have provided the iconographic basis for medals like that produced by the
goldsmith Niccolò Fiorentino in 1495 (figs. 3.20-21 )35

3.2. Prints in Florentine Manuscripts

Prints inside Book Covers and on Flyleaves

The richest evidence for how prints were employed in Florence is provided by the
manuscripts in which many were pasted, since they are set alongside texts that reveal how
their owners understood and manipulated their prints. Although there are instances of prints
interspersed through the leaves of books as discussed below, in the fifteenth century it was
more common to paste prints inside the front or back covers of the book (see Appendix).
There were varied motivations for doing this, however. The Florentine Girolamo di Pagholo
pasted the German metalcut, St Jerome in his Study (fig. 3.22), inside his anthology of religious
texts, but the image does not relate specifically to any of the written works included in it.36 The
print might have been a token of a Girolamo di Pagholo’s name saint who also exemplified the
pious qualities of his own scholarly activity. Other books feature prints positioned inside
manuscripts with no direct relationship to either the main text or to the identity of the owner.
The Master of the Vienna Passion’s Madonna of Loreto, representing the Virgin in her
miraculous house in Loreto, was juxtaposed with the Rubrica de verborum obligationibus of
Johannes de Imola, a Latin treatise on civil law.37 It may have been included as a form of
invocation to the Virgin.
In further examples, there is a clear relationship between the text and image. Inside
the cover of a manuscript containing Dante’s Commedia, the owner placed the engraving,
Dante as Poet of the Divine Comedy (fig. 1.99), where Dante is shown before the walls of
Florence alongside Hell and with Mount Purgatory and Earthly Paradise.38 The print thereby
provides a visual prelude to the first two canticles of the Commedia, while also associating the
poem and its author with Florence, possibly the home of the manuscript’s owner. The
Florentine print, The Ship of Fortune (fig. 3.23) was glued inside the cover of a fifteenth-

35
Flaten, ‘Portrait Medals and Assembly-Line Art in Late Quattrocento Florence’, pp. 127-39, esp. p. 130.
36
BNCF, MS. II.IV.51. The print is found under BNCF Banco Rari 352.1.
37
Zucker, ‘The Madonna of Loreto’, pp. 152-53. For Johannes de Imola see Annalisa Belloni, Professori
giuristi a Padova nel secolo XV, Frankfurt, 1986, pp. 63, 236-242.
38
Florence, BML, MS. Strozziano 148. See Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 50.
84
century copy of Boccaccio’s ll Filocolo.39 It shows show an almost naked man supporting the
sail of a ship as a female sits calmly at its edge. Above the ship are the words ‘I[o] mi laso
portare all fortuna speranda / alfin daver buona ventura’ (I let myself be carried by Fortune,
hoping until the end to have good luck), demonstrating that the ship is symbolic of the
vicissitudes of Fortune, even though it carries a male body rather than the usual female,
Fortuna (fig. 3.20).40 More specifically, Fortune is subject to the cruel and random power of
love: the sight of a beautiful woman propels the semi-nude male on as his ship is provoked by
Cupid’s dart and the winds of Love. Though unnoticed by either Aby Warburg or Edgar Wind,
the iconography relates very precisely to Boccaccio’s prologue, where the author employs the
same metaphor to introduce Fortune as a theme of his book:

Therefore, O youths who have directed the sails of your yearning spirits toward the
winds stirred and fanned by the gilded wings of Cytherea’s young son, while you linger
in the seas of love and desire to come safely to port by your chanted course, by that
same inestimable power of love, I beg you to turn your attention to this work, since
you will find in it how changing Fortune has given various stormy permutations to
loves of old, and yet subsequently returned her victims to calm seas.41

The print corresponds so closely to the passage in the Filocolo that the iconography may have
been derived from Boccaccio’s words.42 Like the introductory paragraph by Boccaccio to his
readers, the image, positioned inside the manuscript’s cover highlighted the themes of love,
beauty and chance that are central to the novella.43

39
The print is in BNCF, Banco Rari, 352.1. The book, from which the print was taken, is in BNCF, MS.
II.III.197. The book has been rebound and the original binding is stored under classmark Banco Rari 352.
40
These words are partially obscured in the British Museum impression of the print (illustrated, fig.
3.20), but are visible in the impression in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Florence.
41
Book I, chapter 2. Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Filocolo, trans. Donal Cheney, New York and London, 1985, p.
5. ‘Adunque, o giovani, i quali avete la vela della barca della vaga mente dirizzata a' venti che muovono
dalle dorate penne ventilanti del giovane figliuolo di Citerea, negli amorosi pelaghi dimoranti disiosi di
pervenire a porto di salute con istudioso passo, io per la sua inestimabile potenza vi priego che
divotamente prestiate alquanto alla presente opera lo 'ntelletto, però che voi in essa troverete quanto
la mobile fortuna abbia negli antichi amori date varie permutazioni e tempestose, alle quali poi con
tranquillo mare s'è lieta rivolta a' sostenitori; onde per questo potrete vedere voi soli non essere
sostenitori primi delle avverse cose, e fermamente credere di non dovere essere gli ultimi’. Giovanni
Boccaccio, Opere minori in volgare, ed. Mario Marti, 4 vols, Milan, 1969, vol. 1: Filocolo, p. 79.
42
This view is different from the opinions of Warburg and Wind who create elaborate reasons for the
unusual iconography. See Warburg, ‘Francesco Sassetti’s Last Injunctions to His Sons’, pp. 241-42; Wind,
‘Platonic Tyranny and the Renaissance Fortuna’, p. 492.
43
Nicolas H. Perella, ‘The World of Boccaccio’s Filocolo’, PMLA, vol. 74, no. 4, 1961, pp. 330-39, esp. pp.
331-33.
85
Prints in Margins and Between Leaves

Some manuscript owners integrated a number of prints within the pages of the texts.
Two fairly well known examples of this more creative appropriation of engravings and
woodcuts have been recently explored by David Areford in his book The Viewer and the
Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe. The first is a group of manuscripts copied and owned
by the German scholar and physician Hartmann Schedel from Nuremberg whose prints are
found alongside a range of religious, humanistic and medicinal texts.44 The second is
comprised of three secular manuscripts owned by the Paduan notary Jacopo Rubieri. Both
collectors were recipients of a humanist’s education, and used prints to decorate and illustrate
texts in distinct and personal ways.45 At the beginning of a treatise on heat and cold, for
example, Rubieri set an unrelated woodcut fragment with the figure of St Christopher against a
black background and within a border of stars (fig. 3.24). As Areford asserts, its inclusion here
may be connected with the saint’s status as patron saint of travellers and beginnings;
positioned at the opening of the manuscript, the figure symbolises the start of the reader’s
journey through the text.
These important manuscripts provide a context for the little studied manuscripts of
three Florentines who acquired, collected and pasted prints in manuscripts as an addition to
established methods of marking, compiling and illustrating texts in Florence. These include
one book belonging to an individual or institution devoted to the Archangel Raphael, two
manuscripts belonging to the notary Ser Piero Bonaccorsi (1410-1477), and a third manuscript
belonging to the blacksmith, Niccolò Tieri and his son Francesco.

The Raphael Prayer Book

A small, previously unpublished prayer book of the second half of the fifteenth century
in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, MS. II.XI.19 (henceforth described as the Raphael Prayer
Book), contains two round prints pasted alongside the text, both unrecorded by Hind or
Zucker. The first is a small circular engraving with a diameter of 56 mm showing the Archangel
Raphael guiding Tobias (fig. 3.25), which, by virtue of its shape, can be associated with the
round Otto prints. Its design is very similar to a larger round print in the British Museum (fig.
1.33), except for the costume and landscape. The second print is a very small circular

44
See Hernad, Die Graphiksammlung des Humanisten Hartmann Schedel, and Areford, The Viewer and
the Printed Image, pp. 107-09.
45
Ibid., Image, pp. 107-52.
86
impression with a diameter of 18mm, depicting Christ on the Cross, the Virgin and St John the
Evangelist (fig. 3.26). It was probably derived from a niello plate like the many roundels in the
British Museum with small figures set against a dark, densely cross-hatched background (fig.
3.27).46
The two prints are exciting additions to the corpus of Florentine engravings
accumulated by Hind and Zucker. But they are equally fascinating for the light they shed on
how engravings were incorporated alongside manuscript illustrations and religious texts, for
they are positioned on two folios of a manuscript containing prayers to Christ and to the
Virgin, Offices to the Virgin, to the Dead and to the Cross, as well as prayers directed to specific
holy figures, such as the Archangel Raphael and St Sebastian. In this respect the book can be
compared to Books of Hours that became increasingly popular in the fifteenth century across
Europe and which contained cycles of prayers such as the Hours of the Virgin, Hours of the
Cross and Office of the Dead as well as other prayers to individual saints.47 Its relationship
with Books of Hours, moreover, is reinforced by a number of pen, ink and wash drawings that
are set in spaces deliberately left between the texts. Before the mass of the Virgin there is a
detailed illustration of the Nativity of Christ (fol. 57v, fig. 3.28), an image typically associated
with the hour of Prime in the Hours of the Virgin.48 Further prayers to the Virgin, Christ and St
Sebastian are accompanied by drawings of the Assumption of the Virgin (70r), the
Annunciation (fol. 71v), the Crucifixion with Sts Francis and Jerome (fol. 41r, fig. 3.29) and the
Martyrdom of St Sebastian (folio 68r, fig. 3.30). Elsewhere portraits and figures of angels
simulate the historiated initials of manuscript illuminations (fol. 65r, fig. 3.31) and the first
letter of the Office of the Dead figures a skull and cross bone.
Particularly striking is a circular red monogram drawn on folio 19r (fig. 3.32) that is
surrounded by the words ‘Angelum nobis medicum salutis mite de celis ut o[mn]e[s] sanet
egro[tos]’ (Send from Heaven, the Angel, doctor of health, in order to heal all the sick). This
phrase is derived from a ninth-century hymn, ‘Christe, sanctorum decus angelorum’, which
celebrated the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, though this particular excerpt is
directed at Archangel Raphael whose healing powers are also celebrated in the story of
Raphael and Tobias depicted a few pages earlier. 49 The monogram itself is a configuration
around the central letters ‘T’ and the cross, ‘+’, which, given the association with Raphael, may

46
Hind, Nielli, cat. nos. 12, 13, 17-28, 30, 31, 35-34, 50-86, 107-132; Blum, Les nielles du Quattrocento,
cat. nos 40, 191, 193-95.
47
Roger S. Wieck, Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art, exh. cat.,
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1997-98, New York, 1997.
48
Ibid., p. 23.
49
Matthew Britt, The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal, New York, 1955, p. 289.
87
partly refer to Tobias. It can be compared to a similar type mark in a manuscript containing
the Rule of the Poor Clares belonging to the Monastery of Santa Margherita and Santa Maria
Magdalena in Arezzo where ‘S’ and ‘M refer to the convent’s titular saint, St Margherita (fig.
3.33).50 The Raphael monogram was possibly associated with the adult confraternity in
Florence devoted to Raphael at Santo Spirito, first recorded in 1454, and the letters around
this ‘T’, S T and S G, may indicate secondary saints associated with the brotherhood, perhaps
‘San Tomasso’ and ‘San Giovanni’.51
These drawings may have been commissioned from artists at less expense than paying
for richly coloured miniatures. Several manuscripts with the poetic satire Geta and Birria and
Aesop’s Fables, for instance, feature pen and ink drawings alongside the text, one of which
records that the seventy illustrations cost the owner 3.5 lire from the workshop of ‘Drea del
Verrocchio’ in 1463 (fig. 3.34).52 The drawings of the Raphael Prayer Book, with their poorly
defined perspectives and figures out of proportion with each other, are weaker than those in
the Verrocchio shop illustrations in Geta and Birria. But with their strong pen outlines and
modelling with wash, the drawings reflect the techniques and designs of Maso Finiguerra and
Antonio Pollaiuolo. The Martyrdom of Sebastian with its athletically poised and muscular
archer and gracefully suffering Sebastian, is possibly inspired by Pollaiuolo’s Martyrdom of St
Sebastian altarpiece of 1475 and the archer’s stance can be compared with Hercules in
Pollaiuolo’s Hercules, Nessus and Deineira.53 The angels and head of the Virgin, on the other
hand, can be linked with figures by the Verrocchio workshop, also active in the 1460s and
1470s.54 The manuscript may have been sent to be illustrated by one of these shops or, more
likely, the images were completed by a local cartolaio who wished to illustrate a book that he
had copied and bound. It was common for cartolai to complete various aspects of the making
of a book, including the binding, writing and illustration; Gherardo di Giovanni, for instance,

50
Adelaide Bennett, Jean F. Preston, William P. Stoneman, A Summary Guide to Western Medieval and
Renaissance Manuscripts at Princeton University, Princeton, 1991, p. 41.
51
I am grateful to Konrad Eisenbichler for this suggestion. For the confraternity, see John Henderson,
Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence, Oxford, 1994, p. 446. The youth confraternity devoted to
the same saint in Florence had a different monogram, with a ladder the letters ‘N’, ‘D’, ‘S’, ‘R’ and ‘A’.
See Konrad Eisenbichler, The Boys of the Archangel Raphael: A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411-
1785, Toronto, 1998, pl. 6.
52
Florence, BR, MS. 1591. See Scuricini Greco, Miniature Riccardiane, pp. 247-48, no. 244. Given that
the drawings in the manuscript are considerably weaker than those associated with Verrocchio, it has
been suggested that they were produced by less skilled artists based in his workshop. David Alan Brown,
Leonardo da Vinci: Origins of a Genius, New Haven and London, 1998, p. 176, n. 25 and Kent, Cosimo de’
Medici and the Florentine Renaissance, p. 76.
53
See Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, pp. 208-25 (Martyrdom of St Sebastian), pp. 98-102 (Hercules,
Nessus and Deianira). I am grateful to Alison Wright for discussing these drawings with me.
54
See, for instance, Verrocchio’s Raphael and Tobias in the National Gallery, London and The Virgin in
Adoration in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. Dario A. Covi, Andrea del Verrocchio: Life and
Work, Florence, 2005, pls 204, 208.
88
was a cartolaio who bound and had copied manuscripts, but who also was an expert
illuminator.55 The lettering of this script around the monogram is the same as that used for
the capitals in the main text, suggesting that scribe was also the illustrator.
The two engravings complement this visual-verbal programme. The first engraving is
affixed on folio 15r in a space immediately prior to the prayer commemorating the Archangel
Raphael, thereby providing a focus for the prayer’s petitions and a sign of the angel’s
protective power. Set within the middle of the page on folio 15r, the Raphael and Tobias
engraving was, like the drawings, intended to be in the book from the early days of its
production. Likewise, the Crucifixion niello print was pasted on folio 53r, alongside the Office
of the Cross which, in Books of Hours was conventionally preceded by an image of the
Crucifixion.56 Although it was not placed in a reserved space between prayers or within an
initial, it is positioned in the generous margin – a margin found on each page of the book –
where it evokes the roundels with portraits and narratives scenes that were included in the
borders of many Italian illuminated manuscripts in the period. A manuscript by Ser Ricciardo
di Nanni, for example, shows a small roundel with an image of the Lamb of God in centre of
the bas-de-page (fig. 3.35).
In this respect the engravings are comparable to prints in several manuscripts from
Northern Europe recently studied by Ursula Weekes where they were employed as
alternatives to hand-drawn illuminations. A vernacular prayer book, for instance, dated to the
early 1460s, contains a range of para-liturgical texts such as offices, masses, hymns, prayers,
indulgences, excerpts from Gospels and Passion narratives.57 Alongside the many prayers are
twenty-five small engravings and metalcuts each measuring around 68 x 48mm, hand-coloured
and surrounded by elaborate decorative borders like those often found in illuminated
manuscripts from the area (fig 3.36). On the folio opposite prayers for the Assumption of the
Virgin, a print was cut and pasted showing the Coronation of the Virgin, and prints of the
stigmatisation of St Francis, St Vincent, St Dorothy St Margaret, St Elizabeth, St Barbara and St
Lucy were positioned opposite prayers to these saints.
In the Raphael Prayer Book, the two circular engravings are distinct from the drawn
illustrations by virtue of their shape and medium. This may have been deliberate, for the use
of an engraving (as opposed to a drawing) to illustrate the prayer to Archangel Raphael
immediately differentiates it from the later images in the book and emphasises the importance

55
Albinia C. de la Mare, ‘The Book Trade’ pt. 2 of ‘Bartolomeo Scala’s Dealing with Booksellers, Scribes
and Illuminators, 1459-63’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 39, 1976, pp. 239-45
and Rouse and Rouse, Cartolai, Illuminators, and Printers in Fifteenth-century Italy.
56
Wieck, Painted Prayers, p. 81.
57
Weekes, Early Engravers and their Public, pp. 101-19, 294-98.
89
of Raphael to the book’s owner. It is given even further impact by its symmetry with the
circular monogram positioned just a few folios after it on folio 19r. Since the rim of the
monogram is only slightly larger than that of the engraving, it is feasible that this emblem was
designed to correlate with the representation of the Raphael with Tobias (figs. 3.37-38). Seen
together, the print and the monogram can be compared with the two faces of doubled-sided
pendants or ‘agnusdei’ that became increasingly popular in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries as protective amulets.58 On one side they depict a sacred figure and on the reverse
they were often inscribed with a monogram or prayer that enhanced their apotropaic or
invocatory function. An Agnus Dei pendant, for example, shows the Lamb of God on one side
and the monogram of Christ on its reverse (figs. 3.39-40). Another medallion shows the
Veronica and the words ‘Agnie [sic] Dei miserere mei qui crimna tollis’ (Lamb of God, who
takes away sins, have mercy on me) on the other side (figs. 3.41-42).59 Words and image
combine on the pendants to commemorate and entreat a holy figure and to protect the
person who carried it.
The drawing of the monogram of Raphael on folio 19r is not completed in a way that
directly alludes to the metallic, three dimensional surface of a medallion. But the spherical
shape, the image of Raphael and the verse in supplication to Raphael around the monogram
evoke the double-sided pendants, and at the least, visualise and celebrate the saint in a similar
way. For, although a large number of these pendants are dedicated to Christ and, in
particular, to the Lamb of God, medallions were also devoted to saints and other holy figures
who might likewise offer protection, such as the Archangel Raphael. A pendant in the British
Museum, for instance, depicts the three Archangels Gabriel, Michael and Raphael on one side
and St Bernard of Clairvaux on the reverse (fig. 3.43).
The niello Crucifixion print also, if not more so, recalls such medals, coins and pilgrim
badges. With the dense cross hatching applied to show the darkness of the night sky, it
resembles the small round silver plates inlaid with niello from which such prints were made. It
was not uncommon for such objects, moreover, to be stuck inside manuscripts as souvenirs of
pilgrimage or spiritual tokens. In one of Jacopo Rubieri’s manuscripts, a badge displaying the
Archangel Michael was fixed inside the cover of his book between 1460 and 1480. In the
Southern Netherlands and North of France, roundels were often stitched into pages (fig.

58
Ronald W. Lightbown, Medieval European Jewellery, London, 1992, pp. 210-13. For amulets and
talismans, see also pp. 96-100.
59
Hind, Nielli, p. 37, cat. nos. 114 and 127. See also Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and
Ritual in Reniassance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane, Chicago and London, 1985, pp. 149-50 and John
Cherry, ‘Containers for Agnus Deis’, in Chris Entwistle (ed.), Through a Glass Brightly: Studies in
Byzantine and Medieval Art and Archaeology Presented to David Buckton, Oxford, 2003, pp. 172-74.
90
3.44).60 The habit was evidently widespread, since towards the end of the century several
Northern European illuminators created trompe l’oeil versions of these tokens in the border of
prayer books (fig. 3.45).61 In a slightly more elaborate and erudite fashion, Francesco Rosselli
simulated medallions and coins in the borders of his illuminated manuscripts, albeit they are
more commemorative ornaments in an all’antica style than vestiges of sacred tokens (figs.
3.46-47).62 The Crucifixion print may purposefully evoke a more expensive and sacred object in
a similar way. Stuck onto the page and made through the technique of engraving onto metal,
the niello print imitates this practice more successfully than a painted or drawn roundel.

Piero Bonaccorsi’s Quadragesimale and Opuscula Augustini et Hyeronim

The prints and manuscripts owned by the notary Ser Piero Bonaccorsi (1410-1474) are
the best studied of the three case studies presented here. 63 In 1936 Lamberto Donati
identified four engraved, coloured fragments in a manuscript, the Quadragesimale, written by
Bonaccorsi in 1464 and held in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence.64 In 1984, Claudio
Ciociola, who studied Bonaccorsi’s literary works and scriptorium, linked four engravings in the
Uffizi with another manuscript compiled by Bonaccorsi.65 Containing a collection of patristic
texts and subsequently entitled the Opuscula Augustini et Hyeronim, it was completed not long
after 1459 and shows the traces of the glue employed to adhere the prints to the page. In
total, eight manuscripts have been found by Bonaccorsi’s hand, including the Quadragesimale

60
Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image, pp. 113-16; Weekes, Early Engravers and their Public, pp.
182-83.
61
Kurt Köster, ‘Religiöse Medaillen und Wallfahrts-Devotionalien in der flämischen Buchmalerei des 15.
und frühen 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Hans Striedl and Joachim Wieder (eds), Buch und Welt: Festschrift für
Güstav Hofmann zum 65. Gerburtstag dargebracht, Wiesbaden, 1965, pp. 495-504 and Kurt Köster,
‘Gemälte Kollektionen von Pilgerzeichen und relgiösen Medaillen in flämischen Gebet- und
Stundenbüchern des 15. und frühen 16. Jahrhunderts: Neue Funde in Handschriften der Gent-Brügger
Schule’, in Fran Vanwijngaerden, Jean-Marie Duvosquel, Josette Mélard, Lieve Viaene-Awouters (eds),
Liber amicorum Herman Liebaers, Brussels, 1984, pp. 485-535.
62
Garzelli, Miniatura fiorentina del rinascimento, vol. 1, p. 183.
63
For biographical details of Bonaccorsi see G. Bruschi, ‘Ser Piero Bonaccorsi e il suo Cammino di Dante’,
Il Propugnatore, vol. 4, no. 1, 1891, pp. 5-39, 308-48; Ciociola, ‘Lo scrittoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino’,
pp. 68-69, n. 2; Stéphane Toussaint, De l’enfer a la coupole: Dante, Brunelleschi et Ficin: À propos des
‘codici Caetani di Dante’, Rome, 1997, pp. 44-45, 56-69.
64
Lamberto Donati, ‘Iter iconographicum’, Maso Finiguerra, vol. 1, 1936, pp. 97-147, 126-47.
65
Claudio Ciociola, ‘Ornamentazione calcografica (restuita) di un autografo di Piero Bonaccorsi’, La
Bibliofilia, vol. 84, no. 2, 1984, pp. 109-41.
91
and the Opuscula Augustini et Hyeronim, in addition to his notarial documents now in the
Florentine State Archive.66

Manuscript Contents Date

BML, Laur. 90 Tratatello in laude di Dante, Letters to Fra Romolo, 1440
sup. 131 Dante’s Paradiso, Cammino di Dante, Vita di Dante, Vita
di Petrarca, canzone of Petrarch, sonnet of Dante
BML, Laur. Redi 3 Cammino di Dante, Vita di Dante, Vita di Petrarca (Copy After 1436
by Giovanni Berti?)
BNCF, Magl. Cammino di Dante
VII.1104
BR 1038 Cammino di Dante 1450-1500
BR 1122 Cammino di Dante
Archi. Caetani, Cammino di Dante
Misc. 1198/1222
BNCF, Pal. 704 Tractato di sustantie Early 1460s?
BR 1402 Quadragesimale c. 1464
BNCF, NA 3 Texts by Pseudo-Augustine, Pseudo-Bernard, St Jerome, After
St Augustine, Pseudo-Eusebius, Hugh of St Victor et al. 1459/early
[Opuscula Augustini et Hyeronim] 1460s
Table 1. Manuscripts with texts written or copied by Piero Bonaccorsi

All of these manuscripts display Bonaccorsi’s fascination with cataloguing and

understanding the world around him, as well as his penchant for the works of Dante and the
Latin Church Fathers. The Cammino di Dante, his most copied work, provides an explanation
of the geography and chronology of Dante’s Commedia; the Tractato di sustantie is an
encyclopaedic tract describing the various substances of the world: animal, vegetal and
mineral.67 The Quadragesimale, written by Bonaccorsi in what he called ‘rhymed prose’,
recounts a visionary journey inspired by Dante, in which, on the days leading up to Easter, the
author was led by the figure of Fulgentia to Mount Parnassus and Paradise.68 Finally, the
Opuscula Augustini et Hyeronim features a collection of works by the Church Fathers, including
the Pseudo Augustine’s Liber de anima et spiritu, a text now attributed to Alcher of Clairvaux,

66
The information in the table below is garnered from Massimo Seriacopi, ‘Sulla Ricezione di Dante nel
Quattrocento: Leonardo Bruni e Piero Bonaccorsi’, Humanistica, vol. 3, no. 1, 2008, pp. 63-75; Ciociola,
‘Lo scrittoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino’ and Ciociola, ‘Ornamentazione calcografica’.
67
For the Cammino di Dante see Bruschi, ‘Ser Piero Bonaccorsi e il suo Cammino di Dante’; Ciociola, ‘Lo
scrittoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino”, pp. 69-83 and Seriacopi, ‘Sulla ricezione di Dante nel
Quattrocento’. For the Tractato di sustantie see Ciociola, ‘Lo scrittoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino’, pp.
67-69, n.1, 101-111.
68
Salomone Morpurgo (ed.), I manoscritti della R. Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze: Manoscritti italiani,
Rome, 1900, pp. 443-443. See Ciociola, ‘Lo scirttoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino’, pp. 96-100.
92
several letters and works by Augustine, Jerome, Bernard of Clairvaux, and texts by writers
pretending to be Augustine, Eusebius and Cyril.69
The four print cuttings in the Quadragesimale and one fragment in the Opuscula
probably derived from a single engraving depicting Petrarch’s Triumph of Divinity and are each
coloured with a bright blue and a yellow-gold paint.70 On folio 15r of the Quadragesimale,
Bonaccorsi pasted a fragment of the Tree of Knowledge and an angel brandishing the sword
(fig. 3.48). On folios 4v and 14r, two trumpet-playing angels are placed in the margin (fig.
3.49), while a further fragment showing God the Father above a globe, was pasted on folio
141v of the Opuscula after a letter by the Pseudo-Bernard to Raymond (fig. 3.50).71 No other
impression of the original print survives to show how the fragments fitted together, but similar
engravings with the same motifs by the Master of the Vienna Passion allowed Lamberto Donati
to reconstruct it (fig. 3.51). The apparition of God the Father, on top of a chariot led by the
four symbols of the Evangelists, was positioned at the centre of the print facing the viewer,
while the temptation of Adam and Eve at the Tree of Knowledge was figured in the top right
with the angel bearing a sword hovering above, ready to expel the sinners from Paradise. The
two trumpet-playing angels do not feature in the smaller impression of the Triumph of Divinity,
but plausibly formed part of the lost larger version, as Donati’s reconstruction demonstrates.
The other three engravings from the Opuscula were not cut up. On folio 60v
Bonaccorsi placed an impression of the Master of the Vienna Passion’s St Jerome in Penitence
(fig. 3.52), which, like the Triumph of Divinity fragments, retains traces of yellow-gold paint on
the sun and on the mane of the lion.72 The two final prints are unique impressions by
unknown Florentine engravers whose style is not consistent with either the Master of the
Vienna Passion and his followers or the Dante Workshop. Inside the opening cover Bonaccorsi
pasted a full page engraving representing the Assumption of the Virgin with St Thomas
reaching for the girdle as it falls towards him (fig. 3.53). The second print, the Ascension of
Christ, was glued on the verso of folio 1, immediately after the contents page of the
manuscript (fig. 3.54) and shows Christ ascending into Heaven as the disciples look up at him.

69
Ciociola, ‘Lo scrittoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino’, pp. 92-96, 100-01 and Ciociola, ‘Ornamentazione
calcografica (restuita) di un autografo di Piero Bonaccorsi’.
70
Donati, ‘Iter Iconographicum’, vol. 1, pp. 126-47; Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 31 and vol. 5,
p. 307; Ciociola, ‘Ornamentazione calcografica’, pp. 112-16; Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1,
pp. 45-47; Toussaint, ‘De l’enfer à la coupole’, p. 85.
71
For the engravings in the Uffizi, see Augusto Calabi, ‘Raccolte italiane di stampe, II. Gli Uffizii: Opere
ignote o malnote dell’incisione su metallo del ‘400 italiano’, Bolletino d’arte del Ministero della Pubblica
Istruzione, vol. 6, 1926-27, pp. 49-64, pp. 49-53; Antony de Witt, La collezione delle stampe: R. Galleria
degli Uffizi, Rome, 1938, pp. 13-14, cat. nos. 129-31; Ciociola, ‘Ornamentazione calcografica di un
autografo di Piero Bonaccorsi’, pp. 120-30.
72
Another impression of the engraving in the British Museum was removed from the inside cover of an
unknown fourteenth-century manuscript. Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 40.
93
Both of these prints were decorated with the same blue and gold pigments adopted to
decorate the Triumph of Divinity cuttings, and since the colours were also employed for the
first initial in the Opuscula, it is likely that Bonaccorsi himself applied colours to the prints.73
In each manuscript, however, the prints are presented on the page with contrasting
effects. In the first they are placed in the margins of Bonaccorsi’s text, while in the second
they are interspersed with the patristic works in the available blank spaces. In the following
analysis, the manuscripts will be considered separately to show how Bonaccorsi integrated his
prints with his own textual marks and illustrations in a manner that relates to contemporary
manuscript culture in Florence.

Cut Engravings as Marginalia in the Quadragesimale

Pasted in the margins of the book, the fragments pasted in the Quadragesimale bear
striking comparison with the many marginal notes, marks and images that decorate
Bonaccorsi’s manuscripts, and which were self-consciously employed to enhance the meaning
of the words. In the introduction to the Quadragesimale, Bonaccorsi explains his marginalia
with the metaphor of jewelled ornaments that enrich the reading of the text:

[..] my author, seeing me write in the vernacular, in order to make myself more
pleasing and appealing not only to those reading the Italian but also to those able to
read Latin, had me decorate [‘hornata’] my face and head with certain jewels and
notable Latin sayings, with some maxims, authorities and doctrine of the most sacred
and wise doctors. 74

Here Bonaccorsi draws on Ciceronian theory of rhetoric so popular amongst

contemporary humanists, and one aspect in particular, elocutio (style). Alongside correctness,
clearness, appropriateness, a key component of elocutio was ornatus (ornament), an effect
achieved through figures of speech, tropes and rhythms of speech that could in turn stimulate
delight (delectare) in listeners and readers.75 Leonardo Bruni, for instance, in his letter De
studiis et litteris written to Battista Malatesta between 1422 and 1429 proclaims the power of
the orator to arouse the soul of the listener through his treasury of ornaments: ‘These

73
BNCF, MS. Nuovi Acquisti 3, fol. 2r.
74
‘il mio autore, che veggiendomi vulghare, per farmi più grata et più dilecta, non solo a’ vulghari ma
anchora a latini, m'a, hornata la faccia et la mia testa, di certi gioelli et latini notabili, d'alquante
sententie, autorità et doctrine, di più sacri santi et savij doctori. Florence, BR, MS. 1402. fol. 1v. See also
Ciociola, ‘Los scrittoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino’, p. 97, n. 116.
75
Wolfgang G. Müller, ‘Style’ in Thomas O. Sloane (ed.), Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, Oxford, 2001, pp. 745-
57, p. 746.
94
ornaments of words and thoughts, that like stars and torches illuminate a speech and make it
marvellous, are the instruments of the orator’.76 Although the metaphor of illumination would
have appealed to Bonaccorsi with its connotations of intellectual vision and beatific sight, this
quality was more often explained as clothing or jewellery. In a word of caution about
ornamentation, Bruni declared that ‘One needs such an ornamentation in a laudatory speech
only when the virtues and actions in themselves are not attractive enough, as women who
have no beauty of their own rely most of all upon cosmetics and jewellery’.77 Buonaccorsi
evidently is alluding to this metaphor, comparing his text to a face, and his marginalia to
jewels.
Often these ‘jewels’ are relevant Latin quotations from the works of theologians; in
other places they are vernacular records of personal or social interaction with the facts or
themes of the book. In the Opuscula, for instance, Bonaccorsi records the death and burial of
Archbishop of Florence, Antoninus in 1459 in Santa Maria Novella. But although Bonaccorsi’s
introduction only explicitly refers to written marginalia, the borders of his pages are filled with
marks and illustrations that might equally be termed ‘jewels’. In the Opuscula, a pointing
hand or manicule (manicula), a small portrait sketch in pen and ink, and the word ‘nota’ are
examples of the marks applied by the author to highlight specific passages (fig. 3.55). Many of
these are typical of the traditional markings that appeared in manuscripts which allowed the
text and its contents to be directed towards the interests of the owner (figs. 3.56-57).78
William Sherman, in his history of the manicule refers to the ‘lifelike manicules’ drawn by
Italian humanists such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sozomeno of Pistoia and Bernardo Bembo in
their books.79
At other points, Bonaccorsi’s texts are supplemented by complex diagrams and pictures
drawn and coloured by Bonaccorsi himself. In the Cammino di Dante, the pages are decorated
with cosmographical diagrams (fig. 3.58-59). In the Tractato di Sustantie Bonaccorsi
supplemented his description of the physical world with a large number of coloured and
labelled illustrations of animals, minerals and plants as well as astronomical drawings (figs.

76
‘Iam vero illa verborum sentientiarumque ornamenta, que tamquam stelle quedam et faces
orationem illuminant et admirabilem reddunt, instrumenta oratorum propria sunt.’ Leonardo Bruni,
Opere letterarie e politiche, ed. Paolo Viti, Turin, 1996, p. 264.
77
‘Illis enim huiuscemodi ornatu opus est, quorum virtutes, ac res gestae satis per se ipsas formosae non
sunt, ut mulieres videmus illas maxime fuco ornatuque inniti, quae sua ac vera pulchritudine carent.’
Quoted in Hanna-Barbara Gerl, ‘Ornatus in Leonardo Bruni’, Philosophy and Rhetoric, vol. 11, no. 3,
1978, pp. 178-90, p. 179.
78
For a thorough analysis of such marks in Renaissance books in England, see William H. Sherman, Used
Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England, Philadelphia, 2008.
79
Sherman, Used Books, p. 35, fig. 11, p. 36. See also Albinia C. de la Mare, The Handwriting of Italian
Humanists, Oxford, 1973, pp. 8, 20.
95
3.60-61). At the start of his Cammino di Dante, alongside a map of Hell, he explicitly explains
the function of such images as tools for explaining and reinforcing complex ideas: he declares
that ‘questa semplice figura’ (this simple figure) was made as ‘un pocho d’introductione’ (a
small introduction).80 The diagram is therefore a guide facilitating the reader’s experience of
the journey described in the text. His choice of the word ‘figura’ is significant here, since it
explicitly relates the drawings to a rhetorical figura (figure) – a changed sequence of thoughts
or words such as ellipsis – contrived to add ornament to words.81
Bonaccorsi’s marginal illustrations are by no means unusual, even if they are more
abundant than in many other manuscripts. Florentine school children and adults illustrated
and marked their manuscripts with small, rough illustrations and doodles; folio 88v of the
manuscript owned by the Tieri family, for instance, exhibits an elaborate organic pattern of
swirling foliage (fig. 3.62). In a book containing the Life of St John the Baptist of 1409, on the
other hand, an illustration of two devotees praying at the saint’s tomb was added in the
bottom margin (fig. 3.63). 82 With their erudite content, Bonaccorsi’s illustrations compare
with the manuscripts of authors who used diagrams to explain their astronomical,
architectural or mathematical texts. Mariano Taccola, Francesco di Giorgio, and Francesco
Filarete all included numerous illustrations of their designs and theories in a manner
comparable to the drawings of Bonaccorsi (figs 3.64-65), even if the quality of their execution
is considerably higher.83
The appropriation and application of engravings in the manuscripts can be understood
within this context of this ‘visual thinking’ or ‘visual reading’, where marks, figures and
diagrams interact with words to explain meaning. The depiction of Adam and Eve is positioned
so that it illustrates Fulgentia’s description of Good and Evil, visualising the Biblical moment
from which Good and Evil sprung and which is mentioned or referred to in the text (fig. 3.66).
Likewise, the trumpeting angel on folio 4v represents the allegorical figure of Musica as she
appeared to the author on Mount Parnassus on the one hand, while the similar angel on folio
14r (fig. 3.67) blows a trumpet which like a manicule, draws attention to the passage on folio

80
BNCF, MS. VII. 1104, fol. 1v.
81
Müller, ‘Style’, pp. 746-47.
82
Florence, BNCF MS. II.II.445. ‘Vita di S. Giovanni Battista in volgare con disegni, scritta da Zanobi di
Paolo d’Agnolo Perino nel 1409’ is inscribed on fol. 1r.
83
For illustrations to Mariano Taccola’s De ingeneis (1433-49) and De machinis (1449) see Bernhard
Degenhart and Annegrit Schmitt, Corpus der Italienischen Zeichnungen 1300-1450, 2 vols, Berlin, 1968-
1982, vol. 2.4. For Filarete’s Libro architettonico (c. 1465, now in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale,
Florence), see Degengart and Schmitt, Corpus der italienischen Zeichnungen, vol. 1.2, pp. 567-73. For
Francesco di Giorgio’s Trattato di architettura (c. 1470), now in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin all
included numerous diagrams and marginal illustrations, see Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Trattati di
architettura, ingegneria e arte militare, ed. Corrado Maltese, 2 vols, Milan, 1967, vol. 1, p. 253.
96
14r, ‘a questa miseria non è soctoposta, la natura angelicha perche non a ingnorantia’ (angelic
knowledge is not subject to this misery, because it has no ignorance).
But why would Bonaccorsi choose to paste in fragmented prints rather than provide
his own hand-coloured, purposely designed drawings that are more directly illustrative of his
story? The printed illustrations do not provide diagrammatic explanations of the text that are
as clear as most of Bonaccorsi’s own pictures, nor are they necessary to convey his meaning.
The answer may reside in Bonaccorsi’s theory of ornamentation and embellishment and the
comparison of his marginalia to jewels. For, although the printed images are coloured to
conform to the scheme of the drawings, they are obviously distinct from the illustrations
drawn directly on the page by Bonaccorsi. On separate sheets glued down onto the page and
with a design completed through the new technique of engraving, they stand out as being
from a different origin, a souvenir of another author. Just as the marginal quotations, his
‘jewels’, are taken from other Latin texts to delight the reader and clothe Bonaccorsi’s work in
a historical tradition of scholarship, so the engraved images, made by another artist for a
different purpose, embellish Bonaccorsi’s words. Furthermore, the ludic and inventive aspect
of cutting and pasting these marginalia should not be ignored; they exhibit a playful linking of
text and image and a creative reinvention of an older graphic tradition of book illustration and
manicules.

Prints in the Opuscula: Visualising God and the Heavens

In the Opuscula Augustini et Hyeronim, Bonaccorsi displays another way of

incorporating his collected prints in a different type of manuscript. The engravings are not cut
into fragments and fitted into the margins alongside relevant text, but are allocated their own
separate space on the page. Secondly three of them are given written captions that identify
the subject as they were understood by Bonaccorsi. On the tomb of the Virgin in the
Assumption (fig. 3.53), Bonaccorsi wrote in his own hand, ‘Assumptio Marie V[ir]ginis in celum’
(Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven). Beneath the Ascension of Christ pasted on folio
1v (fig. 3.68), he labelled the engraving: ‘Ascensio y[es]u [Christ]i in celu[m]’ (the Ascension of
Jesus Christ into Heaven). On the left of the St Jerome in Penitence on folio 60v he wrote
‘S[an]c[t]us Ieronimus contempla[n]s Cruciefissum’ (St Jerome contemplating the crucifix) (fig.
3.52). There is also a weaker relationship between text and image, with the prints evoking
only generally the themes of the written works and the wider scholarly and theological
interests of Bonaccorsi. In this respect the application of prints is more akin to that in the

97
books of Hartmann Schedel and Jacopo Rubieri where the prints do not always illustrate or
emphasise the precise meaning of the texts.
The closest relationship between written words and printed image occurs in the
placement of the St Jerome in Penitence on a folio immediately preceding epistolary accounts
of Jerome’s death. In the letter by the Pseudo-Eusebius beginning on folio 61r, the author
recounts how Jerome, realising that he was soon to die, prepared a tomb, carried out the
typical prayers and admonitions, and was given his last communion, a scene painted by
Botticelli for Francesco del Pugliese in the closing years of the century.84 On seeing the
sacrament before him, Jerome passed into a penitential state, crying, beating his chest and
sighing at the sight. As soon as he had received the Host, Jerome lay on the ground and
suddenly an intense, dazzling light shone as candescent angels moved around him.85 The
passage underlines the importance of looking at the body of Christ in this process: it is the
sight of the body of Christ in the sacrament that causes Jerome’s miraculous vision of light and
angels, and which initiates his ascent towards Christ in Heaven. This is not the moment
depicted in the print, whose source is thought to be from another letter, written to Eustochius
and attributed to Jerome, in which the author describes his self-mortification and penitence in
the wilderness. 86 But the engraving highlights several key aspects of Jerome as he appears in
the Pseudo-Eusebius letter in the Opuscula: his contemplative behaviour, the centrality of the
image of Christ, and the importance of penitence in his last moments. By titling the print
‘Jerome contemplating the crucifix’, Bonaccorsi reframes the iconography of the image to suit
the visionary qualities of Jerome at his last Communion.
The final three prints are only broadly related to the themes of the book. The large,
central fragment of the Triumph of Divinity showing God the Father in triumph is consistent
with the overarching religious theme, but its links with the works alongside which it is shown
are tangential. It is comes after a letter by the Pseudo-Bernard to Raymond offering guidance
on family life and before Hugh of St Victor’s Soliloquy on the Earnest Money Soul, neither of
which discusses the visio Dei or the Last Judgement, themes for which the engraving might be

84
Herbert P. Horne, Alessandro Filipepi commonly called Sandro Botticelli, Painter of Florence, London,
1908, pp. 174–77; Ronald W. Lightbown, Sandro Botticelli, 2 vols, Berkeley, 1978, vol. 1, pp. 120–22, pl.
45; vol. 2, pp. 86–87, cat. no. B78.
85
Horne, Alessandro Filipepi, London, 1908, pp. 175-76.
86
See Millard Meiss, ‘Scholarship and Penitence in the Early Renaissance: The Image of St Jerome’,
Pantheon, vol. 32, no. 2, 1974, pp. 134-40; Daniel Russo, Saint Jérome en Italie: Étude d'iconographie et
de spiritualité (XIIIe-XVe siècle), Paris, 1987, pp. 201-221; Christiane Wiebel, Askese un
Englichkeitsdemut in der italienischen Renaissance: ikonologische Studien zum Bild des heiligen
Hieronymus, Weinheim, 1988, pp. 17-64. The letter is published as Letter XXII in Philip Schaff (ed.),
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 28 vols, New York, 1886-1900, vol. 6, p. 24.
98
a suitable image. The specific location of the print may rather be accounted for by the fact
that it was the appropriate size to fill an otherwise empty space (fig. 3.69-70).
The Assumption of the Virgin and the Ascension of Christ are positioned before the first
text in the anthology, Alcher of Clairvaux’s De spiritu et anima liber which outlines the nature
of the soul and the spirit but which is not directly concerned with the life of either Christ or the
Virgin. Nevertheless, the depictions of an ascent into heaven by Christ and the Virgin are
consistent with the twin interests in the visualisation of, and ascent to, Paradise, which
continually recur in Bonaccorsi’s oeuvre. Firstly, Bonaccorsi was fascinated about how the
immaterial and invisible world of Heaven could be explained. In the Quadragesimale he
composed a number of highly complex diagrams of the hierarchies of heaven, in which he
showed the disposition of the angels, the spheres and placement of the Virgin and Christ. One
page, for example, figures the Trinity and the Virgin in the angelic circles, set within a
mandorla and accompanied extensive textual descriptions (fig. 3.71). In the opening to the
Cammino di Dante Bonaccorsi acknowledged that his depictions were not accurate as they
would appear to the physical eye, but that they prompted the ‘eye of the intellect’ to grasp
them more fully.87 The Assumption of the Virgin and the Ascension of Christ are analogous to
this type of drawing since they both represent schematic depictions of the heavens. The angels
in the Assumption are presented hierarchically in four tiers, each of which shows angels
praying, playing music and singing. Above the figure of the Virgin encased in a vibrant
mandorla of zig-zagged rays of light, is God the Father and the dove of the Holy Spirit.
Secondly, the two prints depict the physical and spiritual ascent of the Virgin and Christ
towards Heaven, and are thereby related to Bonaccorsi’s interest in the contemplative
progression towards a vision of God. The theme of ascent is central to Dante’s Commedia, the
Cammino di Dante and the Quadragesimale, where the authors are led up mountains before
being taken through the spheres of Heaven. Ascent is also a concern of Alcher of Clairvaux’s De
spiritu et anima liber, the Opuscula’s first text, for the author outlines the seven steps of the
soul in ascent from the temporal world to the eternal supernatural world of God and the
beatific vision.88 Seen in parallel with these works, the passage of the Virgin and Christ
depicted in the two engravings can be seen as precedents of the universal journey of the

87
‘Questa figura dello inferno non si può porre ne depingere in aspecto piano per modo che coll’ochio
corporale si possa vedere tucto. E però e nicistà considerarlo e vederlo coll’ochio dello intellecto’.
Florence, BR, MS. 1122, fol. 1v.
88
Frances Carmel Regan, A Study of the Liber de Spiritu et Anima: Its Doctrine, Sources and Historical
Significance, PhD Thesis, University of Toronto, 1948, pp. 152-74.
99
contemplative soul. This was especially appropriate, since in the work of earlier Christian
scholars, the Virgin was often symbolic of the soul’s ascent towards God.89
Bonaccorsi was not the only person to link the iconography of the Assumption of the
Virgin with an interest in allegorical spiritual journeys. The same motives were probably at
work in the commissioning of Assumption of the Virgin (fig. 3.72) that Matteo Palmieri (1406-
75) had made by Francesco Botticini between 1475 and 1480 for his chapel in San Pier
Maggiore.90 Palmieri had written his own allegorical poem in imitation of Dante’s Commedia,
La Città di Vita, between 1455 and 1464 roughly the same time of the composition of
Bonaccorsi’s Quadragesimale. Here, the author is guided through the underworld and
Purgatory by the Cumaean Sibyl and through Paradise by an angel in a way that compares with
Bonaccorsi’s ascent up Mount Parnassus and through Paradise, guided not by a Sibyl, but by
Fulgentia.91 The Città di Vita may even have directly inspired Bonaccorsi’s work, for he cites it
in the margin of his Cammino di Dante and Palmieri and Bonaccorsi, of similar age, knew each
other.92
Like Bonaccorsi, Palmieri employed images to convey his ideas, albeit through more
expensive media. The illuminated manuscript of Palmieri’s Città di Vita, now in the Biblioteca
Laurenziana, includes miniatures of angels and a cosmographical diagram by Botticini
completed between 1472 and 1473 (figs. 3.73-74).93 But his interest in the iconography of the
Assumption of the Virgin is especially relevant, for like Bonaccorsi, he saw the story as an
opportunity to explore, visually, his scholarly interests. Although the large Assumption
altarpiece is not a direct illustration of Palmieri’s poem, it reflects the theological aspirations of

89
See Ann W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages, Ithaca, 1990, pp. 43-104, where the Bride in
The Song of Songs was interpreted both as the Virgin and as the soul.
90
For the altarpiece, see Rolf Bagemihl, ‘Francesco Botticini’s Palmieri Altar-piece’, The Burlington
Magazine, vol. 138, no. 1118, May 1996, pp. 308-14. In the tax return of Ser Piero and his brothers
Lionardo, Giuliano and Antonio in 1430, they recorded ‘Matteo Palmieri dee avere due fiorini’. ASF,
Catasto, vol. 384, fol. 828v. Three years later the debt had risen to five florins. ASF, Catasto 475, fol.
61v, Ciociola, ‘Lo scrittoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino’, p. 83. Amanda Lillie has recently highlighted the
1480 tax return of Palmieri’s family that mentions the making of the chapel and its altarpiece in San Pier
Maggiore. Amanda Lillie, ‘Land and Landscape in Botticelli’s Assumption Altarpiece’ in Taking Shape:
Italian Altarpieces Before 1500, unpublished symposium, Courtauld Institute of Art and National Gallery,
London, 8 July, 2011.
91
Alessandra Mita Ferraro, Matteo Palmieri: Una biografia intellettuale, Genoa, 2005, pp. 358-59. For a
description of the Città di Vita, see George M. Carpetto, The Humanism of Matteo Palmieri, Rome, 1984,
pp. 111-34.
92
Carpetto, The Humanism of Matteo Palmieri, pp. 114-18. On folio 20v of Florence, BR, MS. 1122,
Bonaccorsi wrote, alongside an illustration of the spheres of the Heavens, ‘Matteus Palmerius ait in sua
o
prima cantica, cap .24. sue poesie’. For the relationship between Palmieri and Bonaccorsi see Ciociola,
‘Lo scrittoio di un “acerbista” fiorentino’, pp. 82-83. For the probable link between Palmieri’s Città di
Vita and Bonaccorsi’s Quadragesimale, see Toussaint, De l’enfer a la coupole, p. 87 and 107, n. 14.
93
Garzelli, Miniatura fiorentina del Rinascimento, vol. 1, pp. 95-96.
100
his work, offering a paradigm of spiritual ascent from earth to Heaven in the form of the most
perfect human, the Virgin.94
The Assumption of the Virgin print is not of the ambitious pictorial scale of Palmieri’s
altarpiece, but with its depiction of angels, the Holy Spirit and God the Father, it complements
the theological themes in the Opuscula Augustini et Hyeronim and Bonaccorsi’s own works.
The same might be said of the Ascension of Christ engraving that visualises the ascent by
Christ, even though the depiction of the angels is less elaborate than in the Assumption. The
figuration of the heavenly space is more prominent than it is other fifteenth-century
representations of the scene, such as that by Luca della Robbia (fig. 3.75), in that it represents
God, the Holy Spirit and the angels of Heaven.
In sum, the prints incorporated into the manuscript reflect the overarching interest
reflected in the contents of the texts: the power of visionary experiences to elevate the soul
beyond the terrestrial world. The engraving, St Jerome in Penitence, shows a saint in the
midst of contemplation; the Ascension of Christ and Assumption of the Virgin depict the
movement of the body and soul from earth to Heaven, an experience that the mystic yearns
for in his soul, if not in body; the image of God the Father is a visualisation of God as he
appears to the blessed in Heaven with the beatific vision. Seen together, the prints in the
Opuscula and the Quadragesimale demonstrate how Bonaccorsi creatively appropriated prints
in distinct ways as part of a programme of visualising complex theological themes.
Again, the employment of prints here can be compared with Bonaccorsi’s interest in
rhetorical ornamentation and understood as ‘jewels’ that decorate the ‘face’ of the text. But
fruitful comparison can also be made between Bonaccorsi’s manuscripts and the thinking of
Susan Stewart in her book On Longing, where she explores the ‘souvenir’ and the ‘collection’.95
The collection, she writes, is ‘a form [of art] involving the reframing of objects within a world
of attention and manipulation of context’.96 It is characterised by the gathering of things so
that, ‘not simply a consumer of the objects that fill the décor, the self generates a fantasy in
which it becomes producer of those objects, a producer by arrangement and manipulation’.97
Moreover, it is mode of creativity informed by ‘play’ and ‘amusement’ rather than simple ‘use
value’. An obvious instance of such as ‘collection’ is the album owned by Sultan Mehmed II,

94
See Bagemihl, ‘Francesco Botticini’s Palmieri Altar-piece’, p. 311.
95
Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection,
Durham and London, 1993, esp. pp. 151-69.
96
Ibid., p. 151.
97
Ibid., p. 158.
101
containing disparate Italian prints assembled to create an unusual synthesis of images.98 But
Bonaccorsi’s pasted prints can also be linked with Stewart’s definition. For, unlike his hand-
coloured drawings, the prints in Bonaccorsi’s manuscripts are tangible signs of his acquisition
of something attained from elsewhere, and demonstrate his playful substitution of their
original context (the artist’s workshop, the point of purchase, or the original complete print)
for the new narrative embodied by his book. The prints not only visualise text’s theme; they
also witness Bonaccorsi’s purchase of innovative objects (copperplate engravings) and his
inventive integration of these into his own personally constructed product.

The Tieri Manuscript

Stewart’s conceptual framework is even more applicable to the manuscript of the Tieri
family in the Biblioteca Riccardiana which represents a third and distinct type of manuscript.
Here, the texts and engravings were collected and anthologised gradually in a dynamic
relationship with each other.99 It contains six engravings attributed to the workshop of the
Netherlandish Master of the Banderoles and which are pasted on the recto of folios 3 to 8 of a
total of 96 folios.100 The first five are the Betrothal of the Virgin, the Annunciation, the Virgin of
the Crescent Moon, the Crucifixion, and the Deposition of Christ (figs. 3.77-3.81). The final
print in the sequence depicts an unusual allegorical, moral scene, the Tree of Life, showing the
triumph of death over the worldly States (fig. 3.82). The total number of original engravings
probably was probably eight, as there was presumably a smaller print pasted on the first folio,
where only the shadow of the glue remains (fig. 3.76). A whole folio has also been lost
between the images of the Virgin of the Crescent Moon and the Crucifixion, as the text, the

98
Hind, ‘Fifteenth-Century Italian Engravings at Constantinople’; Raby, ‘European Engravings’; Landau
and Parshall, The Renaissance Print, pp. 91-95.
99
Morpurgo, I manoscritti della R. Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze, MS. 1052.
100
For the Master of the Banderoles, see Lehrs, Geschichte und kritischer Katalog des deutschen,
niederlandischen und franzosischen Kupferstichs, vol. 4, pp. 1-24; Friedrich W. H. Hollstein, Masters and
Monogrammists of the 15th Century, Amsterdam, 1955, pp. 18-77; Lockhart, ‘Four Engravings by the
Master with the Banderoles’, pp. 247-254. In Lehrs' catalogue, the individual prints are catalogued as
follows, Betrothal of the Virgin (cat. no. 8), Christ on the Cross with Four Angels (cat. no. 17), The
Deposition (cat. no. 20), The Tree of Life (cat. no. 86). The Annunciation is regarded in Lehrs' catalogue
as Italian, although, as Hind notes he had earlier given the print to the Master of the Banderoles. I agree
with Hind that it is related to this master, if it is not directly by his hand. Lehrs, Geschichte und kritischer
Katalog des deutschen, niederlandischen und franzosischen Kupferstichs, vol. 4, p. 38; Hind, Early Italian
Engraving, vol. 1, pp. 279-280. The manuscript is also mentioned in Landau and Parshall, The
Renaissance Print, 1470-1550, p. 13; Kent, Cosimo De' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance, p. 76.
Dale Kent incorrectly refers to the prints as early Italian woodcuts.
102
Credo di Dante, on the verso of each print is missing a section.101 Another print may have
been pasted on the lost page, continuing the pattern seen on the folios before and after.
The engravings are dated to the 1460s, although two of them, the Deposition and the
Tree of Life were printed from reworked plates, and are possibly from later decades. This
approximate date is consistent with that given to the manuscript as a whole, which, on the
basis of the script, was produced in the second half of the fifteenth century. An inscription on
folio 95v at the end of the manuscript, reveals that it belonged to the Florentine Tieri family:
'Questo libro è di Francesco di Niccolò di Tieri di Lorenzo Tieri. Chi l'acchata, lo renda' (this
book belongs to Francesco son of Niccolò di Tieri di Lorenzo Tieri; whoever borrows it, return
it) (fig. 3.84). In 1480 Francesco Tieri was in his early teens and lived in Santa Maria Novella
with his father Niccolò di Tieri di Lorenzo Tieri, then aged 55, and his uncle and his siblings.102
Since it is unlikely that Francesco acquired and incorporated the prints in the book in the early
1480s at the age of thirteen, if he did compile the whole book himself, he must have decided
to use the prints some years after they were first made and sold, since the latest activity of the
Master of the Banderoles is thought to be the 1470s. The manuscript was written by more
than one person, however, and since Francesco’s inscription is in a different hand from that of
the text at the book's opening, it is possibly a later claim to ownership of a book passed down
to him. It is credible that the manuscript was begun by Francesco's father, Niccolò, a
blacksmith, a leading member of the Arte dei Fabbri and in 1483 one of the twelve men in the
College of the Buonuomini.103
The manuscript resembles a large group of manuscript compilations, like the
commonplace books and chapbooks in English literary tradition, in which eclectic texts were

101
The text of the Credo of Dante is missing a number of lines which would conclude the versified
discussion of the Ten Commandments and begin the Seven Deadly Sins. For the complete version of this
text, see Rime profane e sacre di Dante Alighieri, Florence, 1830, pp. 677-85.
102
Florence, ASF, Catasto, 1480, vol. 1014, fol. 106r. The Tieri family lived in the Gonfalone of Leon
Bianco, in the quarter of Santa Maria Novella. It is difficult to read the specific age of Francesco, but in
the 1469 Castasto he is described as two years old, so in 1480 he is likely to have had around thirteen
years. ASF, Catasto, 1469, vol. 922, fol. 310r.
103
Niccolò's father, Tieri, though dead by 1457, could feasibly have been the buyer of the prints, as the
Master of the Banderoles was probably producing engravings in the 1450s. See Florence, ASF, Catasto,
1427, vol. 77, fol. 144r and ASF, Inventory of 1457 Catasto, Santa Maria Novella, p. 204. Niccolò's uncle,
Niccolò di Lorenzo, and father, Tieri di Lorenzo, also served as Priors of the Buonuomini, in 1426 and
1433 respectively. For Niccolò di Tieri di Lorenzo Tieri, see ASF, Tre Maggiore, vol. 606, fol. 148r. For
Niccolò di Lorenzo di Niccolò Tieri, see ASF, Tre Maggiore, vol. 600, fol. 144r. For Tieri di Lorenzo di
Niccolò Tieri, see ASF, Tre Maggiore, vol. 601, fol. 85r. The surname Tieri is sometimes written as 'Teri'.
Information from the Tre Maggiore archive is recorded in David Herlihy, R. Burr Litchfield, Anthony
Molho, and Roberto Barducci (eds), Florentine Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office Holders,
1282-1532, machine readable data file, Providence, R. I., 2002.
<http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/tratte/>
103
anthologised by the owner over an extended period of time.104 It includes a range of religious
and moral texts: Cato’s Precepts, tracts on Holy mass, sin and redemption, the Credo of Dante,
hymns to the Virgin, a ternary poem in celebration of Pope Eugene IV, psalms, legends of
saints, meditations on the life of Christ and the Virgin, the twelve Fridays of Pope Clement and
a carnival song added in the sixteenth century. A number of similar manuscripts compiled by
lay men and women in Florence, many of them unstudied, are held in the libraries of Florence.
These consist of secular poetry, classical prose, vernacular texts by Dante, Boccaccio and
Petrarch, sermons, treatises, prayers, lives of the saints, hymns, sacred plays as well as other
disparate notes and records.105 One of the best known is that made by Giovanni Rucellai for
his sons which, because of the eclectic and edifying quality of the contents, he characterised as
a zibaldone (a large salad), or ‘insalata di più erbe’ (a salad of many greens).106 A book made by
the Mona Costantia, wife of Benedetto Cicciaporci in the second half of the fifteenth century
exemplifies the varied contents of such anthologies. Her manuscript included the Fior di Virtù,
prayers, the legends of a number of female saints, the Triumphs of Petrarch and a
selection of catechistic lists including the Ten Commandments, the Twelve Articles of Faith and
the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. The presence of legends of the female saints, the Fior di Virtù
and rubrics of Christian faith reflects Costantia’s intention for the manuscript as consolation
for herself and her daughters, with readings appropriate for nurturing young girls into a life of
piety.107
In a similar way, the prints and texts in the Tieri manuscript were selected from a
variety of sources and then put in a meaningful sequence. Here, the images are placed on the
recto of folios 3 to 8, with the Credo of Dante, a poetic affirmation of belief wrongly attributed
to Dante, written on the verso.108 The text moves progressively through the main tenets of
Christian faith, beginning with the key moments of the Gospel stories, then outlining the
sacraments, the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, before ending with extended
versions of the Paternoster and Ave Maria prayers. The disposition of prints and passages of
the texts can be seen in the following table.

104
Earle Havens, Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the
Twentieth Century, New Haven, 2001.
105
These have been discussed by by Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance, pp. 69-93.
106
Perosa, Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone, vol. 1, p. 2 and vol. 2, p. 103.
107
The owner wrote in her colophon: ‘Questo libro affatto scrivere mona ghostantia donna fu di
benedetto cicciaporci el quale a libro affatto fare per consolatione dell’anima sua e secondariamente a
chonsolazione delle sue figliuole’(Mona Costantia, wife of Benedetto Cicciaporci had this book written,
to give consolation to her soul, and secondly, for the consolation of her daughters). Florence, BNCF, MS.
II.II.89, fol. 144r.
108
Massimo Seriacopi, Intorno a Dante: Un commento inedito di fine Trecento ai primi sedici canti
dell'Inferno, Florence, 2004, pp. 49-50.
104
 Folio Print Text
1r Cato’s Precepts
1v Lost Print Tract on Holy Mass, Original Sin, Redemption
2r Tract on Holy Mass, Original Sin, Redemption
2v Credo of Dante (Incarnation and Crucifixion)
3r Betrothal of the
Virgin
3v Credo of Dante (Resurrection, Ascension,
Paradise, Hell, Holy Spirit, Trinity)/ 2 hymns to
Virgin
4r Annunciation
4v Credo of Dante (Baptism and Penitence)
5r Virgin of the
Crescent Moon
5v Credo of Dante (Eucharist, Last Unction, Ten
Commandments)
Missing folio r Lost Print?
Missing folio v Credo of Dante (lost folio: Ten Commandments,
Seven Deadly Sins)
6r Crucifixion
6v Credo of Dante (Seven Deadly Sins; Versions of
Paternoster and Ave Maria)
7r Deposition
7v Credo of Dante / Five Sorrows of the Virgin
8r Tree of Life
8v Ternary in Celebration of Pope Eugene IV by
Niccolò Cieco
Table 2. Layout of prints in Tieri manuscript

The positioning of the Betrothal, Annunciation, Virgin of Crescent Moon, Crucifixion

and the Deposition is not ordained by the words of the Credo of Dante alongside them.
Instead, the prints are placed in their own independent sequence that predominantly follows
the succession of events in the lives of the Virgin and Christ. It begins with the betrothal of the
Virgin to Joseph and ends with the last moment of the Passion sequence, the deposition of
Christ from the cross. In this arrangement, the images were suited to personal, serial
meditations, the visual counterpart of the written Meditations on the Life of Christ copied in
the manuscript on folios 15v-88v. The narrative, however, is idiosyncratic, since it omits many
of the standard episodes of the Passion, including the Nativity, Adoration of the Shepherds or
Magi, as well as other events from the life of Christ, such as the Flagellation, Betrayal of Christ,
or the Resurrection. Unlike prints in the Passion cycles by the Master of the Banderoles and
the Master of the Vienna Passion, the engravings chosen by Tieri were not originally intended
by the printmaker to form a complete set. The Annunciation, for instance, is in a landscape
format in contrast to the portrait layout of the other prints. Hypothetically, Niccolò – or

105
Francesco – Tieri bought a batch of engravings and then placed them on the pages of the book
in the most appropriate order. The first three engravings follow the sequence of the life of
the Virgin; the next two, and perhaps the lost print, are scenes from the Passion of Christ,
while the final print, the Tree of Life is distinct.
The placement of prints compares with other chapbooks that incorporate ephemeral
objects. An important example is a manuscript of around 1475, belonging to the bonesmith
and glasses-maker, Lionardo di Tomasso and his wife Mattea, which includes a series of
religious and secular texts.109 The book begins with the main text, the Chronicon pontificum et
imperatorum by the thirteenth-century Dominican writer Martin of Poland (folios 1r-60r).
Following this are a number of sacred poems and prayers, including Petrarch’s ‘Vergine bella
che di sol vestita’, a description of the Biblical moments leading up to Easter written according
to the Evangelists; Boethius’ On the Consolation of Philosophy, a collection of short pieces of
wisdom from ancient writers, a tract on the course of the moon and the influence of the
Planets, and prayers including the Credo of Dante, an indulgenced prayer of St John Lateran,
and songs dedicated to the Virgin, such as the Stabat Mater. At some point someone, perhaps
Lionardo, also pasted several other items inside the book. These include a small scrap of paper
with the poem ‘Salve nostra salus agnus mitissime salve’ written on it attached to folio 61r, a
piece of parchment with a prayer written in formal script at the bottom of folio 61v (fig. 3.85),
and two or three full-page coloured woodcuts (figs. 3.87-88).110 None of these insertions bears
a direct relationship with texts written alongside; they seem to have been accumulated over
several years and added with little regard for the narrative continuity between them. This was
not uncommon. A book belonging to Girolamo Pagholo, discussed above, contained a
metalcut, St Jerome in his Study inside the front cover (fig. 3.22) and scrap of paper with a list
111
of virtues associated with the letters of the alphabet inside the flyleaf (fig. 3.86). In the
Zibaldone of Gianozzo di Bernardo Salviato made between 1482-88, the owner bound into his
book several folios from a text printed at San Jacopo a Ripoli in which the author shows the
reader how to address people in letters. The pages are positioned alongside an array of works
including sonnets, carnival songs, prayers, descriptions of the course of the Moon, and a
collection of facts, memories and dates about Florence and Italy.112 Such manuscripts are

109
BNCF, MS. Conventi Soppressi G.3.877.
110
Two of the woodcuts are documented as having been taken from the manuscript, and are found in
BNCF MS. Banco Rari 352.4-5. A third, showing St Zachariah (Banco Rari 352.3), appears to be from the
same series of Banco Rari 352.4, showing St Lodovico, and is inscribed with a prayer in the same hand as
that used to write on the St Lodovico print. It is possible that the St Zachariah print was also removed
from this book, or another manuscript also belonging to Lionardo di Tomasso.
111
BNCF MS. II.IV.51. The print is now in MS. Banco Rari 352.2.
112
BNCF MS. II.IX.42, fols 72r-79v.
106
eclectic pastiches, not only of texts written on the books’ pages, but also of material collected
elsewhere and pasted inside them. The prints in the Tieri manuscript exemplify the same
impulse to collect and compile disparate items, the same ‘longing’ for collection described by
Susan Stewart above.
Although the prints were collected and pasted on the folios without much
correspondence to the principle text alongside it, further texts were inserted around the
engravings, creating a more meaningful sequence for the prints and offering interpretations of
the images displayed. The engravings can be separated in to three groups on the basis of
smaller texts that are written beside them, and, as shall be demonstrated, in response to them.
The first group consists of the three joyous images of the Virgin; the second of the two images
of Christ's Passion, and perhaps the missing print before the Crucifixion, whilst the final
allegorical print stands alone, juxtaposed with the text that begins on the following page.

Two Songs to the Virgin and Five Meditations for the Passion of Christ

On folio 3v, in the large margin to the right of the Credo of Dante and opposite the
Annunciation engraving, the scribe inserted two laude (lyrics addressed to the Virgin) and drew
a line down the centre of the page to separate them from the main text (fig. 3.78). The
language of the two laude is richly visual and provides a natural link with the Annunciation
opposite, the Betrothal of the Virgin on the page before, and the Virgin of the Crescent Moon
on the page after. Each terzina of the first lauda describes Mary with a different adjective: first
she is 'inchoronata' (crowned), secondly she is 'annunziata' (of the annuciation), and thirdly she
is 'madre del figliuol di Dio' (mother of the son of God). All these epithets were associated
conventional iconographic themes found in Florence, the Coronation of the Virgin, the
Annunciation and the Virgin and Child.113 Pertinently, they can also be connected with the
engravings in the manuscript, where Mary is shown in three of her roles: in the Betrothal she is
'vergine pura', in the Annunciation she is 'annunziata' and in the Virgin of the Crescent Moon,
where she is 'inchoronata', 'sopra tuti gli angeli exaltata' (exalted above all angels), and ‘bathed
in the luminous light of paradise’. These visual descriptions are not unusual in contemporary
Florentine laude since they were intended to be sung by lay confraternities to an image of the
Virgin and Child in a church.114 It is not surprising that Niccolò Tieri linked them with his

113
Florence, BR, MS. 1052, fol. 3v.
114
For many laude from the period see Antonio Lanza, ed., Lirici Toscani del '400, 2 vols, Rome, 1973. For
an introduction see Ursula Lucille Betka, Marian Images and Laudesi Devotion in Late Medieval Italy, ca.
1260-1350, PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2001.
107
engraved images of the Virgin, especially since the statutes of such confraternities often
required members to repeat their own prayers before their own private images.115 The Virgin
of the Crescent Moon was especially appropriate in this respect since its iconography was often
attached to the indulgenced prayer Ave Sanctissima and in this particular version angels hold
texts in banderoles that might be the opening lines of laude.116
A third text, the Five Sorrows of the Virgin, is written in a space after the Credo of Dante
on folio 7v (fig. 3.82) and which can be understood to relate to Passion engravings in the
manuscript. The reader is told how John the Evangelist, overcome by the Holy Spirit, witnessed
Christ and Mary discussing the five most sorrowful events in her life. The episodes overheard
were: the prophecy of the High Priest Simeon that Christ would die, the discovery of Christ in
the Temple, the Betrayal of Christ by Judas, the Crucifixion and finally the Deposition of Christ
from the cross. It is related to the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, a sequence of meditations that
became widely popular at the end of the fifteenth century when confraternities were
established especially to honour the suffering of the Virgin.117
The last two events of this text correlate with the two prints on the two preceding
pages of the Tieri manuscript, the Crucifixion and the Deposition of Christ from the Cross, while
the lost folio may have included the third sorrow, the Betrayal of Christ.118 The engravings not
only reflect the subjects of the meditation, but they also reflect the tone of suffering that
underlies Mary’s words. In the Crucifixion, Mary's gesture of suffering is exaggerated with her
body writhing as she looks away from Christ. This physical expression of compassion is even
more acute in the Deposition, modelled on Rogier van der Weyden's Deposition in the Prado,
where, as has been pointed out, Mary's position mimics that of Christ, as her arms stretch out
in an arc and her body is tilted towards the ground.119 The prints do not equate exactly with
the text since in this last Sorrow Mary describes receiving Christ in her arms, an episode which
115
Betka, ‘Marian Images and Laudesi Devotion in Late Medieval Italy, ca. 1260-1350’, pp. 40-41.
Archbishop of Florence, Antoninus also recommended the recitation of Paternoster prayers before the
Crucifixion, or the many images produced in this period showing the Virgin and Child with the words of a
prayer written beneath. Antonino Pierozzi, Opera a ben vivere, ed. Francesco Palermo, Florence, 1858, p.
169: 'Quando avete messa o innanzi, o volete in chiesa o volete in camera vostra, inginocchiatevi dinanzi
ad un Crucifisso, e cogli occhi della mente... considerate...'
116
For the Virgin and the Crescent Moon and the indulgence attached to it, see Sixten Ringbom ‘Maria in
Sole and the Virgin of the Rosary’, Journal of the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes, vol. 25, no. 3-4,
1962, pp. 326-30.
117
Sandro Sticca, Il Planctus Mariae nella Tradizione Drammatica del Medio Evo, Sulmona, 1984, pp. 83-
90; Carol M. Schuler, ‘ The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin: Popular Culture and Cultic Imagery in Pre-
Reformation Europe’, Simiolus, vol. 21, no. 1, 1992, pp. 5-28.
118
The first of these scenes, the Prophecy of Simeon would be associated with images of the
Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and the second is similarly usually only shown in the more positive
scenario of Christ talking to the Doctors.
119
Otto von Simson, ‘Compassio and Co-redemptio in Roger van der Weyden's Descent from the Cross’,
The Art Bulletin, 35, no. 1, 1953, pp. 9-16.
108
would more appropriately be matched with the Lamentation. Nevertheless, the parallels are
sufficiently close to indicate that Niccolò or Francesco Tieri paid attention to matching these
supplementary texts with the images.

The Tree of Life and the Ternary to Eugene IV

A close, albeit imprecise, relationship between image and text is also evident in the
juxtaposition of the Tree of Life engraving (3.82, 3.90) with the ternary to Eugene IV that begins
on its verso (3.84). Here the iconography of the image has been largely misinterpreted by the
manuscript’s owner in the effort to find a poem that matches it. In part, the confusion results
from the print’s obscure and rare iconography. On a boat, the normal mast is substituted for a
tree with ten men, all leaders of the ecclesiastical and secular states seated on its outstretched
branches. The Pope sits in the centre, to his left is the Emperor, and Dukes, a Bishop, and a
Cardinal are also present. In the front row a friar looks toward the head of a man, pointing with
a stern finger, as if to teach or scold him. Two mice or rats, one dark and one white, gnaw the
base of the tree, whilst a skeleton floating in the water beneath the boat pulls the tree with a
rope.
The lack of captions makes it difficult, on first glance, to interpret these details. But, the
intended significance of the print is explained by another engraving of more skilled
craftsmanship from the Master of the Banderoles’ workshop, the Wheel of Fortune and Death
below the Tree of Life (fig. 3.90).120 On the left of this image is the more common iconography
of the Wheel of Fortune where a blinded lady, directed by God, turns the wheel, thereby
rotating the men who move from Kingship to Death. On the right is a boat akin to the ship and
tree in the Tieri Tree of Life, except that the skeleton more aggressively shoots an arrow at the
tree from land, and the tree contains a greater number and range of people, with a third row
of women, a naked baby and an old man. The meaning of the image is made clear by the many
banderoles which ground the imagery in the philosophical and religious ideas derived from
Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.121 According to the banderole held up by a friar to the left
of the tree, Death threatens those men and women who celebrate 'pomp' and who wander

120
Lehrs, Geschichte und kritischer Katalog des deutschen, niederlandischen und franzosischen
Kupferstichs, vol. 4, pp. 126-127, cat. no. 87.
121
The banderole at the top of the print is a quotation from Book 5, Prose 6, line 45, 'manet spectator
desuper cunctorum praescius deus visionisque eius praesens aeternitas cum nostrorum actuum futura
qualitate concurrit bonis praemia malis supplicia dispensans' (‘God has foreknowledge and rests a
spectator from on high of all things; and as the ever present eternity of His vision dispenses reward to
the good and punishment to the bad, it adapts itself to the future quality of our actions’, Boethius, The
Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Victor Watts, rev. ed. London, 1999, (1st ed. London, 1969), p. 137).
109
through the globe, reminding them that they too will be buried in the dark ditch of death. In
the small banderole next to the skeleton with the bow and arrow, there are the words 'nemini
parco' (I spare no one).
The two creatures at the base of the tree labelled 'Night' and 'Day' are related to
another iconographic tradition derived from the Story of Barlaam and Josephet recounted in
the Gesta Romanorum, the Legenda Aurea, in public plays, depicted in manuscripts (fig. 3.91)
and in frescos.122 According to this narrative, a man, hoping to flee from death, escapes into a
tree where he is distracted by worldly pleasures. But, unbeknown to him, this tree is being
eaten away by the two rats, night and day, while the unicorn of death and a dragon of Hell
await his impending fall. The iconography of the Tree of Life engravings combines this story
with the ship and skeleton to reiterate the notion that death will come to all, rich and poor,
powerful and weak, clerics and lay citizens. This aspect is even clearer in a third print showing
the Tree of Life (fig. 3.92), where a man is seen falling from the tree having been pierced by the
arrow of death.123 Because of this message, the three engravings can be placed in a family of
images about death, a group that includes representations of Petrarch’s Triumph of Death (fig.
3.93) and pictures of the Danse Macabre where Death tramples on or frolics with Kings
and Bishops.124
On the verso of the folio on which the print is pasted in the Tieri manuscript, Niccolò –
or Francesco – Tieri copied a poem that interprets the image’s theme with striking divergence.
Written by the fifteenth-century poet from Arezzo, Niccolò Cieco in 1430, it proclaims the
election of the new Pope Eugene IV and imagines his future triumphs in uniting the Church
after the Western Schism that had plagued the Papacy for so many years.125 Its inclusion is

122
Ruth Pitman and John Scattergood, ‘Some Illustrations of the Unicorn Apologue from Barlaam and
Joasaph’, Scriptorium, 31, 1977, pp. 85-90; Claudio Salsi, ‘L'allegoria della vita e della morte secondo il
Libro di Barlaam e Josaphat: Piccola antologia iconografica’, in Giovanna Mori and Claudio Salsi (eds),
Rappresentazioni del destino: Immagini della vita e della morte dal XV al XIX secolo nelle stampe della
Raccolta Bertarelli, Milan, 2001, pp. 39-50. For the Trecento Italian example from Asciano (illustrated),
see Alessandro Bagnoli, ‘Gli affreschi dell’anitico Palazzo Bandinelli ad Asciano’ in Cecilia Alessi (ed.),
Palazzo Corboli: Museo d’Arte Sacra, Siena, 2002, pp. 59-70.
123
Elena Santiago Páez, Pilar Gómez Bedate and Ignacio Gómez de Liaño, On Love and Death: Drawings
and Engravings in the Biblioteca Nacional, exh. cat., Fundació Caixa , Barcelona and Biblioteca Nacional,
Madrid, 2001-02, Barcelona, 2001, pp. 182-3, 298, cat. no. 56.
124
Pierroberto Scaramella, ‘L'Italia del Trionfi e dei Contrasti’, in Alberto Tenenti (ed.) Humana Fragilitas:
I temi della morte in Europa tra Duecento e Settecento, Clusone, 2000, pp. 25-98, 25-58; Maria Giulia
Aurigemma, ‘Nosce te ipsum: La raffigurazione della morte nei paesi dell'area germanica e
nederlandese’, in Alberto Tenenti, Humana Fragilitas, pp. 141-196; Mauro Zanchi, Il theatrum mortis nel
nome della vita eterna: L' oratorio dei Disciplini a Clusone, Clusone, 2005.
125
Lanza, Lirici Toscani del '400, pp. 167-168. For the way in which Eugene used art and rhetoric to
convey his role and the 'true vicar of Christ', see Ottavio Clavuot, ‘Verus Christi vicarius: Programmatik
der Sarstellung Papst Eugens IV in Biondo Schriften und Filaretes Portal von St Peter’, in Andreas Meyer,
Constanze Rendtel, Maria Elisabeth Wittmer-Butsch (eds), Päpste, Pilger, Pönitentiarie: Festschrift für
110
unusual, since unlike the majority of the texts in the manuscript, it does not aid, direct, or
consolidate acts of prayer, meditation, faith or Christian behaviour. Instead it commemorates a
historical moment of the Church and celebrates the Militant Church through the metaphor of
St Peter's ship sailing through the deadly waters to the port of safety. Cieco writes, ‘In Your
election was united / The State of the Militant Church / Returned to the port of its first land!’126
By adopting this metaphor, Cieco adhered to a tradition stemming from classical
authors and adopted by the Church Fathers, where the ship became the ship of state, the ship
of Ecclesia or the Ship of Salvation, carrying its members through the troubles of the world
under the sign of the Crucifix to ultimate reunion with God.127 The motif was also alluded to in
visual art. In Andrea di Bonaiuto's fresco in the Spanish Chapel at Santa Maria Novella, for
example, the Militant Church, shown against the Florentine Duomo, is linked with St Peter's
Ship in the vault above (fig. 3.94). The hierarchical arrangement of the members of the Church,
which, according to Eve Borsook, 'constitutes a vision of universal society in which clergy and
laity are united in the Corpus Christi mysticum', is similar to that seen in the Tieri Tree of Life.
The Pope is positioned in the centre and surrounded by his secular and clerical supporters on
either side, including the Emperor and a Cardinal immediately beside him.128 A Venetian
woodcut of around 1500 also shows a ship buffeted by winds and with the text “Navis
Ecclesiae', ship of the Church, threatening that all who stay outside it in heresy, will not be
saved.129
In associating this poem with the print on the previous page, Niccolò or Francesco Tieri
has misinterpreted, or re-interpreted, the intentional significance of the image, using this
second meaning of the ship. Instead of showing the states of the World, led by the Church,
overcome by death, the image has been seen as this Ship of Salvation, triumphing over death.
The juxtaposition of image and text, though evidently not the print’s intended meaning, is not,
however, entirely naive. Cieco’s poem describes Eugene's struggle against the Church's
enemies with metaphors comparable to the imagery in the print. He describes the 'bitter fruits
of the first plants' that were sucked and pierced by ravenous birds, but which are finally

Ludwig Schmugge zum 65. Geburtstag, Tubingen, 2004, pp. 83-107.

126
‘Nella Tua elezzion quanto era unito / Lo stato della Chiesa militante, / Tornato al porto del suo primo
sito!’. Lanza, Lirici Toscani del '400, vol. 2, pp. 167-168.
127
This symbol is comprehensively explored in Hugo Rahner, Symbole der Kirche: Die Ekklesiologie der
Vater, Salzburg, 1964, pp. 239-564.
128
Eve Borsook, The Mural Painters of Tuscany: From Cimabue to Andrea del Sarto, Oxford, 1980, p. 50.
129
Willhelm Ludwig Schreiber, Manuel de l'amateur de la gravure sur bois et sur métal au XVe siècle, 8
vols, Berlin, 1891-1911, vol. 2, p. 255-56, cat. no. 1871.
111
restored to their original healthy state by the Pope.130 Later in the poem Cieco describes
Eugene's fight with Death, charging him to revive the dead soul of the Church: ‘You can
resuscitate the dead soul [of the Church], / In the period under your whip, / If death, does not
carry it to a wicked death’.131 The flourishing tree of life and the group of men who sit in it can
be linked to the ‘healthy forms’ of the Church’s ‘first plants’, and the skeleton and the rats
associated with the 'ravenous birds' that attack them.
It is difficult to ascertain whether the prints were acquired with the intention to pair
them with the laude, the Five Sorrows of the Virgin and the Ternary to Pope Eugene IV,
whether the texts were found to match to the engravings pasted in the book or in more
haphazard manner. Nevertheless, several factors suggest that the prints may have been
chosen first and subsequently related to appropriate words. Firstly, the laude and Five
Sorrows of the Virgin are placed around the main text of the Credo di Dante in subordinate
positions, compressed into available space, indicating that they were squashed in as an
afterthought. Secondly, the prints are placed sequentially on the recto of the first seven
pages and are not positioned directly alongside the relevant poem or meditation. This is
especially apparent in the placement of the Ternary of Eugene IV where words and image
cannot easily be seen simultaneously. Finally, the inclusion of the Ternary is thematically
different from the other works in the book that can be classed as devotional: prayers,
meditations and legends of saints. For although Florentine chapbooks are characterised by the
disparity of their contents, most fifteenth-century copies of the poem are found in specialised
anthologies of secular and religious poetry.132 Because of its surprising inclusion in this
collection, it is more likely that the poem was selected because its metaphors corresponded,
albeit only partially, to those of the print.

Conclusion

The three examples cited above: the manuscripts of Piero Bonaccorsi, the Raphael
Prayer Book and the Tieri manuscript demonstrate how printed images were incorporated
within a culture of reading, writing and illustrating in fifteenth-century Florence. They were

130
‘I frutti acerbi delle prime piante / Punti, e succiati dai golosi uccelli / Torser le vie delle sue forme
sante’. Lanza, Lirici Toscani del '400, vol. 2, pp. 167-168.
131
‘Tu puoi resuscitar l'anima morta / Mentre è nel secol sotto la tua frusta / Se morte, a morte ria non
la trasporta.’ Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 167-168.
132
See Ibid., vol. 2, p. 176, where the manuscripts are listed in which the poem is found alongside other
poetry.
112
appropriated in ways that compared with other practices, such as marking texts with
marginalia, diagrams, doodles, pairing prayers and narratives with drawings, colouring
illustrations and compiling and anthologising texts within one book. Each of these conventions
provided templates of behaviour which were adopted in the use of prints. In practice, the
prints did not provide exact substitutes for these aspects of book culture and devotion, since
the owners were limited by what prints were available to them at the time. But what the
owners lost in the choice of images, they gained in the way that prints provided pre-made
designs, often of high quality craftsmanship, and produced in a fashionable and recently
invented medium.

113
 Part II

Early Florentine Engravings: The Devotional Print

114
Introduction

The second part of this thesis aims to understand the role of religious engravings in the
devotional practices of Florentine people. Judging by a tax record of 1430, simple woodcuts
with religious images were produced in Florence from the early fifteenth century: Antonio di
Giovanni ‘pittor di naibi’ (playing card maker) owned woodblocks for making playing cards and
images of saints (‘forme da naibi e da santi di lengname’).1 No surviving religious woodcut
from the fifteenth century has been attributed to Florentine authorship, but their practice
undoubtedly helped give rise to the many engravings of the second half of the century with an
array of religious figures, including numerous saints, the Virgin and Christ. Many of these
compositions mirror the forms and layouts found in other media. Several prints, for example,
have two saints either side of the enthroned Virgin and Child (fig. 4.1), reminiscent of many
contemporary Florentine altarpieces, typically, but erroneously, dubbed ‘sacre conversazioni’
(fig. 4.2). 2 Likewise, some present saints in a simple iconic guise, detached from a historical
moment and accompanied by symbols of their martyrdom, learning or chastity. St Catherine
of Siena (fig. 4.3), for instance, is shown standing in a landscape, holding a lily and book in her
hands and trampling a devil beneath her feet.3 The design is very similar, except for a few
details, to a late fifteenth-century manuscript illumination and loosely akin to the wing of a
triptych attributed to Jacopo del Sellaio, both in Santa Maria Novella in Florence (figs 4.4-5).4
Others are more complex with Biblical stories, such as the Creation (Hind, A.II.1), Abraham’s
Sacrifice of Isaac (Hind, A.I.5) and the large Temple of Pilate (Hind, A.II.9). The engravers also
made images less frequently seen in fifteenth-century Florentine art, such as representations
of miraculous sites and pictures (the Volto Sancto of Lucca, fig. 2.11 and the Madonna of
Loreto, fig. 2.12), the Mass of Gregory (fig. 1.168), a calendar of the liturgical year (Hind,
A.III.8b) and a table to find the date of Easter (fig. 1.49).

1
‘Trovomj tante forme da naibi e da santi di lengname chonche informo e naibi e fo larte mia e maseritie
atte al mio mestiero di far naibi che vagliono ff 20. ASF, Catasto, 1430, vol. 338, fol. 70r. Documented in
Fiora Bellini (ed.), Xilografie italiane del Quattrocento da Ravenna e da altri luoghi: Catalogo della
mostra, exh. cat., Gabinetto nazionale dei disegni e delle stampe, Rome, 1987-88, Ravenna, 1987, p.
143.
2
Rona Goffen, ‘“Nostra Conversatio in Coelis Est”: Observations on the Sacra Conversazione in the
Trecento’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 61, no. 2, 1979, pp. 198-222, pp. 201-02, 216-17. See also Patricia Rubin,
Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence, pp. 183-92.
3
Hall and Uhr, ‘Aureola super Auream, pp. 578-82.
4
For the manuscript illumination, see Umberto Baldini (ed.), Santa Maria Novella: La basilica, il
convento, i chiostri monumentali, Florence, 1981, p. 304. There is no reference to the manuscript or the
date of the manuscript. For the panel see Lidia Bianchi and Diega Giunti, Iconografia di S. Caterina da
Siena, Rome, 1988, cat. no. 189, p. 281.
115
 As the previous chapter demonstrated, these prints could have been used in any way
their owners chose or circumstances dictated. They could be viewed collectively, such as the
large miraculous woodcut in Forli and the prints scattered during the streets during
canonisation ceremonies.5 But such prints were frequently employed in places that were set
aside for para-litugical devotions, requests for supplication, acts of veneration and reading of
religious texts, all exercises targeted at achieving the condition of devotion. In such locations,
they might be viewed in a fairly systematic manner according to prescribed rituals. The focus
of the following three chapters is a group of prints that can be related to three distinct
methods of devotion widely practised in Florence by laity and clerics: veneration of saints,
meditation on the lives of Christ and Virgin and contemplation of God. In such prints, the
engravers transformed older types of image by innovatively combining established pictorial
frameworks, iconographies, and texts to create new ways that allowed the beholder to
communicate with the divine in distinct ways.

5
For the miracuous print at Forli, see Lisa Pon, ‘Place, Print and Miracle: Forlì's “Madonna of the Fire” as
Functional Site’, Art History, vol. 31, 2008, pp. 303-21. For prints employed to decorate the streets see
Cobianchi, ‘The Use of Woodcuts in Fifteenth-century Italy’.
116
Chapter 4. Veneration: The Hagiographic Vita Print

Significant amongst the inventions of the Florentine engravers is the hagiographic vita
print, a form of print that continued to be popular for centuries. There are three engravings
by the Dante Workshop: the St Anthony Abbot and Scenes from his Life (fig. 4.7), St Anthony of
Padua and his Miracles (fig. 4.8), St Catherine of Siena and her Miracles (fig. 4.10), and three by
other engravers, probably active in Florence: St Sebastian and Scenes from his Life (fig. 4.9),
Blessed Philip of Benizzi and Scenes from his Life (fig. 4.11) and the Baptism of Christ Scenes
from the Life of John the Baptist (fig. 4.6). Because they illustrate the life of the saint,
henceforth they will be referred to as Anthony Abbot Vita, Anthony of Padua Vita, Catherine
Vita, and so on. The individual episodes in each print are labelled in fig. 4.12 and numbered
according to narrative sequence. Four other prints in a similar format – including the engraving
by Piero Baldini discussed above (fig. 1.1) – show scenes from the life of Christ and the Virgin
(figs. 5.11-14), and will be analysed in Chapter Four in the discussion of prints and sequential
meditation . This chapter will explore how and why engravers employed the vita template,
before considering each print more closely to show how it served specific devotional aims.

4.1 The Origins and Renewal of the Vita Configuration

The model adopted by the engravers was rooted in the a configuration of scenes found
in Byzantine icons dating from the twelfth century, known as vita icons, where many small
depictions of the saint’s life were disposed around the portrait icon (fig. 4.13). This
framework was familiar to fifteenth-century Tuscans, since in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries it was imitated in larger vita panels and murals. These were first commissioned to
convey the life and miracles of the recently canonised St Francis (fig. 4.14) and subsequently
employed to represent the biogaphies of many other saints.1 An altarpiece attributed to
Jacopo del Casentino in the church of San Miniato al Monte in Florence, for instance,
commemorated the life of the church’s titular saint, St Minias, whose relics were housed

1
Helmut Hager, Die Angänge des italienischen Altarbildes, Munich, 1962; Klaus Krüger, Der frühe
Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien, Berlin, 1992, pp. 12-42, 65-73; Chiara Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione
delle stimmate: Una storia per parole e immagini fino a Bonaventura e Giotto, Turin, 1993, pp. 321-420,
esp. 346-7, n. 3; Nancy Patterson Ševčenko, ‘The Vita Icon and the Painter as Hagiographer’, Dumbarton
Oaks Papers, vol. 53, 1999, pp. 149-65; Joanna Cannon, ‘Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology:
Reconsidering the Function and Audience of Three Vita Panels of Women Saints c. 1300’, in Victor M.
Schmidt (ed.), Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, New Haven and London, 2002, pp.
291-313.
117
nearby (fig. 4.15).2 On an even larger scale, Giovanni del Biondo’s St John the Baptist and
Scenes from his Life, once in the Ginori Chapel in the church of San Lorenzo, portrays St John
the Baptist trampling Herod, surrounded by eleven hagiographical scenes (fig. 4.16). Several
vita paintings across Italy also depicted the life and miracles of beati, including the Blessed
Margareta of Cortona, the Blessed Umiltà, and the prior to his canonisation, the Blessed
Nicholas of Tolentino.3
A few examples of this format survive from the first half of the fifteenth century with
slight variations on the conventional formula. These include Bicci di Lorenzo’s fresco St
Margaret and Scenes from her Life in the convent of Sant’Onofrio Florence (fig. 4.17); a panel
attributed to Francesco di Antonio di Bartolomeo showing St Bernard with six hagiographic
scenes (fig. 4.18) and a mural from the convent of Sant’Apollonia depicting St Eustace with
four scenes from his life (fig. 4.19).4 Elsewhere in Italy, the vita framework continued to be
used to convey the life and miracles of recently canonised saints. Shortly after St Vincent
Ferrer’s canonisation in 1455, Colantonio produced a panel for the Dominican church of San
Pietro Martire in Naples (fig. 4.20) and a Northwest Italian artist painted an elaborate vita
panel for the Augustinian St Nicholas of Tolentino in Santa Maria in Passione in Genoa, after
Nicholas was canonised in 1446.5 In 1451, one year after the canonisation of St Bernardino of
Siena, the format was used for a ceremonial banner (gonfalone) painted by Giovanni della
Modena for the confraternity of San Bernardino (fig. 4.21). 6 But these instances are
exceptional, and in Florence, as has been well demonstrated, the vita configuration was largely

2
The altarpiece was first recorded in San Lorenzo in 1757 by Giuseppe Richa. Gli Uffizi: Catalogo
Generale, Florence, 1979, p. 303.
3
See Krüger, Der frühe Bildkult des Franziskus in Italien, pp. 65-73.
4
For the St Bernard of Clairvaux panel, see Laura dal Prà, Iconografia di San Bernardo di Clairvaux in
Italia: La vita, Rome, 1991, pp. 7-19. For the St Eustace fresco see Raimond van Marle, The Development
of the Italian Schools of Painting, 19 vols, The Hague, 1923-38, vol. 10, fig. 235. For Bicci di Lorenzo’s
fresco, see Anabel Thomas, Art and Piety in the Female Religious Communities of Renaissance Italy:
Iconography, Space, and the Religious Woman’s Perspective, Cambridge, 2003, pp. 186-89.
5
For the polyptych by Colantonio, see Gennaro Toscano, ‘À propos du retable de saint Vincent Ferrier
peint par Colantonio’, in Frédéric Elsig, Noémie Etienne, Grégoire Extermann (eds), Il più dolce lavorare
che sia: Mélanges en l’honneur de Mauro Natale, Milan, 2009, pp. 409-17. For the the panel with
Nicholas of Tolentino, see Valentino Pace and Roberto Tollo (eds), San Nicola da Tolentino nell’arte:
corpus iconografico, Milan, 2005, pp. 266-67, cat. no. 66; pp. 293-94, cat. no. 118. A vita fresco with the
same saint from the first half of the century adorned the wall of San Giovanni a Carbonara in Naples, see
pp. 257-59.
6
For the gonfalone of St Bernardino, see Jasmin Wilson Cyril, The Imagery of San Bernardino da Siena,
1440-1500: An Iconographic Study, PhD Thesis, The University of Michigan, 1991, pp. 105-07 and
Jadranka Bentini, Gian Piero Cammarota, Daniela Scaglietti Kelescian (eds), Pinacoteca Nazionale di
Bologna: Catalogo Generale: 1. Dal Duecento a Francesco Francia, Venice, 2004, pp. 177-78, cat. no. 60.
118
abandoned in favour of the single, unified frame of the pala in the first half of the fifteenth
century (fig. 4.40).7
It is within this context of the limited production of vita panels that vita prints emerged
in the second half of the century. Why did the Florentine engravers choose to resurrect it the
form, which by this period was fairly archaic? it would have been easy for engravers to present
saints and scenes from their lives following the scheme of a contemporary altarpiece and
predella. The fragment of a woodcut from North Italy, for example, originally showed the
Virgin and Child surrounded by St Roch and another saint, with four or five hagiographic scenes
positioned beneath the main frame in this manner (fig. 4.22).
In contrast to this woodcut, the vita prints offered a compact way to present a saint’s
life on one sheet in a legilble way. In this respect it has more in common with several northern
European prints in which multiple segments were positioned in horizontal tiers. A hand-
coloured woodcut in Nuremberg shows the Legend of Saint James the Greater in fifteen
segments in five tiers of three images (fig. 4.23). Others illustrate the lives of St Catherine of
Alexandria and St Christopher with small textual captions appended to each episode (figs 4.24-
25).8 In such prints, the schematic arrangement of frames, with several different visual fields,
helps to structure the perception of the image and the reception of its messages. Meyer
Schapiro, writing on the semiotics of visual art has suggested that frames, segments and
spatial fields are ‘non-mimetic elements’ of ‘image-signs’, which act as ‘finding and focusing
devices’.9 Historically, such semiotic theory has interesting parallels with the art of memory as
it was understood through classical and pseudo classical writings. One of these was the
pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, composed around 86-82 B.C., a text outlining the
rudiments of rhetoric. It had immense influence on religious writers and humanists in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was translated into Italian and was widely taught to the
laity and to clerics. 10 In the section on memory, the author recommends the use of ‘loci’ or

7
Christa Gardner von Teuffel, From Duccio’s Maestà to Raphael’s Transfiguration: Italian Altarpieces
and their Setting, London, 2005, pp. 183-210.
8
Parshall and Schoch, The Origins of European Printmaking, pp. 328-29, cat. no. 106.
9
Meyer Schapiro, ‘On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs’, in
Algirdas Julien. Greimas, Roman Jakobson, Maria Renata Mayenowa et al., Sign, Language, Culture, The
Hague, 1970, pp. 487-502.
10
Yates, The Art of Memory, esp. chapter 4: ‘Medieval Memory and the Formation of Imagery’, pp. 93-
113. Memory treatises were written by Giovanni di San Gimignano (Summa de exemplis similitudinibus
rerum), Bartolomeo da San Concordio (Ammaestramenti degli antichi, before 1323), Matteo de’ Corsini
(Rosaio della vita and Ars memorie artificialis, 1373), Jacopo Ragone (Artificialis memoriae regulae,
1434), Jacobus Publicius (Oratoriae artis epitome, Venice, 1482, 1485). There was also an Italian
Duecento translation of the ‘memory section’ of the Pseudo-Cicero’s Ad Herennium, known as Trattato
della memoria artificiale. It was part of Bono Giambono’s translation of the entire Ad Herennium,
known as the Fiore di Rettorica. Ibid., p. 98, 383, n. 21. The Biblioteca Riccardiana holds several
119
‘scenes that are naturally or artificially set off on a small scale complete and conspicuous, so
that we can grasp and embrace them easily’.11 For, visual structures – whether in the mind or
realised in a diagram or picture – were thought to help a speaker recollect words, ideas or
stories more easily, to ‘find’ and ‘focus’ on them. The relationship of such ideas with pictures,
especially those with many episodes positioned in compartments of a grid is clear. With the
segmented narrative episodes, such images allowed the viewer to organise ‘an order of time’
in ‘an order of space’, as Shapiro puts it.12
Moreover, the arrangement of these segments can strongly alter the way a narrative is
understood. The arrangement may be horizontal: ‘where representation is [...] of successive
episodes, the image may be extended in broad and superposed bands which have to be read
like a written text’, an arrangement exemplified in the northern European prints cited above.13
The arrangement of frames can also be vertical: ‘one can point to medieval sculptures on
doorways of churches with a narrative sequence proceeding from the lower panels upwards
(Moissac, Verona).’14 Florentine engravers were aware of the grid framework of northern
European prints - a similar design was used for the Legend of the Three Pilgrims to Santiago de
Compostela, for example (fig. 4.26), but they chose – for varied reasons – to employ a very
different layout, with an enlarged central scene or figure. Again this can be understood in
relation to mnemonics or semiotics. By orientating a sequence around a central image, rather
than having it move from bottom to top, one aspect of the story is prioritised above the
others. As Schapiro comments, ‘When stationed in the middle [the image] has another quality
for us than when set at the side’.15 Mary Carruthers, meanwhile, in the context of the art of
memory, draws attention to full page diagrammatic illustrations, such as a representation of St
Luke seated within the niche of an antique portal in a sixth-century Italian Gospel Book (fig.

fifteenth-century copies of manuscripts containing the Trattato della memoria artificiale, including MS
1157, 1159, 1248, 1565, see Morpurgo, I manoscritti della R. Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze, pp. 192,
195, 311, 550. For the influence of the Ad Herennium on medieval theologians, see Carruthers, The
Book of Memory, pp. 122-55. For the dissemination of the text in the fifteenth century in Europe see Ad
C. herennium de ratione dicendi: Rhetorica ad herennium, trans. Harry Caplan, London, 1954, pp. xxxiv-
xxxvii. For the text as part of the school curriculum, see Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy:
Literacy and Learning, 1300-1600, Baltimore and London, 1989, pp. 212-17. For glosses and
commentaries of Cicero’s De inventione and the Pseudo-Cicero, Ad Herennium in the Renaissance see
John O. Ward, ‘From Antiquity to Renaissance: Glosses and Commentaries on Cicero’s Rhetorica’, in
James J. Murphy (ed.), Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric,
Berkeley, 1978, pp. 25-67, esp. 39-41 and John O. Ward, ‘Renaissance Commentators on Ciceronian
Rhetoric’ in James J. Murphy (ed.), Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of
Renaissance Rhetoric, Berkeley, 1983, pp. 126-73.
11
Ad C. herennium de ratione dicendi: Rhetorica ad herennium, p. 209.
12
Schapiro, ‘On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art’, p. 493.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid., p. 494.
15
Ibid., p. 492.
120
4.27), whose layout bears clear comparison with that of the vita prints. On either side of the
niche are scenes from Luke’s Gospel which are explained by tituli in the margins of the page.
According to Carruthers, the segments or ‘small quadratures’ are the ‘loci’ of mnemonic theory
– blocks positioned within a hierarchical space that could be visualised and recalled in the
viewer’s mind.16 The stories of the Gospel are therefore anchored in the authority and person
of St Luke, just as the life and miracles of saints in the vita prints are rooted in the iconic,
frontal image of the saint’s body.
The vita configuration must also have been attractive because unlike other formats, it
was suited to several ways of relating to and venerating a saint. A useful summary of the
reasons for worshipping saints in churches is outlined by Jacopo de Voragine in his Golden
Legend in the description of the festival of All Saints.

The first is the honour due the divine majesty, because when we pay honour to saints,
we honour God in the saints and proclaim that he is admirable in them. [...] The
second reason is that we need help in our weakness. Because we cannot obtain
salvation by ourselves, we need the intercession of the saints, and it is right that we
should honour them in order to gain their assistance [...] The third reason was to
increase our own sense of security – in other words, to have the glory of the saints
recalled to us on their feast day, and thus to build up our own hope and confidence.
[...] The fourth reason was to offer an example for our imitation. [...] The fifth reason
was to allow a fair exchange. The saints make festival in heaven over us, for there is joy
before the angels of God and holy souls over one sinner doing penance, and so we
should make a fair return by celebrating their feast on earth. And [the] sixth reason is
to assure our own honour, because when we honour the saints, we are taking care of
our own interests and procuring our own honour.17

Several of these reasons are applicable to extra-liturgical devotion to the saints in a

domestic or conventual environment where prints were more likely to have been used: making
requests for a saint’s intercession in a time of need, learning of a saint’s virtuous and pious
example in his biography, and remembering a saint’s comforting presence in heaven.
Firstly, the central, iconic figure of the saint allowed individuals to visualise the holy
figure to whom they addressed their invocations. Looking out at the viewer, the saint seems
to invite prayers and requests, engaging the supplicant in an ‘exchange of glances’.18
Florentines would have found it natural to use the prints in this way, especially since the
employment of small texts and images on paper to prompt and guide petitionary prayers was

16
Carruthers, The Book of Memory, p. 249
17
Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, vol. 2, pp. 273-74.
18
See Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund
Jephcott, Chicago and London, 1994, pp. 78-101, quotation on p. 80 (translation of Hans Belting, Bild
und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst, Munich, 1990).
121
not unusual. The San Jacopo di Ripoli press printed prayer sheets (‘orazioni’) dedicated to
saints such as St Julian, St Sebastian and St Roch; individuals also owned paper ‘breviciuoli’,
small sheets with prayers that could be rolled up and put in pouches.19 Printed images of
saints provided visual counterparts to these texts and were linked with vocal prayers by
adopting the formula ‘ora pro nobis’. The Mary Magdalen by the Dante Workshop (fig. 4.28),
for example, includes the text ‘Santa Maria Maddalena ora pro nobis’, requesting that she, on
behalf of the supplicant, plead for forgiveness, compassion or mercy from God.
The narrative of the border, on the other hand, amplifies the saint’s story reinforces
the saint’s holy example and parallels the contemporary practice of copying and reading the
legends of saints in family manuscripts or zibaldoni. Mario Guiducci, for example, who
included several legends by Jacopo da Voragine in his chapbook, prefaced his book with the
comment that the stories of men and women who suffered more than he did gave him
comfort, ‘soothing and minimising tribulations’.20 So too, Mona Costantia, wife of Benedetto
Cicciaporci, compiled the legends of a number of female saints, ‘to give consolation to her
soul, and secondly, for the consolation of her daughters’. 21 In such books, different stories
were related to distinct circumstances. The legend of St Margaret, as patron saint of child
birth, for instance, was widely copied in manuscripts in the period; in 1479, the pregnant
Bianca de’ Medici asked for a copy of St Margaret’s life, while a printed edition of the text was
issued by San Jacopo a Ripoli in 1482.22 The pictorial legends of St Anthony Abbot, St Anthony
of Padua and St Sebastian could offer similar consolation through the dramatisation of their
tribulations. St Sebastian, in the Sebastian Vita, is shown being shot by archers and beaten by
clubs on account of his faith (fig. 4.9). In the Anthony Abbot Vita, Anthony is pictured tempted
by gold, living an ascetic life in the desert with Paul the Hermit and suffering the torments of
the devil (fig. 4.7). His role as a pious example of someone who endures harsh trials is
emphasised by the description of him in the prints as a ‘chavaliere fervvente’ (ardent knight).
Like the real soldier Sebastian, he fought against the difficulties of the world – in this case, the
temptations of the flesh and of worldly goods. In sum, the vita format had the potential to
facilitate more than one way of venerating a saint: the engagement with the stories of the
saint’s life, the celebration of a saint’s holy status and the invocation of that saint for succour.

19
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli 1476-1484, pp. 289-303 and
Musacchio, Art, Marriage and Family, p. 206.
20
Florence, BR, MS 1388, 181r ‘dando refrigeramento nelle tributiatione e memnomandolarci’.
21
‘Questo libro affatto scrivere mona ghostantia donna fu di benedetto acciaporci el quale a libro
affatto fare per consolatione dell’anima sua e secondariamente a chonsolazione delle sue figliuole’.
BNCF, MS. II.II.89, fol. 144r
22
Musacchio, Art, Marriage, and Family in the Florentine Renaissance Palace, p. 212 and Conway, The
Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli, pp. 54-55, 300.
122
4.2. The Varied Forms and Functions of Vita Prints

There is some uniformity in prints with the vita schema, but the framework was
directed to different aims by varying the iconography of the marginal scenes, the composition
of each segment and the use of captions and banderoles. The first section of what follows will
examine the Baptist Vita, exploring its relationship to contemporary chapbooks and interest in
Florence’s patron saint, St John the Baptist. The second part will consider two engravings by
the Dante Workshop with extended invocatory prayers engraved on them: the Anthony Abbot
Vita and the Anthony of Padua Vita. The last section will focus on the Catherine Vita and Philip
Vita, prints that publicise the lives of individuals associated with mendicant orders.

St John the Baptist: Education and Delight

The Baptist Vita (fig. 4.6) stands out amongst the vita prints, since the central image is
episodic rather than iconic (fig. 4.12:A). Illustrating the Baptism of Christ, it is a rough copy of a
lost pax attributed to Maso Finiguerra, known from an old photograph and a paper impression
presumably taken from a sulphur cast of the pax (figs. 4.29-30).23 The original plaque shows
the Baptist and Christ in similar positions with God appearing above from clouds and rays of
light, with St Lawrence and St Francis kneeling in adoration before Christ. These saints are
absent from the print, where the engraver added a banderole from God’s mouth, with a
garbled version of ‘Hic est filius meus dilectus’ (this is my beloved son) from the Gospel of
Matthew.24 With its adaptation of a composition attributed to Maso Finiguerra, the print has
parallels with Piero Baldini’s print, the Coronation of the Virgin and Scenes from her Life (Žatec
Virgin Vita), where the Coronation of the Virgin is based on a pax once in the Baptistery of
Florence (figs. 1.1, 1.4). The narrative scenes around the central Baptism of Christ were
probably designed by a draughtsman and then copied, not entirely successfully, onto the
copper plate in a new grid layout by a separate engraver. The scenes in the lower margin are
awkwardly positioned, the banderole in the Meeting of the Baptist and Christ in the Wilderness
is empty and the text above Christ in the central scene is garbled. The story of the Baptist’s
life is thereby centred around is his most celebrated achievement: his baptising of Jesus, a
moment in the Gospels that publically demonstrated Christ’s divinity.

23
The niello plaque was in the collection of Samuel Figdor Vienna in 1925, and first documented in the
Durazzo Collection in Genoa. See Marc Rosenberg, Geschichte der Goldschmiedekunst auf technischer
Grundlage. Niello seit dem Jahre 1000 nach Chr., 3 vols, Frankfurt, 1925, vol. 3, pp. 76-79.
24
Matthew 3:17. Latin Vulgate: ‘[et ecce vox de caelis dicens] hic est Filius meus dilectus [in quo mihi
conplacui]’.
123
 The life of St John the Baptist was especially important to Florentines, for he was the
patron saint of the city, with his life celebrated in numerous images, texts, plays, processions
and the annual feast of the Baptist’s Nativity (fig. 4.31).25 Perhaps because of this, his life was
deemed an appropriate way to introduce less educated readers and young children to
devotion. In a frequently copied fourteenth-century version of the legend, the author enjoins
the reader:

In thinking of [Christ] and his ultimate love and that of Messer San Giovanni I have
done this for the diversion of feeble minds, and from such a childish work that satisfies
the souls of youths, they may gain such spiritual joy as comes from meditation and
entering into the life of Christ and of his mother Our Lady, and if they find pleasure in
thinking of the life of the saints in such childish ways, how much more will they think
of the life of Christ which is perfection and turning their minds to these small, humble
meditations they will learn how to enter and contemplate the great things of the saints
and thus will begin to contemplate Messer Gesù Christo in the good deeds of his holy
saints.26

Such explanations refer to texts, but pictures were believed to be equally, if not more,
effective, as Giovanni Dominici, the Dominican preacher, famously described in his Regola del
Governo di Cura Familiare:

Have pictures of saintly children or young virgins in the home, in which your child, still
in swaddling clothes may take delight and thereby may be gladdened by acts and signs
pleasing to childhood. ... So let the child see himself mirrored in the Holy Baptist
clothed in camel’s skin, a little child who enters the desert, plays with birds, sucks the
honeyed flowers and sleeps on the ground. ... For you must know that paintings of the
angels and saints are permitted and intended for the instruction of the unlearned.27

In both passages, the authors envision the playful aspects of the Baptist’s infancy as an
introduction into the more serious aspects of the saint’s life. The same theory probably lies

25
Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, pp. 240-63; Giovanni Mancini, ‘Il Bel S. Giovanni e le feste
patronali di Firenze descritte nel 1475 da Piero Cennini’, Rivista d’Arte, vol. 6, 1909, pp. 493-99. For the
plays written for the feast, see Nerida Newbigin, ‘Politics in the Sacre Rappresentazioni of Lorenzo’s
Florence’, in Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann (eds), Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics,
London, 1996, pp. 117-30, esp. pp. 121-22. For the representations by Antonio Pollaiuolo of the Baptist’s
life and the context of Florence, see Wright, The Pollaiuolo Brothers, pp. 257-93.
26
See Kent, Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance, pp. 97-98 and p. 434, n. 11. For the entire
text, erroneously attributed to Domenico Cavalca, see Domenico Cavalca, Volgarizzamento delle vite de’
santi padri e di alcuni altri santi scritte nel buon secolo della lingua toscana, Milan, 6 vols, 1830-1858,
vol. 4, pp. 214-320. For the text as a source for the iconography of St John the Baptist, see Marilyn
Aronberg Lavin, ‘Giovannino Battista – A Study in Renaissance Religious Symbolism’, The Art Bulletin,
vol. 37, 1955, pp. 85-101 and Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, ‘Giovannino Battista: A Supplement’, The Art
Bulletin, vol. 43, 1961, pp. 319-26.
27
Giovanni Dominici, Regola del governo di cura familiare parte quarto: On the Education of Children,
trans. and ed. Arthur Basil Coté (Washington, 1927), p. 34.
124
behind the inclusion of illustrations in several manuscripts containing the story of the Baptist,
some of which may have been drawn by the manuscripts’ owners themselves. In a book
written by the notary Ser Giovanni di Michele Sextini in 1476, for example, a hand-coloured
drawing depicts the young Baptist, holding the banderole with words ‘Ecce agnus dei’ as he
enters the wilderness, (fig. 4.32).28 In another manuscript copied in 1409 by Zanobi di Pagholo
Perini, the text is punctuated by a series of rough, partially coloured drawings including the
Baptism of Christ and the Beheading of the Baptist, often labelled by inscriptions (figs 4.33,
4.34).29
Like these drawings, the Baptist Vita (fig. 4.6) can be understood to offer the ‘pleasure’
as well as the ‘instruction’ valued by writers such Dominici. The intricately designed narrative
scenes print invite the viewer to engage closely with the lives of both Christ and the Baptist,
enjoying the overall decorative effect as well as the details of the story. Episodes are set, for
example, within spaces fashionably decorated with garlands and curtains and in elaborate
all’antica temples with columns and ornamental motifs filled by men and women dressed in
rich costumes with copious drapery and festive headgear. In most other contemporary
images of the Baptist’s nativity, the birth and nursing of the infant is combined in one scene,
with Elizabeth shown washing her hands in bed as a nurse holds the baby (fig. 4.31). Here,
however, the Birth of the Baptist is separated from the Nursing of the Baptist, thereby more
strongly emphasising the familial and domestic aspects of the Baptist’s life, shown as though it
takes place in a Florentine household (fig. 4.12:A.3-4). In the Visitation, on the other hand, the
embryonic John the Baptist is seen jumping for joy in Elizabeth’s womb at the presence of the
pregnant Virgin (fig. 4.12:A.2, 4.35), literally illustrating the words of Luke: ‘when Elizabeth
heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb’. 30 The visualised version of the
Baptist’s life therefore provides a condensed version of the texts found in contemporary
anthologies, with such details providing the ‘acts and signs pleasing to childhood’ as well as to
adults. The images allowed the viewer to dwell, step by step, on the Baptist’s life in a spirit of
curiosity and enjoyment, always aware of the defining moment of his life, his baptism of Christ.

28
BNCF, MS. II.127, fol. 1r.
29
BNCF, MS.II.II.445, fols 1v, 16v, 20r, 33v, 34v, 36r, 38r.
30
Luke 1:41. Latin Vulgate: ‘et factum est ut audivit salutationem Mariae Elisabeth exultavit infans in
utero eius’.
125
St Anthony Abbot and St Anthony of Padua: Supplication

While the Baptist Vita responds to the devotional aims of instruction and delight,
other vita prints were more obviously suited to petitionary prayer. In two vita prints made by
the Dante Workshop, the Anthony Abbot Vita (fig. 4.7) and the Anthony of Padua Vita (4.8),
this is made apparent through the extended prayer positioned beneath the central figure. St
Anthony Abbot is adjoined by the vernacular prayer:

O Holy Father, Anthony of Vienne, ardent knight, worthy of memory, so greatly did you
love Jesus that all people fear you, revere you and give you glory. Because of you, all
hope to have victory from God. Perfect Light of every penitent, pray to Jesus for his
Christ people that he might take unto him our transitory soul.31

The Anthony of Padua Vita, on the other hand, contains a slightly garbled text, also in
Italian: ‘If you are looking for miracles – death, errors, calamities, the devil, leprosy, these all
vanish; the sick become healthy, the sea becomes calm, young and old ask for and recover
their limbs and things they have lost, dangers are warded off, needs cease. Thus say those who
know.’ These words are derived from a well-known Latin prayer or hymn written by Anthony’s
biographer Giuliano da Spira and sung as an antiphon on Anthony’s feast day that culminated
in the prayer: ‘Pray for us, O blessed Anthony, that we may be made worthy of the promises of
Christ’.32
These vita prints differ from other illustrated prayer prints such as the St Mary
Magadalen (fig. 4.28) because the narratives visually demonstrate the effectiveness of the
prayer, proclaiming the saint’s power as an intercessor. These marginal episodes were
probably composed to illustrate this power and the words of the prayer. The Anthony Abbot
Vita, for instance, shows the saint’s potential to heal in the final episode in the sheet, with
pilgrims at the saint’s tomb in Vienne, where invalids, particularly those suffering from

31
‘O PADRE SANTO DEGNIO DI MEMORIA / ANTON DI VIENNA CHAVALIERE FERVVENTE / TANTO
AMASTI GIESU CHE OGNI GENTE / TITEME REVERISCIE E DATTI GLORIA / PER TE DA DIO SI SPERA AVER
VETORIA / PERFETTO LUME DOGNI PENITENTE / PRIEGHA GIESU PER SUA CHRISTIANA GENTE / CHE
FACIA A SE NOSTR[‘]ALMA TRANSISTORIA’. Translation from Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1,
p. 277.
32
This was first identified in Paul Kristeller, ‘Una incisione in rame sconosciuta, del secolo XV’, Archivio
storico dell’arte, vol. 5, 1892, pp. 364-66. See also ‘Anthony of Padua’, Filippo Caraffa and Giuseppe
Morelli (eds), Bibliotheca Sanctorum, 13 vols, Rome, 1961-70, vol. 2, pp. 156-188, p. 171. For the full text
see Joseph P. Christopher, Charles E. Spence, John F. Rowan (eds), The Raccolta or A Manual of
Indulgences: Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, Potosi, 2000, pp. 417-18. ‘Si quaeris
miracula,/ Mors, error, calamitas, / Daemon, lepra fugiunt, /Aegri surgunt sani. // Ant: Cedunt mare,
vincula: /Membra resque, perditas / Petunt et accipiunt / Iuvenes et cani. // Pereunt pericula, / Cessat
et necessitas: / Narrent hi, qui sentiunt, / Dicant Paduani. // Ant: Cedunt mare, vincula.../ Gloria Patri et
Filio/ et Spiritui Sancto. // Ant: Cedunt mare, vincula...// V. Ora pro nobis, beate Antoni,/ R. Ut digni
efficiamur promissionibus Christi’.
126
ergotism (named St Anthony’s Fire after the saint) travelled in pursuit of a cure (fig.
4.12:C.11).33 The argument that these episodes were specially compiled for the print counters
Carolyn Wilson’s suggestion that the Anthony Abbot Vita is a copy of a dismantled vita panel
painted by Fra Angelico.34 Of this speculative panel, only the Temptation by Gold, now in
Houston (fig. 4.36), and St Anthony Abbot, now lost (fig. 4.38), are known. As she observes,
the drapery, staff and postures of Anthony in these two episodes in the engraving are
extremely close to those in Fra Angelico’s paintings, with only small differences in each scene,
such as the pigs and swag around St Anthony (C. 1, figs 4.37, 4.39). According to her
reasoning, the prayer must have been added by the engravers as an afterthought, possibly to
fill the empty space in the lower margin. But, it is likely that the engravers assembled episodes
derived from a range of sources to suit the invocation recorded on the print.35 Apart from the
fact that only one scene from her speculative altarpiece survives, the jumbled organisation of
surrounding episodes in the print would be strange for Fra Angelico, a Dominican friar, but is
more typical of the engravers’ method of eclectic pastiche, whereby various sources were
assimilated into a new composite design. The engravers probably began with the grid
framework and then fitted various elements into it, but not in a wholly logical sequence. In
this respect the making of the two prints was similar to that of the round Otto prints, for which
the Dante Workshop repeatedly used the circular format and mixed and matched images and
motifs within it (figs 1.144,146, 150, 154).
In the Anthony of Padua Vita (fig. 4.8) the marginal scenes most obviously visualise the
contents of the prayer. Two of the segments depict biographical events: Anthony taking the
Franciscan habit (fig. 4.12:D.1) and preaching to people (D.2). Three can be related to well
known episodes from hagiographic literature: the miracle of the miser’s heart (D.7); the
acquittal of a woman from adultery by her newborn (D.3) and the healing of a disobedient
boy’s leg (D.8).36 But the other images do not relate to events described in the accounts of
Anthony’s life or to extant pictures of his miracles. Instead they illustrate the more general
miracles referred to in Giuliano da Spira’s prayer, including those showing Anthony
resurrecting the dead (D.10), healing a leper (D.4), exorcising demons (D.12), clothing the poor

33
For the cult of St Anthony Abbot and the Antonine Canons Regular see Laura Fenelli, Il Tau, il fuoco, il
maiale: I canonici reglari di sant’Antonio Abate tra assistenza e devozione, Spoleto, 2006.
34
Wilson, ‘Fra Angelico: New Light on a Lost Work’, pp. 737-740.
35
This opinion is shared by Meiffret, Saint Antoine ermite en Italie, p. 156.
36
For the hagiographic literature on Anthony of Padua, see volumes in the Fonti agiografiche antoniane
series: Vergilio Gamboso (ed.), Vita prima di S. Antonio, o, Assidua (c. 1232), Padua, 1981; Giuliano da
Spira, Officio ritmico e Vita secunda, ed. Vergilio Gamboso, Padua, 1985; Vergilio Gamboso (ed.), Vita
del "Dialogus" e "Benignitas", Padua, 1986; Vergilio Gamboso (ed.), Vite "Raymundina" e "Rigaldina",
Padua, 1992; Vergilio Gamboso (ed.), ‘Liber miraculorum’ e altri testi medievali, Padua, 1997.
127
(D.9), calming a stormy sea (D.5), helping the young (D.8) and old (D.6). Together, the small
segments provide an index of the many miracles associated with Anthony, evidence of his
power to intercede for mankind, to heal, save and exorcise. Inspired by these, the worshipper
was granted more confidence to address his pleas of supplication to the saint.

St Catherine of Siena and Philip of Florence: Promotion of an Order

On first glance, the Catherine Vita (fig. 4.10) and Philip Vita (fig. 4.11) are very
different. The Philip Vita follows the conventional scheme of vita paintings, with an arch
framing the saint and dividing him from the segments positioned on three sides around him.
In this way it is reminiscent of Giovanni del Biondo’s St John the Baptist and Scenes from his
Life (fig. 4.16) or Bicci di Lorenzo’s vita panel showing St Margaret of Antioch (fig. 4.17). In the
Catherine Vita, on the other hand, the Dante Workshop transformed the vita framework to
conform with contemporary altarpieces, such as those by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Francesco
Botticini and Cosimo Rosselli (figs 4.2, 4.40-41). Like the Virgin and Child in such paintings, St
Catherine is presented in front of an all’antica niche within a walled garden and like
contemporary predellas (fig. 4.40), the print has only four episodes instead of eleven or
twelve. It is only by positioning the narrative episodes either side of Catherine, as if part of the
wall, that the engraver remains faithful to the vita prototypes and places stronger emphasis on
the hagiographic moments and their relationship with the central figure.
Although they are divergent in appearance, both prints were made to promote
figureheads of mendicant Orders, the Dominicans and the Servites in the fifteenth century. The
Dominican nun Catherine of Siena (1347-80) was canonised by Pope Pius II in 1461 after
continued efforts by her Order in the first half of the Quattrocento. Blessed Philip Benizzi of
Florence (1233-85) was the fifth Prior General of the Order of the Servites, an order devoted to
the Virgin Mary that was primarily based at Santissima Annunziata in Florence and the Church
of the Servites in Todi. Philip was not canonised until 1671, but he was the focus of several
attempts to make him the first Servite saint, particularly those between 1485 and 1495 led by
the Prior General, Fra Antonio Alabanti.37 The two vita prints, therefore, cannot be separated
from the publicity campaigns of these organisations intended to disseminate the cult of their
spiritual leaders, an aim that is reinforced by the saints’ mendicant habits and the Servite
emblem above Philip. The production of prints to commemorate an Order’s new saint

37
Alana O’Brien, ‘The Compagnia di San Sebastiano and the Lost Founders’, Confraternitas, vol. 16, no.
1, 2005, pp. 3-18, esp. p. 14. See also Lamberto Crocciani, ‘Immagini e culto di San Filippo Benizi’, in
Eugenio Casalini et al. (eds), Tesori d’arte dell’Annunziata di Firenze, Florence, 1987, pp. 113-31.
128
appears to have been fairly common. Images on paper (‘cartis depictis’) decorated the streets
at the procession of Augustinians at the canonisation of Nicholas of Tolentino in 1446, and
other contemporary woodcuts portray the newly canonised saints St Bernardino of Siena and
St Vincent Ferrier.38 The format of the vita print was suited to this purpose as it contained
the biographic and miraculous events that justified the saint’s right to be celebrated within the
formal institution of the church.

Catherine Vita

As usual in the course of canonising a saint, the miracles of Catherine of Siena played a
key role in the formal Process of her canonisation (the Processo Castellano of 1411-16). As part
of this, Tommaso Caffarini, the leader of the Dominicans in Venice, had Raymund of Capua’s
biography of Catherine, the Legenda Maior, copied and widely disseminated through Europe.39
He also wrote his own extended version of her life, the Libellus de supplemento legende prolixe
virginis Beate Catherine de Senis, or Supplement, which described Catherine’s miracles in
depth, linking them with the acts of well established saints.40 He also commissioned images on
paper – probably woodcuts – showing Catherine, which judging by the word in the contract
‘ystorialiter’ (historiated) had some narrative content: ‘ymago ipsius virginis etiam ystorialiter
de facili multiplicabilis depingeretur in cartis’ (an easily multiplied, historiated image of the
Virgin herself to be painted on paper).41 They may have contained an iconic figure with a
single narrative segment above it like other woodcuts produced in northern Italy (figs. 4.48-49,
4.55), perhaps showing Catherine receiving the stigmata.42 A comment by Fra Bartolomeo da
Ferrara, who was involved in the Processo Castellano, indicates that there were also vita
panels showing Catherine surrounded by scenes from her life and miracles. Describing
paintings of the saint, he notes the narrative scenes around her central figure: ‘whatever I saw

38
Cobianchi, ‘The Use of Woodcuts in Fifteenth-century Italy’, p. 53.
39
Bianchi, ‘Il carattere dottrinale della santità di Caterina da Siena’, pp. 569-70
40
Emily A. Moerer, ‘The Visual Hagiography of a Stigmatic Saint: Drawings of Catherine of Siena in the
Libellus de Supplemento’, Gesta, vol. 44, 2005, pp. 89-102.
41
Bianchi, ‘Il carattere dottrinale della santità di Caterina da Siena’, p. 570. For references to the images
on paper, see Sara Matthews Grieco, ‘Modelli di santità femminile nell’Italia del Rinascimento e della
Controriforma’ in Lucetta Saraffia and Gabriella Zarri (eds), Donna e fede: Santità e vita religiosa in Italia,
Rome and Baria, 1994, pp. 303-25, p. 317. See Saffrey, ‘Les images populaires de saints dominicains à
Venise au XVe siècle’; Saffrey, ‘Ymago de facili multiplicabilis in cartis’, pp. 4-7.
42
Bianchi, ‘Il carattere dottrinale della santità di Caterina da Siena’, p. 593.
129
painted around her image, either pertaining to her life or to her miracles, was simply and
truthfully done in whole, according to what was contained in her Legend’.43
The Florentine Catherine Vita was produced after her canonisation in 1461, probably
commissioned by local Dominicans as part of the continued effort to promote her cult,
alongside the printing of Raymund of Capua’s Legenda Maior by the Dominicans of San Jacopo
a Ripoli in 1477.44 In this respect it can be compared to the many older vita paintings
produced shortly after a saint’s death or canonisation to publicise a recent saint and his
miracles. In Bonaventura Berlinghieri’s panel of 1235, painted seven years after Francis’
canonisation in 1228, Francis is surrounded by six miracles including his stigmatisation, his
preaching to the birds, his healing of the lame and an exorcism (fig. 4.14).45 In the fifteenth-
century gonfalone made in 1451, a year after his canonisation in 1450, St Bernardino is
surrounded by miracles including the curing of the sick and lame, raising a child from the dead
and performing exorcism (fig. 4.21).46 Like these paintings and the other vita prints, the
Catherine Vita (fig. 4.10) portrays Catherine intervening in people’s lives in scenes that also
appeared in a predella by the Master of San Miniato (figs 4.42, 4.44, 4.46) possibly made to
accompany Cosimo Rosselli’s altarpiece showing St Catherine (fig. 4.41).47 The first scene on
the upper left, illustrates Catherine’s descent into limbo where she saved condemned souls
(fig. 4.43); the second illustrates her exorcism of a demon from a friend of Mona Bianca (fig.
4.45), and the final episode shows her funeral with the sick being healed at her body as her
soul ascends to heaven (fig. 4.47). These episodes are clear testimonies of Catherine’s capacity
to heal, exorcise and grant remission from the punishment of sins in Purgatory.
Amongst these episodes, the fourth scene in the Catherine Vita, the stigmatisation of
St Catherine, is particularly important (fig. 4.50). A mystical vision of Christ on the cross in
Pisa, the event proved Catherine’s spiritual excellence during her life on earth and
demonstrated her supreme love and piety by bringing her into conformity with Christ. For
similar reasons, Dominican saints were often shown in the midst of a contemplative or
miraculous vision in contemporary prints. As noted in Chapter Two, the Dante Workshop’s St
Dominic (fig. 2.4) has St Peter and St Paul presenting Dominic with a staff and a book, in a

43
Diega Giunta, ‘L’iconografia cateriniana nel secolo XX’, in Congresso internazionale di studi cateriniani,
pp. 596-619, p. 597.
44
See Thomas, ‘Images of St Catherine’; Anabel Thomas, ‘Dominican Marginalia: The Late Fifteenth-
Century Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli in Florence’, in Stephen J. Milner (ed.), At the Margins:
Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, Minneapolis, 2005, pp. 192-216, pp. 198-201.
45
See Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle stimmate, pp. 321-56; Krüger, Der frühe Bildkult des
Franziskus in Italien, pp. 65-73, Cannon, ‘Beyond the Limitations of Visual Typology’, p. 306.
46
See Wilson Cyril, The Imagery of San Bernardino da Siena, pp. 105-07, 131
47
Gigetta dalli Regoli (ed.), Il ‘Maestro di San Miniato’: Lo stato degli studi, i problemi, le risposte della
filologia, Pisa, 1988, pp. 230-31, cat. no. 35; Thomas, ‘Images of St Catherine’, pp. 172-73.
130
vision that validated the main aim of the Dominicans: to preach. 48 Another woodcut, probably
Venetian, includes a vision believed to have been experienced by both Dominic and Master
Reginald in which the Virgin offered a black habit to Dominic (fig. 4.48, 4.60), an episode that
demonstrated the divine origin of the Dominican order.49 A woodcut from the same series (fig.
4.49) shows St Thomas of Aquinas’ vision in the Dominican monastery in Naples in which
Aquinas was given divine approval for a section of his Summa Theologica. A sculpted image of
Christ seemed to come alive and declare ‘Bene scripsisti da me Thoma’ (You have written well
of me, Thomas) to Aquinas as he hovered above the ground.50 In each case, the visions
sanctified the writing, preaching and deeds of the saints for which they were so celebrated and
venerated.
St Catherine’s stigmatisation was imbued with similar, if not greater significance, for it
positioned her as parallel to St Francis.51 Partly for this reason, Catherine’s stigmata were
central to the Processo Castellano, for they not only were a mark of her sanctity, but they also
positioned the Dominicans on an equal spiritual footing with their rivals the Franciscans. In his
Supplement, for instance, Caffarini focussed on her stigmatisation extensively, not only relating
her experience to St Francis’ stigmata as well as those received by other Dominicans, all of
which were illustrated in an edition of the work now in Siena (figs 4.51-52). Caffarini may have
also commissioned a panel by Andrea di Bartolo showing the stigmatisation of Catherine and
four other Dominicans, for a convent of Dominican nuns in Murano (fig. 4.53).52 Prints also
publicised the event after her canonisation: a north Italian engraving portrays Catherine at the
foot of the cross, receiving the stigmata alongside her fellow nun, the Blessed Margaret of
Hungary (fig. 4.54).53 As one of the four miracles of Catherine in the Catherine Vita, the
stigmatisation is not as prominent as in the northern Italian engraving, but it is emphasised by
the rays of light that shine from the wounds on the hands of Catherine standing in the centre.
48
The two figures in the Florentine print show considerable similarity to a Venetian woodcut in which
the two saints similarly hold a staff and a book, and may have been directly modelled on it or vice versa.
For the woodcut, see Saffrey, ‘Les images populaires de saints dominicains à Venise au XVe siècle’, pp.
282-83 and Bellini, Xilografie italiane del Quattrocento, pp. 120-21, cat. no. 42.
49
Voragine, The Golden Legend, vol. 2, p. 50.
50
Saffrey, ‘Les images populaires de saints dominicains à Venise au XVe siècle’, pp. 265-66 and Parshall
and Schoch, The Origins of European Printmaking, pp. 315-17, cat. no. 101b. The legend was recounted
in several versions of Aquinas’ life. See Dominicus M. Prümmer (ed.), Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis,
Toulouse, 1912-1928, p. 38 (Vita of Petro Calo), p. 108, (Vita of Guillelmo de Tocco), p. 189 (Vita of
Bernardo Guidonis).
51
Rosalind B. Brooke, The Image of St Francis, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 189, 232, 236-7.
52
For the illustrated text see Moerer, ‘The Visual Hagiography of a Stigmatic Saint’. For Andrea di
Bartolo’s panel see Gaudenz Freuler, ‘Andrea di Bartolo, Fra Tommaso d'Antonio Caffarini, and Sienese
Dominicans in Venice’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 69, no. 4, 1987, pp. 570-586.
53
For a discussion of the predella panels and the scholarly debate about their date, see the online
catalogue entry, written in 2011: < http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-
collections/110002477?img=1 > [accessed 12 January 2012].
131
Moreover, if the Catherine Vita was produced after 1472 when the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV
prohibited the representation of stigmata on any saint except St Francis, it was a particularly
daring defiance of the Franciscan claim that only Francis was able to receive the stigmata.54

Philip Vita

Just as the Venetian Dominicans commissioned prints to promote the Blessed

Catherine of Siena at the Processo Castellano, the Servites ordered images of the Blessed
Philip. At a General Chapter meeting in Germany in 1486, the Prior General Fra Antonio
Alabanti da Bologna, asked for his legend and miracles to be written and for his image to be
placed in churches as part of a campaign to have Philip canonised:

Let the Process of Blessed Philip be taken in hand, and let a list of his miracles be
compiled. Let an Altar or statue of Blessed Philip be placed in each of our churches.
Let all our preachers dwell on the glories of the Santissima Annunziata and on the
greatness of our Patriarch Philip. The question of the holy and most deserved
canonisation of our Patriarch is to be discussed.55

The Philip Vita (fig. 4.11), like a north Italian woodcut (fig. 4. 55) showing Philip, may
have been commissioned as part of such an effort since it shows the life and miracles of Philip
included in his several biographies. The vision of the Virgin, the miracle of the angels and
bread, the fire at Todi, the exorcism of prostitutes were known through several legends,
including the thirteenth-century Legenda de origine ordinis and Legenda Beati Philippi and
other texts compiled in the fifteenth century by Niccolò Borghesi, Taddeo Adimari and Paolo
Attavanti.56 Moreover, Philip’s sanctity is emphasised in a similar way to that of Catherine of
Siena: just as Catherine was compared to saints such as Anthony Abbot and Francis, in the
Philip Vita Philip is implicitly linked with other saints. In the left margin, he is shown in
penitence in the wilderness outside a cave in a way that recalls contemporary portrayals of
Jerome (figs 4.56-57). Philip’s vision of the Virgin and Christ handing him the Servite habit –
also seen in the north Italian woodcut (figs 4.58-59) – is reminiscent of St Dominic’s dream of
the Virgin handing him the Dominican habit (fig. 4. 60) and Giovanni di Paolo’s predella panel,

54
Bianchi and Giunti, Iconografia di S. Caterina da Siena, p. 80; Frugoni, Francesco e l’invenzione delle
stimmate, pp. 216-22.
55
Peregrine Soulier, The Life of St Philip Benizi, London, 1885, p. 511. See also, Odir Jaques Dias, ‘La
prima raccolta di miracoli alla morte di san Filippo Benizi (Todi, 1285-1290)’, Studi storici dell’ordine dei
Servi di Maria, vol. 36, 1986 (Le fonti per la biografia di San Filippo Benizi (1233-85): Atti del Simposio
scientifico di Todi [4- 6 aprile 1986]), pp. 77-174, pp. 84-86.
56
Origins and Early Saints of the Order of Servants of Mary: Writings of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries, Chicago, 1984; Davide Montagna, ‘L’agiografia beniziana antica: Pluralità e cronologia delle
legendae trecentesche’, Studi storici dell’ordine dei Servi di Maria, vol. 34, 1984, pp. 11-33.
132
once in the church of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, with St Catherine receiving her habit
from Saints Francis, Dominic and Augustine (fig. 4.61). Like such earlier legends, the episode
not only expressed Philip’s inherent virtue, but also gave divine validation to the Servite Order,
so prominently signposted in the print through the Servite symbol at its top and the Latin
inscription at the bottom. Both the Catherine Vita and Philip Vita prints, therefore, offered a
pictorial manifesto not only for the individuals, their lives and spirituality, but also for their
Orders.

Conclusion

The revival of the vita layout with its fragmented picture plane corresponded well with
the varied ways that Florentines honoured saints, even if the general trend in altarpiece design
was towards unified, single field images. The prints could spread the pious example of the
saint, prove his or her capacity to intercede for men and women on earth and publicise his or
her status as worthy member of the communion of saints. As demonstrated, each print
fulfilled these aims in different ways and to varied purpose. The Catherine Vita was probably
commissioned by local Dominicans to celebrate her recent canonisation. The Sebastian Vita,
on the other hand, with a common invocation engraved in the lower margin, was possibly
created by an opportunistic engraver to sell at one of the many times the plague struck the
city.57 Finally, the Baptist Vita was made by an artist inspired by the designs of Maso
Finiguerra who created an exuberant visual account of Florence’s patron saint, a visual parallel
of the written account of the Baptist’s life so often copied into chapbook.
The layout of the vita print continued to be popular, and artists varied, renewed and
transformed the basic framework in succeeding centuries. At the beginning of the sixteenth
century, for example, a north Italian engraver created another version of St Anthony of Padua
and his Miracles (fig. 4.62) and in the 1520s Titian made the design for a woodcut showing St
Roch surrounded by episodes from his life in which the central image is placed within
rectangular frame topped by a cornice (fig.4.63). A century later, the Dutch engraver Jacob
Mahem was one of many who produced such prints, such as St Willibrord and Scenes from his
Life of 1603 (fig. 4.64) where the images are accompanied by many inscriptions. Another
engraving of 1603, on the other hand, places the tomb of St Cecilia amidst a sequence of
elaborately decorated cartouches, each containing an episode from her biography (fig. 4.65).

57
Ann G. Carmichael, Plague and the Poor in Renaissance Florence, Cambridge and New York, 1985, p. 1.
133
In all cases, the vita typology served as a pictorial grammar to articulate a narrative that could
be viewed in an intimate space with close attention to words and pictorial details.

134
Chapter 5: Meditation: Engraved Lives of Christ and the Virgin

5.1. Meditation and Narrative Images in Fifteenth-Century Europe

The focus of this chapter is on two types of prints with the life of Christ and the Virgin.
The first of these is a picture cycle of ten engravings, designated the Vienna Passion because of
its location in the Albertina Collection in Vienna (figs 5.1 - 5.10). The second type consists of
four single sheet engravings with the layout of the hagiographic vita prints. Two depict Christ’s
Passion and Resurrection in fourteen segments positioned around a larger Crucifixion (figs
5.11-13) and are henceforth described at the Christ Vita prints. Another two, dubbed here the
Virgin Vita prints, represent scenes from the life of the Virgin, set around a picture of her
Assumption in one, and her Coronation in the other (figs 1.1, 5.14). In some respects, these
prints are naturally grouped with the vita prints discussed in the previous chapter, for they all
facilitate a close visual reading of the life of a holy figure. There is a strong connection, for
example, between the Christ Vita prints and the Baptist Vita: both include scenes derived from
the Gospels and show a significant and emblematic moment in the story in the larger central
frame. The prints are treated separately here, however, because images of Christ and his
mother the Virgin Mary commanded a different mode of viewing from those of saints. The
distinction was explained by the Archbishop of Florence, Antoninus, in his Summa Theologica,
written shortly before his death in 1459 and first published in 1477. Saints are considered
worthy of the adoration of dulia, a form of attention characterised by reverence and seen as
analogous to the respect of a servant to his master.1 Christ, on the other hand, could be
adored more intensely with latria, consisting of interior adoration - reverence, devotion and
subjection of the mind (‘reverentia, devotione, et subjectione mentis’) and external adoration
– kneeling, bowing, leaving of gifts (‘genuflexionibus, inclinationibus, munerationibus’).2 The
Virgin, as mother of God, was granted an intermediary position which entitled her to the
adoration of hyperdulia.3
Although these definitions were derived from early patristic texts reinforced by
Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, the laity, and even clerics, were not necessarily aware of

1
Antonino Pierozzi, Sancti Antonini summa theologica, 4 vols, Graz, 1959, vol. 3, pp. 542-45, esp. p. 543.
2
Ibid., vol. 3, p. 543. Latria was also discussed by Girolamo Savonarola, ‘Tractato della oratione
mentale’, in Opere co[n]poste dal venerando padre frate Hieronymo da Ferrara del ordine di predicatori ,
Venice: Lazaro de Soardi, 1512, pp. xlv(r)-lix(v), p. xlvii(v)-xlviii(r). The version consulted is in the British
Library, MS C.53.gg.2.
3
Pierozzi, Sancti Antonini summa theologica, vol. 3, p. 544.
135
them.4 Nevertheless, modes of honouring Christ and the Virgin in the fifteenth century were
distinct from those applied to the saints, and, therefore, images of the saints. One of the most
important of these was meditation, the devotional exercise in which an individual was
supposed to consider deeply and empathise with the joys and sufferings of Christ and the
Virgin. Through such practice, a person might cultivate piety and compassion within himself
so that spiritually he conformed with Christ. The purpose is summed up in one of the several
texts written to guide individuals in such meditation, the widely popular pseudo-Bonaventuran
Meditationes vitae Christi:

To him who searches for it [a new state] from the bottom of the heart and with the
marrow of his being, many unhoped-for steps would take place by which he would
receive new compassion, new love, new solace, and then a new condition of
sweetness that would seem to him a promise of glory.5

This text, now attributed to Friar Johannes de Caulibus of San Gimignano, was
composed in Latin around 1336-64 for the Franciscan Poor Clares, but was quickly
disseminated more widely in Italian and many other vernacular translations.6 At the heart of
such exercise was the process of visualising scenes from Christ’s life in the mind, often in
sequence, in a highly disciplined way. The author of the Meditationes vitae Christi, for
instance, recommends to the reader:

Divide the meditations thus: beginning on Monday go on to the flight of the Lord into
Egypt. Stop there and on Tuesday returning to it, meditate up to the opening of the
book in the synagogue. On Wednesday, from there to the ministry of Mary and
Martha; on Thursday, thence to the Passion; on Friday and Saturday, to the
Resurrection; on Sunday, from the Resurrection on to the end. Do the same thing
every week.7

The episodes are carefully organised into bite-size chunks to make the process of meditation
more manageable and structured.

4
William L. Sullivan, ‘Adoration’ in The Catholic Encyclopedia, 17 vols, New York, 1907-18, vol. 1, 1907
from New Advent: <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01151a.htm> [accessed 21 December 21]. The
ideas originated in a passage by Augustine in his City of God, Bk. X., ch.1. See Philip Schaff (ed.), Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers, 28 vols, Buffalo, 1887, vol. 2, rev. and ed. Kevin Knight, from New Advent:
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120110.htm [accessed 21 December, 2011]. For Thomas Aquinas’
discussion of latria and dulia, see Aquinas, The “Summa theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, from New
Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4025.htm [accessed 21 December, 2011].
5
Isa Ragusa and Rosalie B. Green (eds), Meditations on the Life of Christ: An Illustrated Manuscript of the
Fourteenth Century, Princeton, 1961, p. 317.
6
Sarah McNamer, ‘The Origins of the Meditationes vitae Christi’, Speculum, vol. 84, no. 4, 2009, pp. 905-
955, esp. pp. 905-06. McNamer argues that the main Latin text was derived from an earlier short Italian
text (pp. 906-11).
7
Ragusa and Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ, pp. 387-88.
136
 The Vienna Passion, Christ Vita, and Virgin Vita prints do not explicitly direct their
viewers to meditate upon the images in this way, but they were made at a time when such
meditative techniques were increasingly widespread in both monastic environments and in the
homes of the laity. The Meditationes vitae Christi, for example, was copied in a number of
Florentine manuscripts in the Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence, and the text was printed at
least twenty-six times in Italy between 1465 and 1494.8 Likewise, the spiritual guide, the
Regola della vita spirituale, written by the Franciscan friar Cherubino da Spoleto by 1464 and
printed several times in Florence from 1477, advised readers to practise ‘mental’ prayer every
day, an important part of which entailed meditating on the distinct parts of Christ’s life.9
Though originally written for a nun, Cherubino’s treatise reached a much wider audience in its
printed editions and was often printed together with a work clearly intended for the laity:
Cherubino’s Regola della vita matrimoniale.10 Such teaching presaged the counsel of Girolamo
Savonarola at the end of the century in sermons and books, which likewise emphasised the
importance of mental prayer.11 In each case, the recommended method of meditation is
slightly different, but they are united by the common practice of considering, step by step and
with the mind’s eye, the suffering and joys experienced by Christ and the Virgin on earth.
As scholars have repeatedly remarked, texts such as the Meditationes vitae Christi
gave rise to a plethora of representations of Christ’s life that could be viewed in a more
8
The texts in the Biblioteca Riccardiana are catalogued in Morpurgo, I manoscritti della R. Biblioteca
Riccardiana di Firenze, MS 1052, pp. 47-48 (the Tieri manuscript), MS 1403, p. 443 (Questo libro è di
Mona Gineva donna che fu d'Antonio Mattei. 1458’), MS 1341, p. 401, MS 1357, p. 415; 1377, p. 425;
MS 1378, p. 426; MS 1409, p. 449-50 (‘finito addi 17 di gennaio, il di di Sancto Antonio, 1486 (st. fior.).
Questo libro è di Bartolomeo di Giovanni di Bartolo [il resto del nome fa cancellato] ista all'arte de'
merchatanti di Firenze’); MS 1403, pp. 451-54; MS 1440, p. 471 (‘Questo libro è di Giovanni di Francesco
di Ser Andrea’); MS 1659, p. 611. For printed editions, see Anne Jacobson Schutte, ‘Printing, Piety and
the People in Italy: The First Thirty Years’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, vol. 71, 1980, pp. 5-19,
esp. 16-19. According to Schutte, Le devote meditazioni sopra la passione del Nostro Signore was printed
in 26 editions in Italy between 1465 and 1494. This made it the third best-selling vernacular religious
book in this period behind the Fior di virtù (42 editions) and Antoninus’ Confessionale ‘Omnis mortalium
cura’ (28 editions). This compares with eleven editions of the Bible in Italian before 1495, ten of which
‘were in the version prepared by Nicolò Malermi’.
9
It was printed again in 1482 and 1483 by Niccolò della Magna, in 1483 by the Ripoli press, in 1487 and
1490 by Jacopo di Carlo, in 1490 by the ‘stampatore del Virgilius’, in 1493 and 1495 by Bartolomeo de’
Libri and in 1494 by Lorenzo Morgiani and Johann Petri. See Dennis E. Rhodes, Gli annali tipografici
fiorentini del XV secolo, Florence, 1988, pp. 48-49. The version consulted here is Cherubino da Spoleto,
Regula de vita spirituale, Venice: Melchio Sessa, 1514, London, British Library, cat. no. 3836.de.1. See
folios 3r- 8r, 14r, esp. ‘le seconda cose che la persona debbe pensare’, that is ‘la vita et morte di Iesu
christo’, fols 5v-7r. Cherubino advises the reader to ‘tener adu[n]cha tu anima la me[n]te tua in
co[n]tinuo buon pe[n]siero et in co[n]tinua bona meditatio[n]e’. fol. 3v. For Cherubino da Spoleto, see
Roberto Rusconi, ‘Cherubino da Spoleto’, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 24, Rome, 1980, pp.
446-53.
10
Schutte, ‘Printing, Piety and the People in Italy’, pp. 13-14. According to Schutte, 21 editions with the
two texts printed together were produced in Italy between 1465-94 (p. 18).
11
Savonarola, ‘Tractato della oratione mentale’, esp. pp. lvii(v)-lviii(r), where he discusses the
importance of mental prayer and personal conformity with Christ.
137
intimate context than large murals, reliquaries or altarpieces and which intended to provide
physical counterparts to mental visualisations. A Trecento triptych from a Franciscan convent
of the Poor Clares in Trieste in Northern Italy, for example, presents thirty episodes from the
life of Christ in horizontal tiers (fig. 5.15) that were undoubtedly intended to stimulate the
meditations so popular with the Poor Clares.12 A Pisan manuscript of around 1340-60, on the
other hand, is one of several illustrated copies of the Meditationes where images
supplemented text to facilitate meditation.13 Other Trecento objects convey Christ’s life in
different forms: a booklet containing six thin ivory leaves within a carved ivory cover, for
instance, shows episodes from Christ’s Passion and symbols of his suffering (figs. 5.16-17),
while Simone di Martini’s polyptych shows scenes from the Passion on painted folding panels
(fig. 5.18).14
The use of narrative images for such devotion endured in the fifteenth century. In the
manuscript of the Tieri family, the Meditationes vitae Christi are followed by a rough depiction
of Christ as the Man of Sorrows rising from his tomb, perhaps copied from an engraving or
woodcut (fig. 3.62). This drawing does not illustrate a specific episode recounted in the text,
but evokes the details of the Crucifixion, the Lamentation and the Entombment that are
described there. A small metallic booklet of the second half of the fifteenth century, on the
other hand, now in a private collection and probably made in Northern Europe, contains six
small folios, with an engraved depiction of scenes of the Passion with short texts engraved
beneath them (figs 5.19-21). These were bound together with a clasp so that they could be
turned like pages of a manuscript.
With the advent of print technology, the number of images and texts for meditation
available on the market multiplied. In 1467 the first Italian illustrated printed book, the

12
Maria Walcher Casotti, Il trittico di S. Chiara di Treiste e l’orientamento paleologo nell’arte di Paolo
Veneziano, Trieste, 1961.
13
Holly Flora, The Devout Belief of the Imagination: The Paris Meditationes vitae Christi and Female
Franciscan Spirituality in Trecento Italy, Turnhout, 2009, pp. 49-60. Another Trecento manuscript with
illustrations of the vernacular text ‘Passione di Cristo’, is described in Melania Ceccanti, ‘Immagini per
una (ri)novata Passione di Cristo trecentesca in volgare’, Rivista di storia della miniatura, vols 6-7, 2001-
02, pp. 171-80. For the influence of meditation and Franciscan spirituality on art more generally, see
James H. Marrow, Passion Iconography in Northern European art of the Late Middle Ages and Early
Renaissance: A Study of the Transformation of Sacred Metaphor into Descriptive Narrative , Kortrijk,
1979, pp. 1-32; Belting, The Image and its Public in the Middle Ages; Anne Derbes, Picturing the Passion
in Late Medieval Italy: Narrative Painting, Franciscan Ideologies, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 12-34.
14
For the ivory booklet, see Henk van Os, The Art of Devotion in the Late Middle Ages in Europe, 1300-
1500, London, 1994, pp. 114-15. For similar luxury objects, including Simone Martini’s polyptych, see
Victor M. Schmidt, ‘Portable Polyptychs with Narrative Scenes: Fourteenth-Century De luxe Objects
between Italian Panel Painting and French Arts somptuaires, in Schmidt, Italian Panel Painting of the
Duecento and Trecento, pp. 395-425. Images of the silver booklet are found in the Warburg
Iconographic Photo Library, under ‘Passion Cycles: Miscellaneous’. There is no information about the
dimensions, date or publication of the object.
138
Meditationes vitae Christi by the Dominican Juan de Torquemada (Johannes Turrecremata),
was printed in Rome and issued in several subsequent editions. The meditations described in
this work were structured around a sequence of frescoes in the Benedictine Abbey at Subiaco,
which were loosely evoked by the narrative woodcuts interspersed with the texts (fig. 5.22).15
Likewise in 1487 in Venice, the printer Hieronymo di Sancti included woodcut illustrations
alongside his edition of the Devote meditationi sopra la passione del Nostro Signore, an Italian
translation of the Meditationes vitae Christi (fig. 5.23).16 More common were printed cycles of
Passion images, printed on paper in a range of sizes and formats. Small illustrations of the
lives of Christ and the Virgin were made by engravers of the Rhine-Maas region in the 1450s
and 1460s in series of up to fifty episodes, and were primarily employed as inexpensive
substitutes for manuscript illuminations, pasted into Books of Hours or other prayer books (fig.
5.24-25).17 Other Passion cycles contained larger prints that could be ‘read’ in sequence like
pages of a picture book or pasted alongside a text. The South German Master of 1446 created
such a series of which seven engravings survive, each measuring approximately 101 x 79 mm
(fig. 5.28).18 Another cycle, with sixteen surviving impressions, was produced by the
eponymous Master of the Berlin Passion in the mid-1460s, with dimensions of around 80 x 60
mm (fig. 5.29).19 This sequence includes an extended number of scenes from the Last Supper
through to the Supper at Emmaus. Some German prints, on the other hand, depict the story
on single sheets, in a grid of segments laid out in horizontal tiers and sometimes with textual
annotations, similar to woodcuts showing the lives of saints (figs 5.26-27). 20
There was, therefore, a range of objects and images available across Europe that could
be employed for sequential meditation. The Florentine engravings, however, are not replicas
of these northern prints, simply altered by the addition of all’antica ornaments or fashionable
costumes. The Vienna Passion, with a combination of narrative episodes, symbols and
captions allowed owners to meditate upon the images of Christ in sequence, with close

15
Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, pp. 227-28. Hood bases his research on a thesis I have been unable
to consult: Kurt Barstow, ‘The Education of the Imagination: Cardinal Juan De Torquemada’s
Meditationes and Dominican Reform in the Fifteenth Century’, MA Thesis, University of California,
Berkeley, 1990.
16
Victor Masséna d’Essling, Étude sur l’art de la gravure sur bois à figures vénitiens de la fin du XVe siècle
et du commencement du XVIe, 3 parts in 7 vols, Florence, 1907-14, vol. 1, pp. 1-26; vol. 5, pp. 61-67.
17
Weekes, Early Engravers and their Public, pp. 81-97, 121-43.
18
Lehrs, Geschichte und kritischer Katalog des deutschen, niederländischen und französischen
Kupfestichs, vol. 1, pp. 208-20.
19
Weekes, Early Engravers and their Public, pp. 35-36, pp. 303-04, cat. no. 29. See also Lehrs, Geschichte
und kritischer Katalog des deutschen, niederländischen und französischen Kupfestichs, vol. 3, nos 26-34,
pp. 76-86.
20
For the two woodcuts with a grid format, see Schreiber, Manuel de l'amateur de la gravure sur bois et
sur métal au XVe siècle, vol. 1, pp. 7-8, cat. nos 21, 22.
139
attention to the beautiful, yet suffering body of Christ, quite different from its northern
counterparts. The Virgin Vita and Christ Vita prints, with images arranged on one sheet
around a central scene, facilitated an alternative way of visualising the Gospel events, and
possibly assisted in vocalised meditations such as the rosary devotion.

5.2. The Vienna Passion

Form and Framework

The Vienna Passion consists of ten engravings dated to around 1460-75 that show
scenes from Christ’s Passion beginning with the Agony in the Garden and culminating in the
Entombment of Christ (figs 5.1-5.10).21 At the base of each print are short captions with Latin
phrases in Roman capitals, eight derived from the Gospels and two from the Old Testament
(see Appendix 5).
The presentation of a series of Passion prints in sequence – to be kept in a picture book
or pasted to a surface – was probably inspired by earlier printed cycles, such as those by the
Master of 1466 and the Master of the Berlin Passion mentioned above. With each impression
made from plates of approximately 218 x 134 mm, however, the prints of the Vienna Passion
are considerably larger than these northern European series. They bear stronger comparison
with two Italian blockbooks whose designs are attributed to the Venetian miniaturist Cristoforo
Cortese. Like the engravings in the Vienna Passion, each woodcut is accompanied by an
excerpt from the Gospels inscribed on a banderole held up by angels.22
The first series, now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, consists of twenty-
five prints measuring around 174 x 132 mm, here called the Nuremberg Life of Christ. Dated to
around 1440-55, the prints were once pasted on a panel in the Dominican convent of St
Catherine and show scenes from the life of Christ, beginning with the Annunciation and ending
with Doubting Thomas (fig. 5.30-31).23 Prior to being stuck down, the captions beneath

21
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, pp. 31-36. Impressions of the Betrayal of Christ and the
Trial of Christ are also found in the Rothschild Collection at the Musée du Louvre in Paris and in the
Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin respectively.
22
The most recent assessment of these woodcuts is by Richard S. Field, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Picture
Panel from the Dominican Monastery of Saint Catherine in Nuremberg’. Field outlines the previous
bibliography in this article. The Nuremberg woodcuts are reproduced in Paul Kristeller, Eine Folge
Venezianischer Holzschnitte aus dem XV Jahrhundert im Besitze der Stadt Nürnberg , Berlin, 1909. The
Berlin woodcuts are reproduced in Victor Masséna d’Essling, Le premier livre xylographique Italien:
Imprimé à Venise vers 1450, Paris, 1903.
23
Field, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Picture Panel from the Dominican Monastery of Saint Catherine in
Nuremberg’, pp. 219-25, 230-31.
140
the images were cut off so that only the tips of the angels holding the inscribed cloths can be
seen. The original texts are visible in the second group of eighteen woodcuts in the
Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, measuring 220 x 145 mm and henceforth described as the Berlin
Life of Christ. They were closely copied from the Nuremberg version, printed on nine folios
and bound in a book (figs 5.32-34).24 German blockbooks of the Children of Planets clearly
made their way to Florence where they inspired the Dante Workshop’s series of engravings,
and so it is plausible that the Venetian woodcuts similarly provided a template for the Master
of the Vienna Passion, especially since the dimensions are fairly similar.25
The individual images and texts within the series are very different from these
woodcuts.26 Some of the episodes are not rigidly based on any visual prototype, but were
created in a fairly idiosyncratic fashion by compiling several disparate elements within one
frame. In the Mocking of Christ, for instance, the image of Peter’s denial of Christ, with the
cockerel positioned on a column, is tightly wedged to the left of Christ (fig. 5.35) in a manner
not yet observed elsewhere. It is inconsistent with the Biblical story: Peter was not present at
the moment when Christ was crowned with thorns. Other episodes in the series are less
unusual, but still display a similar tendency to squash together a plethora of figures and other
details, as well as occasional iconographic errors. A snake attacking pelican at the top of the
cross in the Crucifixion, for example, has been added to the conventional image of the pelican
her young with her own blood (fig. 5.36).
Some components of the images are clearly inspired by contemporary Florentine art.
The fancy hats and decorative motifs compare with those in the Florentine Picture Chronicle,
such as the the throne of Pilate that is reminscent of that of Linus (figs 1.102-03). Such
borrowing is even more obvious in the representation of Christ in varied dynamic poses and
with exaggerated musculature. It has been suggested, for instance, that the depiction of
Christ in the Flagellation (fig. 5.4) – visibly different from that in the Berlin Life of Christ (fig.
5.33) – was copied from the lost fresco of the same subject by Andrea del Castagno of the
1450s.27 The stance of the flagellators is close to the running pose of David on a leather shield
by Castagno (fig. 5.37), a posture itself derived from antique sculpture.28 The engraver may
have taken these principal figures from a drawing by another artist, copied them onto the
plate or a secondary preparatory drawing, and then compiled further narrative and

24
Masséna d’Essling, Le premier livre xylographique Italien, pp. 6-14; Field, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Picture
Panel from the Dominican Monastery of Saint Catherine in Nuremberg’, pp. 219-25, 230-31.
25
Blume, ‘Children of the Planets’, pp. 561-63.
26
This is contrary to the opinion expressed in Phillips, Early Florentine designers and engravers, p. 61.
27
Luciano Berti, Andrea del Castagno, Florence, 1966, p. 29 and Nethersole, The Representation of
Violence in Fifteenth-Century Florence, p. 209.
28
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 33.
141
ornamental details around them. This effect of pastiche is manifest in the way that the
flagellators are not correctly positioned around the pediments of the pillars and the three
other soldiers behind them stand awkwardly in a melee of legs, feet and postures, inconsistent
with the linear perspective.
The idiosyncrasy of the pictorial compositions is matched by the unusual execution and
choice of texts, many of which are garbled versions of Biblical phrases (Appendix 5.1). In the
Betrayal of Christ (fig. 5.2), two passages from the Gospels are combined, one from Matthew
and the other from John, each describing distinct aspects of the image: Christ’s betrayal by
Judas and Simon Peter’s cutting of Malchus’ ear. In other examples, the words have little
connection with the scene depicted above. The words below the Bearing of the Cross, ‘Pilate
released Barabbas unto them; but Jesus, having been flagellated he handed over to them to be
crucified’, are more appropriately associated with the Flagellation, the scene which they
accompany in the Venetian Berlin Life of Christ (fig. 5.33).29 Beneath the Lamentation (fig. 5.9)
is a quotation from Psalm 22 which has nothing to do with the Virgin’s mourning of Christ, but
vocalises Christ’s experiences from much earlier moments of his Passion: ‘They pierced my
hands and feet; they counted my bones; they divided up my clothes’.
The iconographic and textual peculiarities of the Vienna Passion can partially be
explained by the engraver’s personal method of design or possibly by his incomplete memory
of Biblical text. The errors suggest, moreover, that there was not a religious adviser or patron
who had any significant input into the composition of the engravings. Nevertheless, several
features of the series relate to contemporary ways of thinking about Christ’s suffering,
particularly as they were encouraged in guides to meditation. Whether bound in a book,
pasted against another surface or handled separately, each print could be considered in a
detailed sequence.30 Furthermore, the combination of image and text compares with the
composition of the Meditationes vitae Christi, where ‘authorities’, as the author calls them, are
inserted alongside the ekphrastic description of each episode. Alongside his graphic account
of the Agony in the Garden, for example, he includes words from the Psalms: ‘O Lord, you see
these things. Do not remain silent, do not leave me (Psalm 34.22), for I am near the trial and
have no one to help me (Psalm 21.12)’.31 In the Agony in the Garden (fig. 5.1) in the Vienna
Passion, the image is underscored by words from the Gospels of Matthew and John: ‘Christ
[said] to his disciples: my soul is sorrowful to death; stay, watch. Christ [said] to Peter: the

29
See Appendix 5.1 for transcriptions of these captions.
30
For the role of such tituli or captions in images for the meditations on the life of Christ, see Flora, The
Devout Belief of the Imagination, pp. 83-90.
31
For the author’s discussion of his ’moralities and authorities’, see Ragusa and Green, Meditations on
the Life of Christ, p. 387.
142
chalice which my father has given. Shall I not drink?’ In both examples, the biblical excerpt
enhances the visual scene by giving a voice to Christ and rooting the story in Biblical authority.

Meditating on Christ’s Body

Equally suited to the practice of meditation is the way that Christ’s body is depicted as
unblemished and beautiful. In the five scenes showing Christ’s naked body (figs 5.4, 5.7-5.10),
Christ is presented with the heroic elegance typically associated with the all’antica nude; the
well-toned, strongly articulated muscles are much like the statuesque classical heroes in the
Master of the Vienna Passion’s Triumph of Fame (fig. 5.38). This is particularly visible in the
Flagellation – possibly inspired by Castagno’s lost Flagellation mural – where the monumental
Christ stands calmly, in great contrast with the same figure in the Venetian Berlin Life of Christ
who writhes against the pillar with his ribs exposed and dripping with blood (fig. 5.33). In the
Lamentation, on the other hand, Christ’s idealised appearance is conveyed not only through
his defined musculature but also through the graceful fall of his body over his mother’s lap (fig.
5.9). This pose also bears some resemblance to several contemporary Florentine examples,
such as those in Francesco Botticini’s altarpiece for the confraternity of San Domenico in
Florence and Jacopo Sellaio’s painting for the Compagnia delle Brucciate in San Frediano (figs
5.39-40). 32 These images contrast with representations of the stiff, broken body of Christ in
printed representations of the Lamentation of Christ from Northern Europe, such as in an
engraving by the Master ES (fig. 5.41), a South German woodcut (fig. 5.42) and a German
metalcut (fig. 5.43). In the northern pictures Christ is shown in acute torment through the rigid
tension of the body; in the Florentine examples he retains something of his prior divine
elegance through the limp and symmetrical fall of the heroic body over the Virgin.
Through absorbing local examples of the Flagellation and Lamentation, the engraver
exhibited a vision of the suffering or dead Christ consistent with devotional texts and sermons.
In the Flagellation (fig. 5.4), for instance, the fierce grimaces of the flagellators are reflect the
‘harsh and grievous’ scourging recounted in the Meditationes vitae Christi.33 Christ, on the
other hand, is described in a way that is related to the idealised image of him in the print. He
is seen as the pinnacle of human beauty with his ‘lovely flesh’, not in the emaciated, humble
condition of the sinful body:

32
Lisa Venturini, Francesco Botticini, Florence, 1994, p. 122 and Cristelle L. Baskins, ‘Jacopo del Sellaio's
“Pietà” in S. Frediano’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 131, no. 1036, 1989, pp. 474-79.
33
Ragusa and Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ, pp. 328-29.
143
 The Lord is therefore stripped and bound to a column and scourged in various ways.
He stands naked before them all, in youthful grace and shamefacedness, beautiful in
form above the sons of men, and sustains the harsh and grievous scourges on His
innocent, tender, pure, and lovely flesh. The Flower of all flesh and of all human
natures is covered with bruises and cuts.34

Similarly, Giovanni Nesi – influenced by contemporary Neoplatonism and its theory that the
soul’s beauty could be reflected in physical beauty – described Christ’s body in a Holy Week
sermon with heightened attention to its beauty, even in the midst of its mortification:

... He suffered in every part [of His body] from His head to His feet. In as much as His
most holy head was [wounded by] sharp thorns, the brightest eyes by a blindfold, the
mellifluous mouth by the bitterest bile, the resplendent face by bloody sweat, the
weak shoulders by the heaviest weight of the cross, and the most sacred breast with a
sharp lance, and the innocent hands and the immaculate feet with pointed nails, and
finally all His precious body with the sharpest of beatings.35

Although Christ endures the brutal treatment of those around him he is still ‘brightest..
mellifluous... resplendent... immaculate’ and ‘precious’. Christ here is also ‘weak’: he is a more
fragile image of beauty than the muscular, monumental Christ in the Vienna Passion. But both
passages reveal how the vision of an idealised, beautiful body (weak or strong) were intended
to stimulate the admiration and compassion of the beholder by reminding him of the injustice
inflicted on Christ.
In Nesi’s text, the dissimilarity between the tormentors’ violence and Christ’s innocent,
divine body is demonstrated through verbal binary oppositions, such as between ‘melliflouous
mouth’ and ‘bitterest bile’. In the Vienna Passion, this effect is created through the contrast
between the naked, strong and undamaged body and the texts, expressions, objects and
symbols around it, many of which refer to the aggressive actions of Christ’s antagonists.
Several captions describe instruments of Christ’s Passion, including the sword and club of the
soldiers who arrest him (in the Betrayal of Christ, fig. 5.2), the crown of thorns (the Mocking of
Christ, fig. 5.5) and the soldier’s spear (the Crucifixion, fig. 5.7). In the Lamentation of Christ,
verses from the Psalms further reinforce the violence: ‘They pierced my hands and feet; they

34
Ibid., p. 238. See also Nethersole, The Representation of Violence in Fifteenth-Century Florence, pp.
209-30.
35
Quoted in John Henderson, ‘Penitence and the Laity in Fifteenth-century Florence’, in John Henderson
and Timothy Verdon (eds), Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the
Quattrocento, Syracuse, 1990, pp. 229-49, p. 242 and 249, n. 72. A similar description of Christ on the
cross was evoked by Savonarola: ‘Levate gli occhi vostri pietosi o sancte et devote do[n]ne: Ecco il
vostro dolcissimo maestro. Ecco il vostro dilecto sposo. Ecco il vostro tanto amato Jesu. Dove e la sua
bella et gratiosa faccia: Dove e la sua dolce co[n]pagnia.’ Girolamo Savonarola, ‘Tractato dello amore di
Jesu Christo’, in Opere co[n]poste dal venerando padre frate Hieronymo da Ferrara del ordine di
predicatori, pp. ii(r)-xxviii(v), p. xxiiii(r).
144
counted my bones; they divided up my clothes’ (fig. 5.9). In the Deposition of Christ, on the
other hand, the torments are conveyed through the instruments hang around Christ’s body –
the whips are suspended from the wings the cross and the crown of thorns held by an angel
(fig. 5.8).
As Scott Nethersole has suggested, the caption in the Flagellation is particularly
significant since it not only exaggerates Christ’s injuries, but it also implicates the viewer in the
violent treatment of him.36 Exceptionally, the text is derived from the Old Testament book of
Isaiah. Positioned here the words accuse the reader of creating Christ’s suffering, not only of
witnessing it: ‘he was wounded because of our iniquities; he was bruised for our sins’ [added
italics]. As part of the collective, sinful humanity, the viewer, just by looking, wreaks the
wounds on the umblemished body. Nethersole’s argument for the culpability of the beholder
is paralleled by the words of Girolamo Morelli that describe how he carefully meditated upon a
crucifix after the death of his son. On looking at the image of Christ he began to ‘immaginare e
ragguardare in me i miei peccati’ (imagine and to see in myself my sins), and whilst gazing at
the sufferings of the Virgin he became aware how ‘miei peccati l’erono cagione di tanta
affrizione’ (my sins were the cause of so much suffering).37 The process of looking at Christ
not only prompts empathy for past events, but provokes penitential introspection. The
caption of the Betrayal of Christ (fig. 5.2) works in a similar way, since Christ seems to question
the reader as well as Judas and the Roman soldiers: ‘like a robber come out with swords and
clubs to arrest me?’
In the Crucifixion, Christ’s body is shown as a source of salvation (fig. 5.7). The caption
reads, ‘One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear and there came out continually blood
and water’, reminding the viewer of the salvific blood and water that fill the liturgical chalices
in the Mass. This aspect is reinforced in the image by the pelican above the cross who feeds
his young with its own blood (fig. 5.36), a motif frequently employed to symbolise the
Eucharist. 38 Here, the viewer is not implicated in the aggression against Christ’s body, but is
invited to share in its redemptive power.
In these ways, the prints in the Vienna Passion assisted their owners in meditating on
the life of Christ with ten separate the images that could be considered in turn. With the

36
Nethersole, The Representation of Violence in Fifteenth-Century Florence, pp. 224-30.
37
Morelli, Ricordi, pp. 477, 484. Peter Parshall makes a similar comment in his discussion of Albert
Bouts’ Christ Crowned with Thorns of 1480, which, he argues, invites ‘the people take [to] upon
themselves the collective responsibility for Christ’s blood’. Parshall, ‘The Art of Memory and the
Passion’, pp. 456-72, pp. 464-65.
38
For a general account of the chalice in art see Victor Heinrich Elbern, ‘Der eucharistische Kelche im
frühen Mittelalter’, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft, vol. 17, 1964, pp. 117-88.
For the pelican, see Lucienne Portier, Le pélican: Histoire dʼ un symbole, Paris, 1984, pp. 93, 113-45.
145
texts beneath each image, the depiction on Christ’s idealised body and the Eucharistic
symbols, the cycle invited the viewer to imagine the harsh suffering of the Passion, but also to
consider the renewal offered through the sharing of his body and blood in the Eucharist. The
engravings illustrate the tragic heroism of Christ’s death and could thus stimulate further
mental visualisations; the words dramatise these images by linking them with the writings of
the Gospels.

5.3. The Vita Prints

The Passion of Christ

The two Christ Vitas show the Crucifixion surrounded by fourteen episodes from
Christ’s Passion, beginning with the Entry into Jerusalem and culminating in the Pentecost.
There are two versions of the basic composition. One version (fig. 5.11) is found in two
surviving impressions in the British Museum, London and the Kunsthalle, Hamburg and is
hereafter described as the London/Hamburg Christ Vita. It is not obviously by either the Dante
Workshop or the Vienna Category engravers, although the Hamburg impression was printed
on the verso of the Baptist Vita, and may suggest that the print was made in same workshop.39
The second version (fig. 5.12) survives in fifteen fragments of a single impression, now in the
Albertina in Vienna and is henceforth called the Vienna Christ Vita. With its distinctive
drapery, torsos, hair, faces and hatching, the Vienna Christ Vita was probably composed and
executed by the engraver of Easter Table (fig. 1.49) and the Small Triumphs of Petrarch (fig.
1.71). The basic template and choice of episodes are the same as those of the
London/Hamburg Christ Vita, but there are several differences. The Vienna Christ Vita displays
a greater command of space and human anatomy, particularly in the Last Supper and
Deposition of Christ, and there are more characters in each scene, notably in the Calvary with
four angels, two carrying away the souls of the two thieves, the others collecting Christ’s blood
in chalices. These details may have been inspired by northern prints, where the souls of the
thieves were sometimes depicted as a tiny men or homunculi, such as an engraving by the
Master ES (fig. 5.44).40 Moreover, it is likely that the segments of this print followed a

39
See Campbell Dodgson, ‘An Italian Fifteenth-Century Engraving’, British Museum Quarterly, vol. 6, no.
4, 1932, pp. 98-99, no. 78; Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 81. Hind records a third
impression in the Biblioteca Estense, Ferrara, though I have been unable to trace this print. The
Biblioteca Estense is actually in Modena. See Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 29, cat. no. A.I.10.
40
See Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in
Medieval and Renaissance Europe, London, 1998, pp. 231-41.
146
clockwise sequence around the central image as reconstructed in fig. 5.13.41 The slight wear
on the left side of the first scene, the Entry into Jerusalem, corresponds with similar patches on
the left side of the final episodes in the sequence – the Descent into Limbo to the Pentecost –
suggesting that they were originally on the same side of the print. This would mean that the
story was read around the sheet in a simple, logical direction. In view of this possibility and the
neater execution of episodes, it is plausible that the Vienna Christ Vita is the earlier work,
copied in the London/Hamburg Christ Vita by an engraver who arranged the images in a less
coherently. Alternatively, it is feasible that both are based on a lost prototype by the Master
of the Vienna Passion, whose Triumphs of Petrarch (fig. 1.46, 1.60, 1.114), for instance, were
copied in the Small Triumphs of Petrarch (fig. 1.71).42

The Christ Vita Prints and Meditation

From the fourteenth century onwards, the division of Christ’s life into small
compartments on one surface was increasingly seen in works designed for personal practices
of meditation and prayer. A number of panels from Franciscan convents, where friars were
encouraged to meditate upon Christ’s life represent numerous small segments with scenes
from Christ’s life.43 The North Italian triptych, cited above, for example, from a convent of the
Poor Clares (fig. 5.15) shows the story of Christ’s life in thirty segments, inviting the viewer to
look closely at each detail and to follow the images in order.44 It is possible that the Christ Vita
prints offered their owners assistance with meditation in a comparable way. This is especially
likely since the segmentation of the pictorial narrative concords with the traditional memory
practices described in the previous chapter, when classical arts of rhetoric and mnemonic

41
Augusto Calabi ‘“Die Kleine Passion” eines anonymen italienischen Meisters des Quattrocento’,
Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Vervielfältigende Kunst, 1930, pp. 4-5; Dodgson, ’An Italian Fifteenth-
Century Engraving’; Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 80.
42
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, pp. 47-49.
43
Petra Meschede, Bilderzählungen in der Kölnischen Malerei des 14 un 15 Jahrhunderts: Eine
Untersuchung zum Bildtypus und zur Funktion, Paderborn, 1994, p. 254. Such panels are also discussed
in Angela Hass, ‘Two Devotional Manuals by Albrecht Dürer: The “Small Passion” and the “Engraved
Passion”. Iconography, Context and Spirituality’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol. 63. no. 2, 2000, pp.
169-230, pp. 176-78.
44
Walcher Casotti, Il trittico di S. Chiara di Treiste. Comparable representations of Christ’s life from
Florence in the fifteenth century are rare. One of the few surviving examples is the silver chest from the
sacristy of Santissima Annunziata, decorated by Fra Angelico between 1449 and 1461, which, although it
has been dismantled and rearranged, still conveys the way that multiple episodes were to be seen and
examined in sequence. There is no strong evidence to indicate how this chest was used. Eugenio M.
Casalini, Il Beato Angelico e l’Armadio degli Argenti della SS. Annunziata di Firenze, Florence, 2007. For a
reconstruction of the original layout of the panels, see p. 19.
147
theory were employed to help with a person meditate on divine words, images and concepts.45
Mary Carruthers, for example, relates the arts of memory and meditative practice to ‘picture
pages’ such as in the Italian sixth-century Gospel Book (fig. 5.45) which also contains the
illustration of Luke’s Gospel (fig. 4.27). The flat latticework employed to frame the narrative,
she argues, served as a tool for recollecting the key moments of the story.46 As Peter Parshall
comments, there is no evidence to suggest that texts such as the Pseudo Ciceronian Rhetorica
ad Herennium, which contained an influential section on memory, had direct impact on
picture-making in the fifteenth century.47 Nevertheless, rhetorical teaching, in different levels
of complexity, was widely diffused and both indirectly and indirectly had the potential to
influence how images were viewed.48
Two sources, at least, provide evidence that religious and lay people of the fifteenth
century might have been aware of how the art of memory could inform and improve
meditation. One is the Devotus modus meditandi, part of a book, datable to the late 1470s
and translated into Italian by Fra Bartolomeo di Bartolomeo della Spina of Pisa, with
instructions on how to meditate on the mysteries of the Virgin’s life.49 In this work, the author
introduces several methods of meditation, many based on architectural systems or the layout
of a local church.50 The second is the devotional manual, the Giardino di Oratione (‘Garden of
Prayer’), written for girls shortly before 1454 by the Franciscan friar Niccolò di Osimo.51 As
Michael Baxandall shows, Niccolò suggests that the reader memorise places and people
familiar to her, before going ‘armed and ornamented (‘armata e ornata’) into a solitary place
where she could, in her mind, integrate such memories with an ordered and internalised
meditation on Christ’s life. 52 In an earlier passage of this book not discussed by Baxandall,
Niccolò employs the vocabulary of rhetorical theory when he advises the reader to separate

45
Carruthers, The Book of Memory and Carruthers, The Craft of Thought.
46
Carruthers, The Book of Memory, pp. 248-50.
47
Parshall, ‘The Art of Memory and the Passion’, p. 463.
48
See Chapter Four of this dissertation, and, for example, Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy, pp.
212-17 where the author discussed the role of the Ad Herennium in the school curriculum in Tuscany.
49
Camara, Pictures and Prayers, pp. 30-43.
50
Ibid., p. 34.
51
Niccolò di Osimo (or Nicholas de Auximo), an Observant Franciscan friar who died in Rome in 1453,
produced several works including the Quadriga Spirituale and Giardino di Oratione or Zardino de
Oration. See Livarius Oliger, ‘Nicholas of Osimo’, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, 17 vols, New York, 1907-
18, vol. 11,1911 from New Advent, <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11064a.htm>, [accessed 13
December, 2011]. Baxandall records that the manuscript of the Zardino de Oration was written in 1454,
but this is after Niccolò’s death. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A
Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, Oxford, 1972, p. 46. The manuscript was published in
Venice in 1494 as Zardino de Oration. The copy referred to here is the edition published in Venice in
1511 and held in the British Library, cat. no. C.107.b.25: Nicolaus de Auximo, Giardino de oratione,
Venice, 1511.
52
Ibid., ch. 18.
148
components of the story: the meditator should dwell on ‘parti divise’ (divided parts) and with
‘articuli distincti’ (distinct articles), whereby each ‘article’ represents an episode of Christ’s
life.53 Niccolò then counsels how to use these blocks: ‘Moving slowly from episode to episode,
meditate on each one, dwelling on each single stage and step of the story’.54
The Giardino di oratione was probably not a widely disseminated text since it was not
printed until 1494. But, the basic idea of breaking down a narrative into distinct tableaux that
could be contemplated in sequence is common to all texts about meditation, including the
Meditationes vitae Christi, which is divided into the hours of the day and days of the week.55
The division of Christ’s life in the two Christ Vita prints, with a grid-like format reminiscent of
the sixth century illumination noted by Carruthers (fig. 5.45), was highly suited to the methods
of meditation in which lay and religious Florentines were trained. Unlike the Vienna Passion,
the Christ Vita prints do not focus on the suffering body of Christ or the symbols of the
Passion. But, the lack of emotional detail in the faces or gestures of the small figures in each
scene does not weaken their potential to stimulate the feelings of compassion desired in
meditation; it requires that the beholder imagine such details him- or herself.56
The Florentine prints are distinct from both the Trecento triptych from Trieste (fig.
5.15) and the German woodcuts (figs. 5.26-27), because of the use of the vita framework: the
Crucifixion is centralised and the events of Christ’s Passion surround it. In this context, the
episodes of his suffering the Passion cycle are anchored his death on the cross at Calvary. This
arrangement can also be associated with adoration of the Eucharist. This is partly because of
the liturgical chalices held by angels in each print, but also because the layout was familiar in
spaces where the sacrament was celebrated. Inspired by the frescoes that once adorned the
walls of Old St Peter’s in Rome, many Italian churches displayed the life of Christ alongside a
much larger image of the Crucifixion, often positioned above the altar.57
Likewise, on Pacino da Bonaguida’s custodia – or tabernacle where the Host was stored –
episodes of Christ’s life were painted each side of a Crucifix (fig. 5.46). On the reverse of
Duccio’s Maestà, the Crucifixion is positioned in the centre of numerous smaller scenes from
Christ’s life (fig. 5.47); behind the altar, it draws attention to the Host that was kept nearby,

53
Ibid., ch. 17.
54
Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, p. 46.
55
Ragusa and Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ, pp. 387-88.
56
Baxandall draws a similar conclusion about Perugino’s religious paintings. Baxandall, Painting and
Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy, pp. 46-47.
57
William Tronzo, ‘The Prestige of Saint Peter’s: Observations on the Function of Monumental Narrative
Cycles in Italy, Studies in the History of Art, vol. 16, 1985, pp. 97-100; Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, The Place
of Narrative: Mural Decoration in Italian Churches, 431-1600, Chicago, 1990, pp. 23-24; Herbert L.
Kessler, ‘St Peter’s as the Source and Inspiration of Medieval Church Decoration’, in Herbert L. Kessler
and Marianna Shreve Simpson (eds), Studies in Pictorial Narrative, London, 1994, pp. 452-68.
149
and allowed clerics to contemplate, in detail, Christ’s suffering.58 The framework was deployed
to celebrate Christ’s sacrifice in para-liturgical contexts, too, outside churches. A fourteenth-
century panel from Cologne shows the Crucifixion with arma Christi at the centre of twenty-
three scenes from Christ’s Passion and Resurrection (fig. 5.48). Coming from a local Franciscan
convent, this panel was probably intended for meditation of the type recorded in the
Meditationes vitae Christi. In this and the Christ Vitas, the beholder is encouraged to slowly
visualise Christ’s life, remembering Christ’s torment and the salvation born from it.

The Mysteries of the Virgin

In the two Virgin Vita prints, the narrative framework is slightly more complicated than
in the two Christ Vitas. The Žatec Virgin Vita (fig.1.1), discussed in Chapter One, was made by
Piero Baldini before 1480 and is constructed around a close copy of a silver and niello pax
showing the Coronation of the Virgin attributed to Maso Finiguerra (fig. 1.4).59 Baldini changed
several details of the design: it is set on a platform enclosed by two fluted Corinthian columns
at the sides and by an entablature supporting a semicircular pediment above. Around this
niche are seven episodes from the Virgin’s life: the Birth of the Virgin, the Virgin in the Temple,
the Betrothal of the Virgin, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, and the
Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin. Unlike the other Florentine vita prints, the narrative
is not organised in a circle around the image, but moves in a zigzag pattern down the page
from left to right, with the penultimate, much larger scene in an extended landscape at the
bottom. The direction of the story then moves up into the centre where the Virgin is crowned
in Paradise.
By means of the segmentation of events into this carefully constructed order, the
beholder is given a spatial map of the Virgin’s life, which moves from the earthly human life up
into the transcendent world of Paradise. The composition of a contemporary German
metalcut is segmented in a similar way, with the Coronation of the Virgin partitioned from the
earthly pictorial space by an undulating line (fig. 5.49). A more crudely executed engraving,

58
William Tronzo, ‘Between Icon and Monumental Decoration of a Church: Notes on Duccio’s Maestà
and the Definition of the Altarpiece’, in Gary Vikan (ed.), Icon: Four Essays, Washington, 1988, pp. 36-47
and Peter Seiler, ‘Duccio’s Maestà: The Function of the Scenes from the Life of Christ on the Reverse of
the Altarpiece: A New Hypothesis’, in Schmidt, Italian Panel Painting of the Duecento and Trecento, pp.
250-77.
59
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 30. Philips, Early Florentine Designers and Engravers, pp. 57, 62,
86; Levenson, Oberhuber and Sheehan, Early Italian Engravings, pp. 20-21, n. 14; Rossella Gilli, ‘Note
sue Maso Finiguerra’, Il conoscitore di stampe (Print Collector), vol. 59, pp. 2-27; Zucker, Early Italian
Masters, vol. 24, pt. 2, pp. 123-26.
150
possibly from Florence, also divides the narrative into two compartments that are linked by an
arrow-like cusp overlapping the frame above it, signalling the upwards movement of Mary’s
soul (fig. 5.50). In Baldini’s engraving, this division is shown with sensitivity to different modes
of viewing implicated in looking at earth and Paradise.60 Here, the frame around the
Coronation of the Virgin acts like the window of a tabernacle, opening onto the superior
heavenly vision not typically visible with the eyes of the body. A related device is found in
other paintings from in and around Florence. In Francesco Botticini’s St Jerome, made for the
Hieronymites at Fiesole, St Jerome is placed within a frame and positioned in a rocky
landscape, setting him apart from the four saints who appear to contemplate him in front of
an all’antica wall (fig. 5.51). A panel in the Palazzo Roffia at San Miniato in Florence, on the
other hand, attributed to the Master of the Johnson Nativity, depicts five saints standing on
the ground looking up at a framed picture of the Virgin and Child that is crowned by God above
(fig. 5.52). 61 As in the Žatec Virgin Vita, the royal, heavenly Virgin is pictorially sealed off from
figures on earth visible through the window around her. Likewise, as in this panel angels carry
up the frame around the Virgin to Heaven, so in the print, the terrestrial and heavenly worlds
are mediated by God who supports the Coronation of the Virgin on a platform above him as he
looks down on the landscape below.
The second Virgin Vita print in the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris (henceforth the Paris
Virgin Vita, fig. 5.14) bears some iconographic similarities with Baldini’s engraving and it also
visualises the spiritual ascent of the Virgin with an upward sequence from the Dormition of the
Virgin to the Assumption of the Virgin and her Coronation, all integrated within the central
compartment. Paradise is partitioned within a rectangular area at the top of the print, with
four music-playing angels on crescent moons and God is surrounded by the heavenly spheres.
Crossing into the scene of Mary’s earthly Dormition below, God bridges Heaven and earth.
But the print differs from the Žatec Virgin Vita in several respects. Firstly, it includes the
typical overcrowding and patterns of the Master of the Vienna Passion to whom the engraving
is attributed.62 Secondly, in addition to the episodes illustrated in Piero Baldini’s narrative, it
represents the Visitation, Circumcision of Christ, the Flight into Egypt and the Massacre of the
Innocents, but lacks the Nativity. Its organisation is more obviously related to the scheme of
the hagiographic prints, with the central rectangular scene surrounded on all sides by nine

60
For an analysis of the hierarchies of vision in a different depiction of the Coronation of the Virgin, see
Patricia Rubin, ‘Hierarchies of Vision: Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin from San Domenico,
Fiesole’, Oxford Art Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, pp. 137-53.
61
Dalli Regoli, Il ‘Maestro di San Miniato’, pp. 318-19.
62
Zucker, Early Italian Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, pp. 57-59.
151
episodes, all separated by a single engraved line. Which is the earlier of the two prints is
unclear: both are datable to the 1460s or early 1470s.

The Virgin Vita Prints and the Rosary Devotion

Like the Christ Vita engravings, both prints could also be related to meditational
exercises. In particular, they can be connected to the rosary prayer that was approved by the
Pope in various stages in the 1470s. This was a vocalised meditation that involved reciting Ave
Maria prayers whilst contemplating episodes of the Virgin’s life and combined two distinct
types of prayer that were typically defined separately: mental and vocal prayer.63 In his Regola
della vita spirituale, probably written by 1464, Cherubino da Spoleto described mental prayer
(‘oratione mentale’) as thinking upon (‘pensando’) and contemplating (‘contemplando’) some
spiritual good, while ‘vocale’ prayer involved praying with the mouth or voice in request for
‘indulgentia’ (indulgence or forgiveness). The latter was performed with prayers such as the
Paternoster, the Ave Maria of the Office of the Cross, Office of the Virgin and Penitential
Psalms.64 By contrast, the rosary prayer united vocalised prayers of petition and veneration to
the Virgin in Heaven with silent meditation on the joys and suffering of her human life. Such
exercises were part of efforts of religious authorities, especially the Dominicans, to prevent the
mindless regurgitation of Latin words. To help this process, many images were produced to
help individuals to remember the prayer and to stimulate their imagination, including the cycle
of engravings attributed to Francesco Rosselli in the late 1480s and described in the Rosselli
inventory of 1526.65 Just as images guided meditation of Christ’s Passion, so rosary pictures
provided a visual ‘itinerary’ through each step of the prayer.
The episodes in the two Virgin Vitas are not those typically meditated upon in the
rosary prayer as it later evolved, since they omit moments of Christ’s Passion. But this would
not have mattered, because in the early development of the rosary, many combinations of
mysteries were employed: early documents of the Cologne confraternity allowed members to

63
For a history of the rosary see Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in
the Middle Ages, University Park, 1997. The first chapter recounts the early development of the rosary
(pp. 12-30).
64
Cherubino da Spoleto, Regula de vita spirituale, fol. 14r-v. The distinction was reinforced in Florence
at the end of the century by Girolamo Savonarola who reiterated Cherubino’s concern that vocal prayer
without mental prayer is of little use. Girolamo Savonarola, ‘Tractato della oratione mentale’.
65
Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, pp. 31-64. See also, Madeline Cirillo Archer, ‘The Dating of a
Florentine Life of the Virgin and Christ’, Print Quarterly, vol. 5, 1988, pp. 395-402; Vittorio Natale
'Vicende di un'iconografia pittorica', in Calenrica Spantigati and Giulio Ien (eds), Pio V e Santa Croce di
Bosco: Aspetti di una committenza papale, Regione Piemonte, 1985, pp. 399-428; Anna Padoa Rizzo
'Firenze e l'Europa nel Quattrocento: La “Vergine del Rosario” di Cosimo Rosselli', in Studi di storia
dell'arte in onore Mina Gregori, 1994, p. 64-69, n. 2; Camara, Pictures and Prayers, pp. 40-59.
152
choose their meditations.66 And in Florence, people were already accustomed to reciting such
prayers with images prior to the establishment of the rosary. In the Children of the Sun,
probably dated to the 1470s, lay people are seen kneeling before an image of the Virgin and
saying prayers with beads (fig. 5.53).67 More pertinently, leading preachers advocated other
vocalised meditations related to the rosary. In the Opera del vivere bene, written in the early
1450s for Dianora dei Soderini, the Archbishop Antoninus described how to say a series of
around fifteen Paternosters and Ave Marias in front of an image of the Crucifix. They should
be divided, he advises, into meditations on the hands of Christ, his side, his body, the suffering
of the Virgin, Christ’s face and entombment.68 Likewise, Cherubino da Spoleto recommended
comparable prayers: he describes the ‘Corona della vergine maria’ (Crown of the Virgin Mary)
with sixty-three Ave Marias said in cycles of ten prayers with meditations on the life of the
Virgin and the ‘Paternoster del Passione’, a series of Paternoster prayers structured around
moments in Christ’s Passion.69 People could construct a similar sequence of Ave Marias to fit
the episodes depicted in each of the Virgin Vita prints.
The relationship between the two engravings and vocalised meditations is supported
by the positioning of the only surviving impression of the Žatec Virgin Vita. It was pasted in a
German manuscript belonging to Johannes Roesler of Wunsiedel, containing the Hortulus
Reginae (‘Garden of the Queen’), a collection of Latin sermons by the preacher Meffreth von
Meissen, a title referring to the Church rather than the Virgin.70 The print is only tangentially
related to this Latin text; it is more obviously connected with a sheet pasted inside the back
cover with a German description of the rosary dated to 1478 (fig. 5.54). Addressed to
members of a rosary confraternity, it describes the origin of the prayer, how it should be said,
and what indulgence would be gained from praying correctly. It thereby compares with a
number of similar manuals, pamphlets and prints directed at confraternity members that were
sometimes juxtaposed with images.71 On a German woodcut showing the mysteries of the

66
Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, pp. 69-71.
67
Massimo Petrocchi, Una ‘devotio moderna’ nel quattrocento italiano ed altri studi, Florence, 1961, pp.
39-44.
68
Antonino Pierozzi, Opera a ben vivere, ed. Francesco Palermo, Florence, 1858, pp. 169-73:
‘Meditazione della passione di Cristo sopra quindici paternostri’.
69
Cherubino da Spoleto, Regula de vita spirituale, fols 14v-15r; Rusconi, ‘Cherubino da Spoleto’, p. 448.
70
Hind and Zucker do not provide the author’s name and incorrectly describe the text as the Questione
de tempore, taking the title from that written on the spine of the manuscript’s binding. For Meffreth,
also known as Petrus Meffordis of Leipzig, and his text, see Anne T. Thayer, Penitence, Preaching and the
Coming of the Reformation, Aldershot, 2002, pp. 31, 36-8, 42; John M. Frymire, The Primacy of the
Postils: Catholics, Protestants, and the Dissemination of Ideas in Early Modern Germany, Leiden, 2010,
pp. 409, 494, n. 143. The version consulted is Meffreth von Meissen, Sermones Meffreth ałs Hortulus
regine de tempore, Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1496, London, British Library, MS IB.7524.
71
Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, pp. 65-80, 122-27.
153
rosary from 1485, for instance, the text below the image is adapted from the Büchlein der
Kölner Rosenkranzbruderschaft (Book of the Cologne Confraternity of the Rosary), written by
the Dominican Jacob Sprenger in around 1475 (fig. 5.55).72 Since the engraving and the
German rosary text inside the back cover do not relate to the sermons in the main body of the
manuscript, it is likely that they were intended to be used together, with the Florentine print
providing a visual framework for saying the prayer.
Baldini’s print was particularly suited to the rosary meditation because of the
disposition of the narrative scenes around the Virgin’s Coronation like other rosary illustrations
where small scenes encircle a larger, centralised iconic image of the Virgin and Child in Heaven.
In Hans Schaur’s rosary woodcut of around 1481 and the woodcut from Ulm of 1485, cited
above, for instance, the mysteries are positioned within the roses of a circular garland, with
the enthroned, crowned Virgin in the centre, holding her child and worshipped by
confraternity members (fig. 5.55). In these depictions, the central image is the focus for the
vocalised prayer addressed to the Virgin in Heaven, while the marginal scenes provide
illustrations of the meditations.
The juxtaposition of iconic and narrative images was repeated, in different ways, in
many rosary images, including a Spanish engraving of 1488 (fig. 5.56), a panel by Goswijn van
der Weyden of 1515-20 (fig. 5.57) and Lorenzo Lotto’s rosary altarpiece of 1539 (fig. 5.58).73 In
Italy, however, these the segmented scenes were sometimes arranged with the vita format,
comparable to that of the Virgin Vita. In a late fifteenth-century engraving, probably from
Milan, the Virgin is shown crowned in Heaven as members of the rosary confraternity kneel
beside her, offering roses (fig. 5.59). On the left side are the five joyous mysteries, on the right
the sorrowful mysteries and the five glorious mysteries would have been seen on the top of
the sheet before they were cut off. Similarly, in a central Italian altarpiece of around 1520-30,
the Virgin and Child are seated in the centre and surrounded by the scenes from her life (fig.
5.60).74 The Virgin Vita prints, therefore, might be seen as early precedents of such pictures,
with the crowned Virgin in the centre, surrounded by mysteries from her time on earth.

72
Parshall and Schoch, Origins of European Printmaking, pp. 274-77, cat. no. 85.
73
For the Spanish engraving, see Jan van der Stock, Early Prints: The Print Collection of the Royal Library
of Belgium, London and Turnhout, 2002, p. 126, cat. no. 478.
74
Cristina Quattrini, ‘L’iconografia della Madonna del rosario nelle Marche: Origini nordiche e nascita di
una tradizione locale’, Notizie da Palazzo Albani, vol. 19, no. 2, 1990, pp. 5-12.
154
The Christ Vita Prints and Vocalised Prayers

Antoninus’ Opera a ben vivere and Cherubino’s Regola della vita spirituale also raise
the possibility that the two Christ Vita prints were used for vocalised, sequential meditations,
but with prayers directed to Christ rather than to the Virgin. In his description of the
‘Paternoster del Passione’ prayer, for instance, Cherubino writes that the reader should recite
twenty-five or forty-five Paternosters, split between meditations on the agony of Christ in the
garden, Christ before Caiaphas and Pilate, Christ crowned with thorns, his flagellation and the
five wounds suffered by Christ on the cross.75 Florentine manuscripts in the Biblioteca
Riccardiana record comparable exercises, with Paternosters said in memory of episodes of
Christ’s Passion or on each day of Holy Week.76 Moreover, in some early versions of the rosary
prayer, Paternoster prayers were employed to accompany the meditation on Christ’s suffering,
and often directed at a picture of Christ. Alanus de Rupe of Douai, founder of the first rosary
confraternity, for example, recommended in his Liber Apologeticus of 1475 written in defence
of the rosary, that readers should recite serial Paternoster prayers in front of an image of
Christ crucified.77 In line with this advice, some German pictures depict Christ, rather than the
Virgin, in the middle of the rosary beads, such as in a large woodcut by Erhard Schön produced
in Nuremberg around 1515 where Christ is portrayed on the cross at the centre of a celestial
hierarchy (fig. 5.61).
Like the crucifix in Schön’s print, the image of Calvary in the Christ Vitas could serve as
a focal point for vocalised prayers of veneration and petition. This function is reinforced by the
chalices held by angels around his body, which, by association with the Eucharist, evoke the
spiritual ‘daily bread’ requested in the words of the Paternoster prayer: ‘panem nostrum
quotidianum da nobis hodie’. Just as in the central image of the Milanese rosary print, where

75
Cherubino da Spoleto, Regula de vita spirituale, fol. 14r-v. ‘Anchora ricordati de dire a memoria et
riverentia dela passione di Iesu Christo li pater nostri dela passione che son questi: cioe cinque pater
nostri ingenochio[n]e co[n] le mane giu[n]te a memoria de loratione che esso fece nel orto: nel quale
sudo tutto di sudor di sangue. Cinque altri ingenochione co[n] le mane legate de drieto: a memoria che
esso co[m]e agnello mansueto su cosi legato menato inna[n]zi ad Anna, Caypha e Pilato come fusse
stato uno ladrone. Cinque altri ingenochioni con le mane giunte a memoria dela corona dele spine co[n]
le quali fu coronato. Cinque altri i[n]genochioni con le mane legate a modo di croce inanzi al pecto a
memoria che cosi stette elgato ala colo[n]na quando fu flagellato. Cinque altri ingenochioni con le mane
in croce a memoria dele cinque piaghe che hebbe in su la croce per nostro amore. Molte persone divote
si trovano dela passione di christo che non solo dicono questi vinticinque pater n[ost]ri sopradicti: ma
dicono anchora cinque pater n[ost]ri in croce per ciascuna piagha che ve[n]gono a essere in tutto
quara[n]tacinque pater nostri: sforzati adu[n]cha anima divota dirgli ogni di che nel pu[n]cto dela morte
ne sarai conte[n]to’.
76
Florence, BR, MS. 1278 (fol. 109r-v), MS 1279 (88r-89r). See Morpurgo, I manoscritti della R. Biblioteca
Riccardiana di Firenze, cat. nos. 1278, 1279.
77
Camara, Pictures and Prayers, pp. 36-37.
155
the Virgin’s protection and grace are symbolised with the gesture of a hand, so here Christ
offers mercy to Christians through the blood lost on Calvary and repeatedly given at the
Eucharist. The employment of the symbolic chalice is more explicit in a late fifteenth-century
German woodcut, showing what is now described as the Chaplet of the Precious Blood (fig.
5.62).78 Seven moments when Christ shed blood are depicted inside the beads of a chaplet
which surrounds the iconic image of the Man of Sorrows. These beads are linked by seven
lines with a chalic below, thereby illustrating how the acts of reciting the Paternoster prayer
and meditating on Christ’s mercy combine in the effort to entreat Christ for mercy and spiritual
nourishment. The two Passion prints could be used to meditate silently upon Passion of Christ,
or, as with the Precious Blood woodcut, worshippers could join together these meditations
with saying Paternoster prayers, simultaneously cultivating within themselves the sentiments
associated with the Passion and requesting salvation and mercy from Christ in heaven.
In sum, the Vienna Passion, the Christ Vita and the Virgin Vita prints provided
illustrations of the Gospel and apocryphal stories by adapting available visual material:
blockbooks and single sheet prints with Passion cycles from northern Europe and Venice and
paintings by local Florentine artists. Although none of these prints are explicitly related to
particular devotional exercises, the disposition of images, use of text and iconographic details
are clearly linked to contemporary methods of meditation disseminated in manuscript
collections, printed books and sermons. They could facilitate the search for the state promised
in the Meditationes vitae Christi: a ‘new condition of sweetness that would seem to him a
promise of glory’.79

78
Frank O. Büttner, Imitatio Pietatis: Motive der christlichen Ikonographie als Modelle zur
Verähnlichung, Berlin, 1983, fig. 196.
79
Ragusa and Green, Meditations on the Life of Christ, p. 317.
156
Chapter 6. Contemplation: Illustrations in Antonio Bettini’s Monte sancto di Dio

Sometime before September 1477, the Dante Workshop embarked on a new venture
by providing three engravings for the first illustrated book to be printed in Florence: the Monte
sancto di Dio published by Niccolò della Magna. The work was written by Antonio Bettini
(1396-1487), Bishop of Foligno and a leading member of the Congregation of the Jesuats
(Gesuati), and shows the reader how, through penitence and contemplation, to experience a
beatific vision of God.1 The text is structured around the metaphorical mountain of Jesus
Christ which must be ascended by a ladder; at the summit the climber will find perfect love
and true knowledge of God. Appended to the main part of the book are two smaller sections:
one that describes the joys of Heaven and the second that outlines the pains of Hell.
The engravings precede each of the book’s three sections. The first, the Holy Mountain
(fig. 6.1), is on placed on folio 4v after the contents pages and opposite the opening page of the
first part of the book, a section that comprises ninety-nine leaves of paper and 115 chapters.2
The image is a full-page engraving made from a plate measuring 255 x 183 mm and shows a
rocky mountain covered with grasses and plants with a small river or stream at the bottom
right. The mount itself is split into three smaller sections, each of which is labelled with one of
the three theological virtues, ‘Speranza’ (Hope), ‘Fede’ (Faith) and ‘Carità’ (Love). A crucifix is
planted into the section of the mountain labelled ‘Fede’, with the word ‘Carità
suggestively inscribed next to Christ’s dying body. The resurrected Christ stands at the peak on
a flat precipice, fully clothed and surrounded by rays of light, clouds and cherubim that are
divided from the world below by three arched lines symbolising the heavenly spheres.
At the bottom there is a flat plain labelled ‘Cognoscimento Dilatato’ (roughly
translated as ‘Widened Knowledge’) from where a ladder leads to the top, its last rung just
below Christ’s feet. At the ladder’s base is ‘Humiltà’ (Humility) and on each step there are
further virtues: the lower four rungs display the four cardinal virtues, ‘Prudentia’ (Prudence),
‘Temperantia’ (Temperance), ‘Fortezza’ (Fortitude) and ‘Iustitia’ (Justice) while the top four
represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, ‘Timore’ (Fear of God), ‘Pietà’ (Piety), ‘Scientia’
(Knowledge), ‘Fortezza’ (courage), ‘Consiglio’ (Judgement), ‘Intellecto’ (Intellect or
Understanding) and ‘Sapientia’ (Wisdom). The words ‘Oratione’ (Prayer) and ‘Sacramento’
1
Antonio Bettini, Monte sancto dio Dio, Florence: Niccolò della Magna, 10 September 1477, quarto folio
(Hain, 1276). The book has 131 leaves with approximately 33-35 lines to a page. Hind discovered 20
copies of the book. See Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, pp. 97-99. See also Zucker, Early Italian
Masters, vol. 24, pt. 1, p. 219.
2
This analysis is based on two copies in London: one in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the
British Museum (MS no. 163.a.3) and one in the British Library (cat. no. Grenville 10563). The folio
numbers are based on the handwritten numbers in the British Museum copy.
157
(the Sacrament) appear on the vertical sides of the ladder, referring to the methods of
devotion that help to cultivate such virtues and gifts.
This basic schema is populated by several figures. A cleric climbs the ladder, dressed in
a Jesuat white habit with the hood hung over his shoulder, much like that worn by Giovanni
Colombini, the founder of the Jesuats, in Sano di Pietro’s polyptych for the church of San
Girolamo in Siena (fig. 6.7). As he looks upwards at a crucifix embedded on the mountain, a
banderole comes from his lips the words bearing the words ‘Tirami doppo te’ (draw me after
you) derived from the Songs of Solomon 1:3.3 Standing on the plain to the left, a fashionably
dressed man turns to gaze upwards at the figure of Christ at the mountain’s summit. A
banderole comes from his lips with words based on Psalm 121: ‘Levavi oculos meos i[n]
mo[n]tes unde veniat ausilium michi ausilium meum a domino’ (‘I lifted my eyes to the
mountains; from where comes help to me[?]; my help [comes] from the Lord’).4 As he looks
up, his body is taunted by a devil who prods him and pulls his left foot with a band inscribed
with ‘Cecità’ (Blindness).
The second engraving, Christ in Glory (fig. 6.2), is printed on folio 98v on the page
before the much shorter second section of the book, Delle glorie del paradiso, consisting of
fifteen folios and fifteen chapters. It was possibly engraved on the reverse of the plate of the
first illustration, since the impressions have the same dimensions. Christ stands surrounded
by a mandorla of light and angels, draped in his burial shroud, showing his stigmata and
holding his right hand in benediction. The third image, The Pains of Hell (fig. 6.3), is positioned
on folio 118r in a space at the end of Delle glorie del paradiso and was printed from a plate half
the size of the first two engravings (123 x 167 mm). Thematically, it is related to the section
that begins on the verso of the page, Delli peni delli danati, written in 7 chapters on 14 leaves
and which culminates in a final exhortation to the reader to climb the metaphorical mountain.
At the centre of the image Satan lurks in a well, eating naked bodies in each of his three
mouths and grasping men with his hands. He is surrounded by seven pits, in which nude men
and women endure infernal agonies and are provoked by devils. Some are fed into the mouth
of a giant dragon, Leviathan, some have their entrails removed, others hang upside down or sit
hungrily at a table of food with their hands tied behind them.

3
The Latin Vulgate words are: ‘trahe me post te curremus introduxit me rex in cellaria sua’, Songs of
Solomon 1:3. ( ‘Draw me: we will run after thee to the odour of thy ointments. / The king hath brought
me into his storerooms’).
4
The words in the image are derived from the Latin Vulgate, Psalm 121: 1-2: ‘levavi oculos meos in
montes unde veniet auxilium meum / auxilium meum a Domino factore caeli et terrae’ (‘I have lifted up
my eyes to the mountains, from whence help shall come to me. / My help is from the Lord, who made
heaven and earth’).
158
 Prior to this publication, most illustrated printed books from across Europe included
small woodcut images, such as Juan de Torquemada’s Meditationes, printed in 1467 in Rome
(fig. 5.22).5 In the 1470s, Italian printers began to experiment by including copperplate
engravings in books, the first of which appeared in Ptolemy’s Cosmographia, printed by
Domenico di Lapi (Domnicus de Lapis) in Bologna in June 1477. In this edition, the images
were printed on separate sheets of paper that were subsequently bound together with the
pages of the text (fig. 6.4).6 Although Lapis’ book was the first known today to be published
with such prints, the idea to include engravings can be traced to the early 1470s when Conrad
Sweynheym advised craftsmen about engraving the maps for Arnold Bucknick’s version of the
Cosmographia, eventually printed in Rome in 1478.7 In Florence, the author Francesco
Berlinghieri followed their example by commissioning engraved maps that were bound at the
back of his Geographia, printed by Niccolò della Magna in 1482 (fig. 6.5).8 The Monte sancto di
Dio, published in September 1477, however, was the first incunable in which copperplate
engravings were printed on folios alongside words. The experiment was followed by Filippo da
Lavagna’s edition of Fra Pacifico da Novara’s Summula de Pacifica Conscientia, printed in Milan
in 1479 with three engraved diagrams (fig. 6.6) and Niccolò della Magna’s publication of
Cristoforo Landino’s Comento sopra la comedia di Dante in 1481 (fig. 2.5).9 The latter was
presumably intended to be fully illustrated, but only nineteen engravings were actually made.
Although subsequent printers predominantly employed cheaper woodcut illustrations, as the
first printed book to be illustrated with copperplate engravings in Florence, the Monte sancto

5
Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, pp. 227-228.
6
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, pp. 289-292. The Cosmographia, printed by Dominicus de Lapis on
rd
23 June 1477 (Hain, 13538), is cat. no. G.1 (1-26). See Claudius Ptolemaeus, Cosmographia, Bologna:
Dominicus de Lapis, 1477, republished with an introduction in Claudius Ptolemaeus, Cosmographia:
Bologna, 1477, ed. Raleigh Ashlin Skelton, Amsterdam, 1963.
7
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, p. 289. The engravings in Bucknick’s Cosmographia (Hain 13537)
are found under catalogue number G.2 (1-27). See also Claudius Ptolemaeus, Cosmographia, Rome:
Arnoldus Bucknick, 1478, republished with an introduction in Claudius Ptolemaeus, Cosmographia,
Roma 1478, ed. Raleigh Ashlin Skelton, Amsterdam, 1966.
8
Hind, Early Italian Engraving, vol.1, the illustrations for Landino’s Commentary (Hain, 5946) are
catalogued as A.V.2 (1-19). The maps for Berlinghieri’s Geographia (Hain, 2825) are catalogued as G.3 (1-
32). See Francesco Berlinghieri, Geographia, Florence: Niccolò della Magna, 1482, republished with an
introduction in Francesco Berlinghieri, Geographia: Florence, 1482, ed. Raleigh Ashlin Skelton,
Amsterdam, 1966. For an analysis of the text and its maps see Roberts, Cartography Between Cultures;
Roberts, ‘Poet and World Painter; Roberts, ‘Francesco Rosselli and Berlinghieri’s Geographia Re-
Examined. I am grateful to Sean Roberts for his help and guidance.
9
See Cristoforo Landino, Comento sopra la comedia di Dante, Florence: Niccolò della Magna, 1481 and
Pacifico da Novara, Summula de Pacifica Conscientia, Milan: Filippo da Lavagna, 1479. The illustrations
for Landino’s book (Hain, 5946) are catalogued in Early Italian Engraving, vol. 1, pp. 99-116, as A.V.2 (1-
19). The engravings in Fra Pacifico’s book (Hain, 12259) are catalogued, pp. 272-73 as E.III.72-74. For
recent bibliography on the Dante illustrations and the publication of Landino’s Commentary, see Keller,
‘The Engravings in the 1481 Edition of the Divine Comedy’ and Korman, ‘Danthe Alighieri Poeta
Fiorentino’.
159
di Dio represents an important achievement in terms of technology, entrepreneurship and
book history.
The final chapter of this thesis seeks to understand how these images were produced
and how they were intended to function in relationship to the text. It will show that the
engravings were made as the result of an interaction of individuals, and as such do not
necessarily form part of a unified programme conceived by one person. The first part of the
chapter will propose that both the Dante Workshop and a separate editorial figure with
knowledge of Bettini’s text contributed to making the illustrations in very different ways. The
second section will consider how, and by whom, the illustrations might have been
commissioned and the final part will suggest how they were intended to function.

6.1. Design

Very little information survives about who was responsible for each aspect the book.
Niccolò della Magna certainly printed the letters, Antonio Bettini wrote its original text, and
the execution of the engraved images is convincingly attributed to the Dante Workshop whose
eclectic way of composing images explains their variations in style, as will be discussed below.
But the making of an illustrated incunable was a fairly complex procedure involving many
people assuming several responsibilities.10 In the early 1470s in Bologna, for instance, a large
group of individuals formed a partnership to produce Ptolemy’s illustrated Cosmographia (fig.
6.4), including Filippo di Giacomo di Balduini (chancellor to Giovanni Bentivoglio), Giovanni di
Baldassare degli Accursi di Reggio, Taddeo Crivelli (the Ferrarese illuminator and engraver) and
Lodovico and Domenico de’ Ruggeri.11 These partners also hired Domenico di Lapi to print the
work and five men to correct the text, while Crivelli probably designed and executed the
printed maps.12 A comparable picture is painted by a recently discovered document drawn up
in 1494 in Florence, recording how Ser Piero Pacini da Pescia, a merchant, notary and editor,
commissioned Giovanni Tedesco to cut woodblocks to print in books.13 The contract does not

10
For some of the different collaborations involved in making early printed books see Berta Maracchi
Biagiarelli, ‘Editori di incunabuli fiorentini’, in Roberto Ridolfi (ed.), Contributi all storia del libro italiano:
miscellanea in onore di Lamberto Donati, Florence, 1969, pp. 211-220; Conway, The Diario of the
Printing Press of San Jacopo di Ripoli, pp. 28-47; Böninger, ‘Ein deutscher Frühdrucker in Florenz;
Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa fiorentina’.
11
Sighinolfi, ‘I mappamondi di Taddeo Crivelli e la stampa bolognese della Cosmographia di Tolomeo’,
pp. 289-90.
12
Ibid., pp. 258-59.
13
Bertoli, ‘Documenti su Bartolomeo de’ Libri e i suoi primi discendenti’, pp. 29-30, doc. 2, p. 48.
‘Magister Johannes olim Nicholai teotonichus de civitate <teotonice> Forisfodie partis Alamanie, omni
meliori modo quo potuit etc., promixit et solemni stipulatione convenit ser Piero olim Nardi Pacini
160
indicate for which books they were intended, though it has plausibly been suggested that they
were meant for the many religious works printed under the influence of Savonarola.14 If so, as
many as five people may have been involved in the making of the book, with Bartolommeo
de’Libri printing the text, the editor and bookseller Ser Piero da Pacini supervising the
commercial operations and, if these were the Savonarolan woodcuts, a religious adviser who
invented the images’ iconography. Drawings for the illustrations were probably made by the
painter Bartolommeo di Giovanni, to whom many of the designs for such woodcuts are
attributed and who was a witness for the contract between Pacini and Giovanni Tedesco.15
These drawings would then have been transferred onto woodblocks by woodcutters under the
leadership of Giovanni Tedesco and returned to Pacini to be printed on paper.
In each case the precise role of the printmakers had in developing the composition and
iconography of the illustrations is unclear, as undoubtedly the process varied for each
commission. In Francesco Berlinghieri’s Geographia (fig. 6.5) the author employed engravers
to create the maps. The printmakers were were probably provided with cartoons since the
maps bear significant similarities to painted versions by Piero Massaio and the illuminators
Gherardo and Monte di Giovanni. Berlinghieri was unable, however, to stop the engravers
from making mistakes in their work and in a letter accompanying an illuminated copy of the
Geographia sent to the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid II, he acknowledged and apologised for such
errors. 16 Hypothetically, Berlinghieri had a supervisory role and may have provided basic
instructions and cartoons for the prints, which the engravers then followed fairly freely, adding
their own figural details.
Lacking such documentation, the exact arrangements underpinning the making of the
Monte Santo di Dio and its illustrations are not known. Nevertheless, the iconography and

notario florentino ibidem presenti et pro se et suis heredibus recipienti et stipulanti etc. pro un anno
proximo futuro non intagliare alicui persone lignaminis intagliare eodem ser Piero cum profiliis sottilibus
et aliis usitatis ad usum boni intagliatoris et magistri, et converso dictus ser Pierus promixit et solemni
stipulatione convenit eidem magistro Johanni ibidem presenti et recipient et stipulanti pro dicto anno
continuo dare ad intagliandum dictas formas lignaminis, videlicet pro qualibet ebdomada dicti anni
proximi future formas quinque lignaminis, videlicet pro qualibet ebdomada dicti anni proximi futuri
formas quinque lignaminis videlicet formas quatuor unius sexsti brachii et unam mensure unius ottavi,
pro vesta infrascripte hic aligate et promixit dictus ser Pierus dare et solver eidem magistro Johanni pro
eius labore pro qualibet forma soldo xxviiij f. p. sub infrascripta pena etc. promixerunt sic attendere et
observare sub pena florenorum auri centum, etc. que pena etc., qua pena etc., pro quolibet eorum
obbligavit etc, renumptiavit etc. per guarentigiam merogante etc’.
14
Ibid., p. 29.
15
For the attribution of the drawings, see Annarosa Garzelli, Il ricamo nella attività artistica di Pollaiolo,
Botticelli, Bartolomeo di Giovanni, Florence, 1973, pp. 12-15.
16
Roberts, Cartography Between Cultures, p. 199. The letter is reproduced on pp. 387-389. ‘Ma se nel
texto o tabule o fussi alchuno errore dallo impressore facto o dallo intagliatore, alla brevita del tempo
che non ha lasciato emendare, ben che per se corregiare si posa, lo imputera la tua Gloriosissimo
maiestà alla quale mi raccomando sempre’.
161
composition of each print suggest that both the Dante Workshop and a separate advisor had a
role in the design of the images, especially in the first illustration.

Pictorial Composition

There is little doubt that the Dante Workshop executed the engravings and
contributed, at the least, many of the decorative elements. The distinctive lettering and
patterns of the workshop appear in the first image and the typical feathered clouds and rays of
light made of small zig-zagged and large curved lines are seen in Christ in Glory (fig. 6.2). But
most characteristic of the workshop’s method is the use of stock figures and reliance on pre-
existing images. In the first print, the Mountain of God (fig. 6.1), the young man looking up the
mountain is related to a general type of fashionably attired and often enamoured male
recurrent in the Dante Workshop prints (fig. 6.8). His hair and facial outline closely
corresponds with that of the young man ascending a ladder in the Ladders of Pride and
Humility (fig. 6.9); his costume recalls those of the young men in the Children of the Sun (Hind,
A.III.4a) and the Children of Jupiter (fig. 6.10), while his balletic stance can be compared with
the dancing youths in the Children of Venus (fig. 6.11) and certain Otto prints (fig. 6.12).
Typical of such figures, he is dressed in calze (hose) and a richly ornamented farsetto (doublet)
with a giornea over it, fashionably arranged in folds.17
That the assembling of a schematic illustration out of figurative components was
common in the workshop is demonstrated in the Ladders of Pride and Humility (fig. 6.13). The
lion (figs. 6.14-15) appears to be from the same model as the lion in Wild Animals Fighting (fig.
6.16), while the Nativity scene (fig. 6.17) is loosely related to Baldovinetti’s design for the
intarsia of the Sacristy in the Duomo (fig. 6.18). The figure of Christ (fig. 6.19) is strikingly close
to that in Fra Angelico’s Last Judgement altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in
Florence (fig. 6.20). Although the body was reversed during the printing process, details such
as the folds of the dress, the positioning of the hands, and the shaping of the shirt closely
follow Fra Angelico’s model, suggesting that the engravers copied a drawing by Fra Angelico or
the painting itself. In this case, visual fragments from a treasury of sources were synthesised,
sometimes awkwardly, to create a new composite image, one which represents an allegorical
idea based on St Bernard of Clairvaux’s De gradibus superbiae et humilitatis.18 An analogous
process of composition can be supposed for the Holy Mountain.

17
Jacqueline Herald, Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400-1500, London, 1981. For the calze see pp. 211-12;
for the farsetto, p. 216 and for the giornea, p. 218.
18
Heck, L’échelle céleste dans l’art du moyen âge, p. 172.
162
 In the second illustration (fig. 6.2), the representation of Christ is stylistically very
different from that in the first print, but is linked with other contemporary depictions of the
resurrected body of Christ. There are clear correlations between Christ’s body and that in
Francesco Botticini’s Resurrection predella panel in the Frick Collection, New York, dated to
around 1471 (figs 6.21-22). Although the position of the head is slightly different, in both
pictures Christ is positioned in the same pose with his bent right knee moving to the right, out
of the mandorla in which he is framed. In Botticini’s painting, Christ clothed in a white cloth –
the shroud – which the engravers transformed into an elaborate toga by the addition of the
decorative border. There are also correspondences in the shading of the bodies, notably
around the shoulder, collarbone and arm where there are strong, contrasting and pooled
patches of dark and light.
In the Pains of Hell (fig. 6.3), the engravers combined elements already employed in
other two single sheet prints showing Hell: one by the Dante Workshop seen in modern
impressions from a reworked plate (the ‘Morrona’ Hell, fig. 6.23) and the other a print in the
Vienna Category (the ‘Vienna’ Hell, fig. 6.24). Many of the iconographic features in these
prints were derived, probably indirectly, from the fresco of Hell in the Camposanto in Pisa,
dated to around 1330 and attributed to Buonamico Buffalmacco (fig. 6.25) such as the man
lying on his back wrapped in a snake as a devil pours liquid silver down his throat; the gluttons
sitting at a table full of food with their hands tied behind their back; the bodies fed to into the
giant mouth of the serpent; the figure suspended upside down and encircled by snakes. These
motifs were visible to Florentines through paintings inspired by the fresco, such as Fra
Angelico’s altarpieces showing the Last Judgement (fig. 6.26-27) the first of which which, like
Pains of Hell illustration, includes Satan sitting in a well of ice.19
The engraver, however, muddled the iconography of the seven deadly sins found in
the other representations, where a three-mouthed Satan (representing the sin of pride) is
positioned in the centre or at the bottom, surrounded by circles or pits (‘bolgie’) containing
sinners associated with avarice, lust, wrath, gluttony, sloth and envy.20 In some cases, there is
also a cave or pit at the top of Hell for the heretics, the soothsayers and the simoniacs, men
who are condemned not for their vices, but for the rejection of the true faith.21 These figures

19
For the influence of the Camoposanto frescos, see Jérome Baschet, Les Justices de l'au-delà: les
représentations de l'enfer en France et en Italie, XIIe-XVe siècle, Rome, 1993, pp. 366-69 (for the
influence of the frescos in Florence more generally, see pp 369-69). For Fra Angelico’s altarpieces from
the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, see John Pope-Hennessy, Fra Angelico, rev. ed. London, 1974 (1st
ed. London, 1952), p. 192.
20
Baschet, Les Justices de l'au-delà, p. 298.
21
Ibid., pp. 299-300. In the Camposanto fresco and the Vienna Hell engraving (fig. 6.24), the captions
label the heretic Mohamed.
163
are shown alongside imagery that had been used, often in isolation, to signify Hell in some of
the oldest depictions of the subject, such as the mouth of Leviathan that swallows the souls of
the damned.22 In the engraved illustration, instead, there are seven fiery pits which only
vaguely evoke the seven sins. Some of the pits correspond with the sins of avarice, gluttony
and wrath, but the others contain details from other parts of the iconography of Hell,
unrelated to the seven sins. Thus, in the pits in the top centre and top left, the engravers
included the torments associated with the heretics, simoniacs and soothsayers, such as the
feeding of bodies into the mouth of Leviathan, decapitation, the ripping out of a man’s entrails
and the hanging of a body by the feet. These were then incorporated within seven pits that
allude to, but only approximate, the conventional seven sins.

Iconographic Invention

The iconography of Pains of Hell engraving has little in common with the text of the
final section, Delli pene delli dannati, with which it is thematically paired. In this section,
Bettini devotes little attention to mapping out Hell; instead he employs a conceptual
framework describing the pains of the soul and the body that oppose the glories of heaven.
He does not mention Satan; nor does he indicate specific bodily torments. In making the
print, therefore, the engravers seem to have worked independently of the text. While the
first two images were printed in spaces deliberately set aside for them alongside the
appropriate section of the book, no such space was left on the verso of the page opposite
Bettini’s description of Hell. It was inserted in the space at the end of the preceding section, so
that it oddly concludes the account of Paradise.
The iconography of the first two illustrations, on the other hand, must have been
designed, or invented, by someone well acquainted with Bettini’s theology, presumably early
on in the planning of the book’s layout. This is especially evident in the Holy Mountain (fig.
6.1). The pictorial schema is almost exactly that of the mountain described in the prologue,
which is made of three separate smaller mountains, named Hope, Faith and Charity, set on a
plain called ‘Cognoscimento dilatato’ (fig. 6.28). This is subtly different from Bettini’s main
account of the three mountains, represented schematically in fig. 6.29, where the mountain of
knowledge of human and divine nature (‘cognoscimento della natura divina e humana’) is at
the bottom; the mountain of love (defined both as ‘amore’ and ‘carità’) is situated above this
and on the top is the mountain of Jesus Christ. The three theological virtues and humility are

22
Ibid., pp. 233-43.
164
described as chains that tie the ladder to the mountain at key points along the path: the bond
of hope is at the base of the mountain of love; the bond of ‘well ordered’ love is midway up it,
and the chain of perfect love is at its summit. The engraving refers to some elements of
Bettini’s description, such as the chains holding the ladder (fig. 6.30) and so was probably
devised by someone with knowledge of the entire book, but with detailed reference to the
prologue.
The illustration not only outlines the basic allegory of the mountain and ladder,
however, but it also supplements and enriches it by dramatising the themes of the text. The
fashionable youth, the Jesuat, the devil and the figure of Christ at the top of the mountain, are
not specifically mentioned in the book, but crystallise certain of its concepts in a visual, human
narrative. The elegant young man, for instance, exemplifies the message of the first chapters
of Bettini’s text in which the author outlines the penitence and humility necessary to ascend
up to Christ on the ladder. His elaborately decorated giornea was probably associated with
vanity and pride, in contrast to the habit of the Jesuat that symbolises humility. In a sermon
delivered in Siena in 1427, for example, St Bernardino of Siena scornfully suggested that the
garment gave its wearer a bestial appearance.23 But the man’s turning action, clearly shown in
the image through the gestures of the arms, hands and position of the feet, reflects the
deliberate and willed movement of penitence and rejection of such sin.
The young man’s act of looking up the mountain also alludes to the metaphor of vision
in the discussion of the contemplation of, and participation in, God. Throughout the text,
Bettini follows the theological tradition, rooted in the Bible and promoted by theologians such
as St Augustine, where the act of seeing was an appropriate metaphor for the immediate,
complete, and perfect union with God and light was an emblem of God’s power and love.24
Bettini refers to Augustine’s tripartite definition of vision to explain this. Firstly, there is
corporeal vision of material things perceived through the physical senses; secondly there is
‘spiritual’ (‘ymmaginaria’) vision when an individual sees visual forms in dreams or ecstasy, but
not through their physical eyes.25 The last and most superior form of vision, to which Bettini
consistently refers when he describes the vision of God, is intellectual vision, the apprehension
of immaterial, formless things in a more abstract process of cognition through the ‘mind’s eye’
or the ‘eye of the intellect’, as Bettini calls it. It is this intellectual vision, Bettini explains, that

23
Bernardino da Siena, Le prediche volgari dette nella Piazza del Campo l’anno 1427, ed. Luciano Banchi,
3 vols, Siena, 1880-88, vol. 3, p. 189.
24
See Bettini, Monte sancto di dio, pt. 1, ch. 19, fol. 22v: ‘Della luce per la quale lo intellecto puo vedere
iddio. Et come dio sempre e disposto: e sempre desidera che noi lo vediamo per intellecto & per affecto
lo gustiamo’.
25
See, in particular, Bettini, Monte sancto di dio, pt. 1, ch. 101, fol. 95r: ‘Come per lo dono dellintellecto
veramente vediamo idio’.
165
is the vision of God ‘face to face’ recorded by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13: 12: ‘We see now
through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face’.26 This vision is not one that most
mortals can endure or will ever see; to witness a vision of this type on earth, two exceptional
conditions are required. Primarily, an individual needs God to reveal himself, according to his
will and grace, so that the devotee can momentarily transcend his mortality and envision that
which is beyond worldly things.27 But before this can happen the individual must attain a
condition of supreme sanctity and a pure – metaphorical – ‘eye’ of the intellect. Those who
have not achieved sufficient holiness, or who are trammelled by sins, are intellectually blinded
from seeing God’s essence. Only through penitence and piety is the eye of the intellect made
clear enough to ascend the mountain of Christ and to know, see and encounter God ‘face to
face’.28
In the image, the tension between sinful blindness and sanctified vision is illustrated by
the band with the word ‘Blindness’ (‘Cecità’) with which the devil pulls at the youth’s leg as he
strains to look up at Christ. Here, the designer may have been deliberately referring to a
passage in chapter 10 (‘Della consideratione di quelle cose che inducono el peccatore ad vera
penitentia’):

Let the sinner now consider that most holy and noble image of God, in whose image
he himself was created, but which has been extinguished in him because of his sin. Let

26
This Pauline quote is referred to many times by Bettini. See, for example, ch. 42, fol. 44v: ’Dilatiamolo
ora alla cognitione della natura divina felice mente sempre sagliendo al monte sancto cristo Iesu idio
nostro et sposo dellanima nostra per lo cui mezo meglio intenderemo la natura divina che per alcunaltro
mezo vedremolo qui per specchio in figura. Ma quando saremo totalmente saliti al monte sancto cristo
Iesu. Et in lui solo quietati et totalmente trasformati vedremolo a faccia a faccia ora in via lo vediamo in
parte.’
27
Bettini, Monte sancto di dio, pt. 1, ch. 102, fol. 95v. Referring to the words of St Bernard of Clairvaux,
he says ‘idio nella contemplatione e veduto come eglie, onde all’electo et dilecto di dio dice, El lume del
volto di dio si vede per intevalli come uno lume chiuso nelle mani. El quale si manifesta et nasconde
secondo larbitrio di colui che il tiene, accio che essendo veduto quasi in uno transcorso o vero in un
punto lanimo faccienda alla piena possessione del lume etherno. E della heredita della visione di dio:
overamente accio che gli sia manifesto quello che gli manda, alcuna volta el sentimento dello amante e
constrecto et preso da una gratia che passa et togliegli poi essa gratia et rapiscelo a certi di da ogni
tumulto delle cose terrene alli celestiali gaudii. Et secondo el suo modo per un momento et per um
punto esso medesimo si mostra et lassasi vedere come eglie. Et in questo mezo lo sa come e lui’.
28
See esp. Bettini, Monte sancto di dio, pt. 1, ch. 18, fols 20v-21r: ‘Della mondititia dellaffecto del core e
dello intellecto’, [...] ‘... la humana beatitudine consiste in vedere idio per intellecto. [...] Et aviamo
veduto come tre cose sono necessarie al vedere esso iddio. Cioe la sufficientia del veditore. El modo del
vedere. Et la dispositione desso iddio el quale lhuomo desidera di vedere. Et da poi dicemo che la
sufficientia del veditore era locchio atto al vedere cioe lo intellecto. Et che lattitudine dello intellecto era
la luce senza obstaculo impeditivo che tanto e a dire quanto la purita senza peccato. Et aviamo veduto
come il grande obstaculo del peccato per la sanctissima penitentia si rimuove et consuma. Et come
siamo fortificati per la frequentione del sacramento del sanctissimo corpo di Cristo’. Later in the
chapter, on fol. 21v, Bettini says, quoting Bernard, ‘lo intellecto debba esser purgato accio che intenda.
[...] Lo intellecto el quale e occhio dell’anima debba esser purgato da piu cose’.
166
 him reform his soul through this image and through holy penitence. Let him lift up his
mind to contemplate the essence of God and thus he will be exalted in God. The more
God is contemplated, the more He is highly figured, sculpted and put in relief in the
mind of the faithful. Let him rest and fix his mind intensely on Jesus Christ and he will
not sin. And if, just for one moment he falls, he may lift himself up again through most
holy penitence. And however many times he falls to the ground, as many times he will
return always to God.29

Bettini describes how, by looking up at and fixing the mind on the image of God in
Christ, a man will not sin and thus his eye will be purified. The more he looks on this image,
the more brilliant it will appear in his mind like a painted image. Yet, if for one moment he is
distracted from this penitence – expressed as looking upwards at God – he will suddenly fall
down to the ground. The correspondence with the youth in the engraving is clear: like the
hypothetical penitent, he turns to look upwards at the image of God, whilst sin threatens to
pull him away from his penitential gaze on Christ.
This penitential theme is reinforced by the gestures and speech of the youth who
shields his eyes as he looks up at the radiant figure of Christ on the mountain and says the
words from the Psalm: ‘I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence help shall
come to me [?] / My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth’.30 Bettini refers to
this verse in his book when he says that King David, seeing a spiritual mountain before him,
despaired that he would ever be able to ascend it. 31 In his moment of crisis David looked up
and requested help from God, who then guided his way and protected him from evil. Thus, in
both text and image, David becomes the model for every repentant reader of Bettini’s book
who can look up at the mountain of God to escape from his sin, despair and troubles. The
band tied around the young man’s foot, furthermore, may be a reference to the next verse in
the psalm, ‘May he not suffer thy foot to be moved’.32

29
Bettini, Monte sancto di dio, pt. 1, ch. 10, fol. 13v, ‘Consideri anco il peccatore quella sanctissima et
nobilissima ymagine di dio alla quale ymagine e creato la quale ymagine in lui e spenta per lo peccato.
Riformi lanima sua a quella ymagine per la sancta penitentia. Levi la mente su in alto a contemplare la
essentia di dio & sara exaltato in dio, el quale quanto piu e riguardato: tanto piu nella mente fedele si
truova altamente figurato: scolpito et rilevato. Ripososi e fermisi in yhesu cristo efficace mente & non
pecchera. Et se pure alcuna volta cadra subito per la sanctissima penitentia si relevera. Et quante volte
alla terra diclinera: tante volte & tanto piu efficacemente sempre in dio ritornera et tanto piu grave
peccato reputera’.
30
Psalm 121: 1-2.
31
Bettini, Monte sancto dio dio, pt. 1, ch. 29: ‘Come nessuno puo veder idio se non saglie al monte
sancto yhesu cristo’, fol. 32r. ‘Et David vedendo questo monte posto sopra li monti e sopra li colli et al
tucto in se medesimo diseprandosi di non poter salire diveva Io levai gli ochi miei alli monti et
disperandosi del salire subgiugne. Onde mi verra laiuto. Et vedendo non potere avere nessuono aiuto se
non e dallo etherno padre subgiunse. Laiuto mio verra dal signore el quale a facto il cielo et la terra.
Certamente per nessuno modo potremo venire all beata visione Et al dolcissimo et suavissimo et
etherno gusto di dio se non sagliremo al monte Cristo.’
32
Psalm 121: 3.
167
 The attitude of the young man and the position of Christ on the mountain’s summit
also provide a subtle visual reference to the transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor, another
Biblical event that was often seen as a foreshadowing of beatific vision.33 As described in the
Gospels, Christ was ‘transfigured’ before the eyes of the disciples Peter, John and Jacob, as a
voice descended from a bright cloud above. He became radiant to such a degree that the
disciples were dazzled by his brilliance: ‘His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as
white as the light’. (Matthew 17: 2). Theologians such as St Augustine, St Jerome, St
Bonaventure, St Thomas Aquinas and the Florentine friend of Bettini, Archbishop Antoninus of
Florence, all interpreted the Transfiguration as a prefiguration of the vision of the resurrected
Christ in the glory of Paradise where Christ is united with his divine body.34 Although beatific
vision was only achieved after death with the resurrection of the body, many theologians,
including Bettini, argued that individuals could glimpse this face of God on earth, if they
transcended their mortal flesh in a moment of spiritual ecstasy. It is this type of ecstasy which
Bettini suggests is possible for the individual who ascends the ladder.
This interpretation of the Transfiguration was not only known to erudite theologians.
Vernacular texts produced in the fifteenth century for audiences illiterate in Latin, also link the
mountains in the Gospels with metaphorical mountains of contemplation or prayer.35 In the
Montaigne de Contemplation, written in 1400 by the French mystic Jean Gerson, the author
describes a mountain which the reader can ascend to enter into contemplative encounter with
God. He compares the experience of such contemplation with the disciples’ vision of the
transfigured Christ: ‘He who comes there [up the mountain of contemplation] has climbed
33
Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36
34
For various interpretations of the Transfiguration by the Greek and Latin Fathers, see John Anthony
McGuckin, The Transfiguration of Christ in Scripture and Tradition, Lewiston, 1986. For the exegeses of
Augustine and Jerome, see pp. 269-290. In his Commentary of Matthew 3:17, Jerome writes that ‘there
appeared to the apostles what the future would be like in the time of judgement’ and ‘on the mountain
there had been given a foretaste of the future kingdom’ (pp. 270, 273). For the account of the
Transfiguration in the works of Thomas Aquinas, see Jack M. Greenstein, ‘“How Glorious the Second
Coming of Christ": Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" and the Transfiguration’, Artibus et Historibus, vol.
10, no. 20, 1989, pp. 33-57, pp. 41-46 and Christian Kleinbub, ‘Raphael’s Transfiguration as Visio-
Devotional Program’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 90, no. 3, 2008, pp. 367-93. Kleinbub discusses Augustine’s
sermon on the Transfiguration (p. 381). For Bonaventure’s reference to it as a parallel to the seraphic
vision at the end of the Journey of the Mind towards God, see Kleinub, ‘Raphael’s Transfiguration as
Visio-Devotional Program’, p. 385 and Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The
Life of St Francis, ed. and trans. Ewert Cousins, London, 1978, pp. 61-62, ch. 1.5.
35
In the ‘Monte de oratione’ composed before 1477, when it was mentioned by Cherubino da Spoleto
in his Regola della vita spirituale, the author describes the allegorical mountain of prayer, at the summit
of which are the treasures of the Court of God. This is equated with the mountain from which Christ
gave his sermon on the mount. The author describes the mountain as the mount described in the
Gospels, when ‘Jesus climbed onto the mountain and drew near to his disciples’. Gabriella Zarri, ‘La vita
religiose femminile tra devozione e chiostro: Testi devote in volgare editi tra il 1475 e il 1520’, in I Frati
minori tra ‘400 e ‘500: Atti del XII convegno internazionale, Assisi 18-19-20 ottobre 1984, Assisi, 1986,
pp. 127-68, pp. 142-43, n. 46.
168
onto the mountain where God transfigured himself in front of the three apostles. [...] He
speaks to God [...]; he is ravished in his spirit or above his spirit; he dwells in heaven’.36
Likewise, in the service for the feast of the Transfiguration recently instituted by Calixtus III in
1456, the Collect, spoken by the priest on behalf of the congregation, declared that the story
was a pre-figuration of the beatific vision.37
Although Bettini does not spell out this reference to the Transfiguration as explicitly as
Jean Gerson, the engraved illustration alludes to it in the way Christ is figured at the top of the
mountain, looking down, dressed in white, surrounded by rays of light, and with his arms wide
open. This allusion is especially visible when the engraving is compared with the moment as it
was sometimes depicted, with Christ standing in blazing light on a rock with the disciples
shielding their faces beneath. The iconography had its roots in Byzantine painting, was painted
as one of the scenes in Duccio’s Maestà (fig. 6.31), and became increasingly popular at the end
of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, most famously exemplified in Raphael’s
altarpiece commissioned by the Cardinal Giulio de Medici.38 It was not particularly common in
fifteenth-century Florence, but two versions of the iconography make interesting comparisons
with the Holy Mountain since they also emphasise the relationship between the biblical event
and visionary experience. The first is a mural by Fra Angelico in a cell at the convent of San
Marco (fig. 6.32); the second is a triptych attributed to Botticelli and dated to the late 1490s
(fig. 6.33). In each, Christ is positioned on a rocky mound as the disciples struggle to look at
him and raise their hands to protect their eyes, while St Dominic, St Augustine and St Jerome
gaze up unimpeded. The gestures of the disciples are interestingly akin to those of the young
man shielding his eyes from the radiance of Christ. For he, like the disciples, is, as yet unable to
linger on Christ’s body in Paradise and must hold up his arm to protect his eyes; emerging from
the clutches of the devil, he is not yet sufficiently purified to endure the divine image of Christ
in all its brilliance. This is an ecstatic experience that awaits the individual who successfully
reaches the mountain’s summit, like Augustine and Jerome.
The second part of the engraving’s visual drama is centred on the Jesuat who climbs
from the rung of Justice to the first of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Fear. Gazing at a
crucifix above him, he embodies a passage in the text when the climber ascends to receive the
gifts of the Holy Spirit: ‘on this rung, the blessed Jesus Christ appeared nailed on the cross, all

36
Brian Patrick McGuire (ed. and trans.), Jean Gerson: Early Works, New York, 1998, p. 93.
37
Greenstein, ‘How Glorious the Second Coming of Christ’, p. 46. Greenstein mistakenly says that the
feast was instituted in 1457; it was actually started in 1456.
38
Ibid., pp. 36-41
169
cut and destroyed in his body, all beaten, bloodied and crowned with thorns.’39 According to
Bettini, before the climber can envision the face of God in Paradise, he must first meditate
upon Christ’s humanity and sacrifice on earth, which Bettini describes as a spiritual vision
conceived in the mind. The crucifix planted into the mountain of Faith, therefore,
emblematises Christ’ Passion in a material form while the Jesuat represents the process of
meditating upon that Passion.
The banderole coming from the Jesuat’s mouth incorporates a further theme from the
text. The words ’tirami doppo te’ allude to Solomon’s lyric ‘Draw me: we will run after thee to
the odour of thy ointments / The king hath brought me into his storerooms’, describing the
amorous exchanges between the king and his bride. In the Middle Ages theologians often
interpreted this encounter as an allegory for the loving relationship between the mystic’s soul
and Christ, a tradition followed by Bettini. 40 In the main text, Bettini alters this phrase to fit
in with his own allegorical schema: ‘Give me some gift as husbands are accustomed to do
before they are joined to their bride, and so adorned, draw me after you so that I will run most
quickly up this ladder in your most precious scent and most sweet perfumes.’ 41 The gifts of
the Holy Spirit are equated with the gifts of a bridegroom to his bride, Christ’s body is
associated with that of the husband appearing to his wife, and the ladder, where the
encounter takes place, is like the bridal chamber where the union takes place.
The words and gestures of the friar and the Jesuat can be understood as a visual and
dramatic nexus of the ideas and metaphors of Bettini’s text. The themes of the love of a bride
for bridegroom, the gaze fixed on the body of Christ, the ascent up the ladder of perseverance
and the contemplation of God are all combined in the pictorial narrative of the friar climbing
up the ladder. Seen together, the young man on the plain and the Jesuat exemplify the
spiritual journey urged on the reader, with allusions to the lyrics of the psalms, the Songs of
Solomon, and the biblical transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor. With such layers of
meaning, it is highly likely that the print was designed by someone well-versed in theology:
such sophisticated knowledge would not be expected from most Florentine goldsmiths.
The content of the second image, showing Christ in Glory, is less obviously matched
with the text (fig. 6.2), but it also reflects the book’s themes. It does not visualise the structure

39
Bettini, Monte sancto di dio, pt. 1., ch. 87, fol. 82r. ‘in questo scalone yhesu cristo benedecto ce
apparito conficto in croce tucto lacerato e distructo in corpo tucto battuto tucto insanguinato et
coronato di spine’.
40
See Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages, pp. 1-24. See also Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory:
Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs, Kalamazoo, 1997.
41
Bettini, Monte sancto di dio, pt. 1, ch. 84, fol. 80v, ‘Falle alcun dono si come usono di fare li sposi
inanzi che si congiunghano alla sposa et cosi ornata; tirami dopo te che volocissimente io corra super
questa scala nel pretiosissimo odore e delli tuoi unguenti suavissimi’.
170
of the heavenly world as described by Bettini, but shows the isolated figure of the resurrected
Christ surrounded by rays of light and angels. In part, this is because Bettini acknowledges that
the experience of Heaven is ineffable and cannot be represented on earth in word or image.
To endure a vision of God, beyond the fleeting glimpse that might be possible on earth, would
destroy a mortal body. His description of the glories of Paradise is not built around a
cosmological structure or visual metaphors like the Paradiso of Dante with its spheres of
heaven and the Heavenly Rose.42 Bettini’s explanation of Paradise is organised through
conceptual distinctions rather than spatial divisions. The author first outlines the three glories
of the soul and their associated qualities, and then he considers the three glories of the body
in a similar way.
Christ in Glory is an appropriate illustration because even though Bettini rarely
provides any visual description of Paradise, when he does, it is always centred on the perfect
body of the resurrected Christ. In chapter 3 of the Delle glorie del paradiso he describes the
location of Heaven in the following way:

The place of the blessed is that dwelling to which Jesus Christ gloriously arose after his
resurrection, which is above all the heavens, that is at the most worthy place of the
heavenly empyrean. That place is most proper for the most noble body of Jesus Christ
and he desires all his blessed faithful to be in that dwelling.43

Bettini recognises that Paradise is beyond human conception, but Christ’s body is the
most powerful and appropriate medium through which to begin to apprehend the celestial
realm. Christ’s resurrected body, as it appeared to the disciples after his resurrection,
moreover, offered the best foreshadowing of the corporeal aspect of Paradise. God, he
argues has a spiritual ‘face’ in the form of God’s grace and a celestial face in the glorious soul
of God. But he also has a corporeal face in the ‘splendid face of Jesus Christ transformed and
united, in the speculation of his clarity’, or, in other words, the body of Christ in its perfect
form after the resurrection.44 In this respect, the engraving closely matches Bettini’s words,

42
See, in particular, Paradiso, canto 30, with its description of the ascent into the Empyrean, the river of
light and the heavenly rose. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, ed. and trans. John D. Sinclair, 3 vols,
Oxford, 1961, vol. 3, canto 30, pp. 430-39.
43
Bettini, Monte sancto di Dio, pt. 2, ‘Delle glorie del paradiso’, ch. 3, fol. 106v, ‘Luogho de beati e quello
al quale doppo la resurrectione yhesu cristo gloriosamente salse el quale luogo e sopra tucti li cieli, cioe
per infino al dignissimo luogo del cielo impirio: Imperoche quel luogho e convenieutissimo al nobilissimo
corpo di yhesu cristo, et in quello luogo vuole che stieno tucti li suoi beati fedeli.’
44
Bettini, Monte sancto di Dio, pt. 2, ‘Delle glorie del paradiso’, ch. 5, fol. 107r, ‘Uno nella sua essentia et
trino in persone, una bonita, una equalita, una virtu et una verita; vede come egle a faccia a faccia,
vedelo non per fede ma luminosamente: et in verita, vede a corporale splendidissima faccia di yhesu
cristo glorioso et sposo suo transformata et unita nella speculatione della sua chiarita per virtu dello
spirito del signore, vede anco la spirituale faccia delle gratificante gratia di dio per la quale gratia gle
donata una certa luce et conoscimento del volto della divina, a probatione per lo quale dio raguarda
171
for Christ is shown in his resurrected body, just as he will appear at the Last Judgement, the
second coming of Christ when all bodies will be raised and united with their souls. The
wounds that killed him on earth are visible on his feet, his hands and on his side, while the
mandorla, the seraphim, the other angels, the clouds signal to the reader that this is the body
of Christ in Heaven.
The engravings, therefore, were made to relate to the text in different ways. The first
image conveys an iconography that interprets the book in a complex manner; the second, in a
less obvious way, also conforms to the message of the work. Both indicate a collaboration
between an adviser and the engraver, while the third illustration deviates substantially from
the text and seems to have been devised at a later point in the books’ production, and by
someone not an expert in Bettini’s theology, but inspired by other common representations of
Hell.

6.2. Editing and Financing

The identity of the person responsible for inventing the iconography, editing the book
and possibily supervising its production is non known. It is probable that Niccolò had some role
in the layout of the book; it is no coincidence that he was also was involved in Cristoforo
Landino’s Comento sopra la comedia di Dante which was illustrated by engravings executed by
the Dante Workshop (fig. 2.5). But given his background as a printer and ‘donazello’ (servant
or assistant) for the Officials of the Mercanzia, it is unlikely that he had the theological
education to either write the prologue or to develop the iconography of the first print.45
It is also possible that Antonio Bettini had a part in determining the inclusion and
content of the first two engravings. He certainly had some connection with Niccolò della
Magna and the publication of the Monte sancto di Dio since three copies were recorded in his
will together with several volumes of two other books printed by Niccolò in 1477: six copies of
Feo Belcari’s Vita del Beato Giovanni Colombini, and four copies of Domenico Cavalca’s

solamente gli suoi et non gli alieni. Et di questa faccia dice il propheta: Dalla faccia del signore e mossa la
terra dalla faccia dello dio di Iacob. Questa cognitione di dio per la faccia Ela cognitione di dio per la
presentia della gratia nella quale si vede presentialmente essere. vede anco la gloriosa anima in gloria la
celestiale faccia di dio la quale facciaeè la presentia di dio gloriosa.’ See also ch. 11, fol. 111v: ‘La
excellentissima et nobilissima gloria de corpi resuscitati et uniti con la gloriosa anima per la unione et
coherentia che ciascuno corpo ha colla gloriosa anima nasce et viene da essa gloria della animna et
permarra in etherno colli glorificati corpi in paradiso’.
45
Ridolfi, ‘Contributi sopra Niccolò Tedesco’; Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa fiorentina, pp.
229-31.
172
Pungilunga.46 It was not uncommon for the author to have input in a book’s production.
Francesco Berlinghieri, whose Geographia was printed by Niccolò in 1482 with a number of
engraved maps, took on a supervisory role in its publication. In 1476 he sent a letter to Rome
enquiring about engravers to execute the thirty-one maps; he edited the text himself and after
the book’s publication he commissioned illuminators to decorate several of the books.47
Nevertheless, Bettini’s involvement with the publication was probably limited: it is unlikely
that Bettini wrote the text’s prologue, for, as noted above, there is a discrepancy between the
disposition of the virtues and the shaping of the mountain. Given that Bettini devised the
original metaphor, it would be surprising for him to consciously alter it for the prefatory
summary; it is more likely that someone else, who oversaw the publication of the book, wrote
the prologue and established the iconography for the first engraving.
A candidate for this role is the poet Feo Belcari (1410-84), who was both actively
involved with the Jesuats and interested in disseminating religious ideas in Florence.48
Although he was not an official cleric with the congregation, he was allowed to ‘confraternare’
– to participate in their chapter meetings – and was admitted into the Jesuat compagnia of San
Girolamo in Florence.49 In 1448, the chapter meeting held in Florence, attended by Bettini,
was called the ‘capitolo di Feo Belcari’ which, as Isabella Gagliardi has suggested, probably
means that he financed it.50 In 1445 he completed his translation of Ambrogio Traversari’s
Latin version of the Pratum Sprituale into Italian, a book that narrated the lives of the desert
fathers who greatly interested the Jesuats, and he dedicated the work to the leader of the
Florentine convent of the Jesuats in Florence, Egano da Bologna. 51 He also wrote the first
important biography of the founder of the Jesuats, Giovanni Colombini; in his research he

46
Giorgio Dufner, ‘Antonio Bettini, Jesuat und Bischof von Foligno’, Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia,
vol. 18, no. 3, 1964, pp. 399-428. The will is reproduced from a sixteenth-century copy on pp. 424-28.
Among other books by St Bernard of Claivaux, St Thomas Aquinas, St Jerome, St Antoninus, St Ambrose,
he owned a ‘libro chimato Monte di Dio’; ‘3 altri libri di Monte di Dio’; ‘quattro volumi, chiamato
Pungilingua’ and ‘sei leggende del B. Gio[van]ni’. Bettini also owned ‘due decalochi di santo Gregorio’,
which may have been copies of the Dialogue of Gregory I, translated into Italian by Domenico Cavalca.
It was printed in two separate editions in Venice in 1475. See Anne Jacobson Schutte, Printed Italian
Vernacular Religious Books 1465-1550: A Finding List, Geneva, 1983, p. 195. For the books printed by
Niccolò della Magna between 1476-1484, see Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo di
Ripoli, pp. 304-14.
47
Roberts, Cartography Between Cultures, p. 137. The letter, now lost, is summarised in Jacobs, ‘Zur
Datierung von Berlinghieris Geographie’, p. 249. The attribution of the engraved maps, and the
problematic attribution of them to Francesco Rosselli, is discussed by Roberts, Cartography Between
Cultures, pp. 171-89.
48
Mario Marti, ‘Feo Belcari’, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 75 vols, Rome, 1960-2010, vol. 7,
1970, pp. 548-51.
49
Isabella Gagliardi, I Pauperes Yesuati tra esperienze religiose e conflitti istituzionali, Rome, 2004, p.
367.
50
Ibid., p. 367 and n. 34.
51
Ibid., p. 367-68.
173
would have inevitably come across Bettini who also wrote his own version of Colombini’s life.52
Moreover, Belcari can also be linked with Niccolò della Magna, since the Vita del beato
Giovanni Colombini was printed by della Magna in 1477, the same year as Antonio Bettini’s
Monte sancto di Dio, and he was a friend of Antonio di Guido, the singer and poet who had
been a partner of Niccolò della Magna in the early 1470s.53 With his knowledge of Jesuat
theology and links with della Magna, therefore, Belcari was well placed to provide an
iconographic programme for the first two illustrations in the book.
Educated men with an interest in a text often undertook an editorial role in its
publication.54 Francesco Berlinghieri, for instance, took on various editorial responsibilities,
including proof-reading, for Marsilio Ficino’s De christianae religione printed by Niccolò della
Magna in 1481 and Ficino’s translation of the works of Plato, printed in 1483 by the San Jacopo
a Ripoli press.55 Likewise, the notary and copyist Pietro Cennini edited the text of Servius’
Commentary on Virgil printed by his brother Bernardo, and his close friend, the humanist
Bartolomeo di Fonzio, acted as commissioner, corrector and business partner for the press at
San Jacopo a Ripoli. Fonzio possibly did the same for Niccolò della Magna for whom he was
legal representative.56
A better documented example of editing is seen in the production of the Malermi’s
vernacular translation of the bible printed by Windelin of Speyer in Venice in 1471, where
merchants, printers, author and scholars worked together.57 Windelin employed the Abbot
Niccolò Malermi as the primary translator of the book, but in bringing the book to print,
Malermi drew on the expertise of fellow writers, including the humanist scholar Gerolamo

52
See Remo L. Guidi, ‘Influenza delle tradizioni religiose e agiografiche nella Vita del B. Giovanni
Colombini di Feo Belcari’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, vol. 5, 1969, pp. 391-412. See also
Gagliardi, I Pauperes Yesuati, pp. 363-375.
53
Antonio di Guido and Feo Belcari wrote epistolary poems to each other. See Lanza, Lirici Toscani del
Quattrocento, vol. 1, pp. 173, 215-16, 219-20. For Antonio di Guido and his relationship with Niccolò
della Magna, see Böninger, ‘Ricerche sugli inizi della stampa fiorentina’, pp. 231-33.
54
See Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, pp. 24-25.
55
Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘The First Printed Edition of Plato’s Works and the Date of Its Publication’, in Erna
Hilfstein, Paweł Czartoryski, and Frank D. Grande (eds), Science and History: Studies in Honor of Edward
Rosen, Ossolineum, pp. 25-35; Sebastiano Gentile, Sandra Niccoli and Paolo Viti (eds), Marsilio Ficino e il
ritorno di Platone: Mostra di manoscritti, stampe, e documenti, Florence, 1984, pp. 116-17; Arnoldo
della Torre, Storia dell’accademia platonica di Firenze, Florence, 1902, p. 667; Enrico Rostagno, ‘Di un
esemplare del “De christiana religione” di Marisilio Ficino’, La Bibliofilia, vol. 2, no. 11-12, 1901, pp. 397-
409; Roberts, Cartography Between Cultures, p. 138.
56
Maracchi Biagiarelli, ‘Editori di incunabuli fiorentini’, pp. 216-217. The colophon of Servius’
Commentary on Virgil reads: Petrus cenninus Bernardi eiusdem. F. quanta potuit cura & diligentia
emendavit ut cernis.’ See Ottino, Di Bernardo Cennini e dell’arte della stampa in Firenze, p. 28. For
Fonzio’s role at the San Jacopo a Ripoli press see Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo
a Ripoli, p. 31-47.
57
See Martin Lowry, ‘“Nel beretin convento”: The Franciscans and the Venetian Press’, La Bibliofilia, vol.
85, no. 1, pp. 27-40.
174
Squarzofico and the theologian at the Franciscan convent of the Frari in Venice, Fra Lorenzo.
The latter acted in an editorial capacity, as Malermi acknowledged: ‘I turned to you, most
illustrious doctor, so that you could review my translation and examine the parts where my
carelessness of the different reading of the texts called for correction or for some further
addition’. In 1477, when Malermi’s book was printed in a second edition by Gabriele di Pietro,
Squarzofico supervised the printing, added an introduction and changed the text’s layout, even
though Malermi, the Bible’s translator, was still alive.58 Similarly, someone like Belcari may
have taken Bettini’s work, edited it, written the prologue and supervised the first two
illustrations.
Whoever organised the production of the book also may have financed the work,
which, with three copperplate engravings, was a speculative venture. The making of around
275 - 300 copies of the Vita di Santa Caterina by the San Jacopo di Ripoli press, a book with
160 leaves in quarto format, required an investment of about 32.5 florins in 1477
(approximately 13200 denari) to cover labour, ink and paper. As noted in Chapter Two, there
were various ways that a book – with or without illustrations – could be funded, but often it
was on commission from the editor of the text. At the San Jacopo di Ripoli press, Bartolomeo
di Fonzio sponsored several works for which he also corrected the texts, while Francesco
Berlinghieri and Filippo Valori, Ficino’s pupil, financed Ficino’s translation of Plato.59 The
Monte sancto di Dio might have been financed by the Jesuat communities in Siena or Florence
(of which Bettini and Belcari were part), just as the Dominicans at San Jacopo a Ripoli funded
the printing of Raymund of Capua’s Vita di Santa Caterina and the Venetian theologian, Fra
Lorenzo, financed a press for printing religious books at the Convent of the Franciscan Frari.60
Alternatively, the cost may have been covered by Niccolò della Magna himself or, more likely,
by his business associate, the merchant Cappone di Bartolommeo di Capponi, with whom he
was in partnership from 1475-80.61 In a comparable way, Domenico di Lapi, the printer of the
text of Ptolemy’s Cosmographia had to pay the initial costs of making the book himself, with
the promise of 100 gold ducats from the sale of the first books.62 There is no suriviving
document describing the role of Taddeo Crivelli, probably the engraver of the maps, but it is
possible that he produced the prints at his own cost, and was then subsequently repaid.

58
Ibid., p. 33.
59
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo a Ripoli, pp. 17, 31-47.
60
Ibid., p. 28; Lowry, ‘”Nel beretin convento”’, pp. 27-40.
61
Conway, The Diario of San Jacopo a Ripoli, pp. 38- 39.
62
Sighinolfi, ‘I mappemondi di Taddeo Crivelli e la stampa Bolognese della Cosmographia di Tolomeo’,
pp. 258-59
175
6.3. Purpose and Function

Given the number of people involved in producing the book, the reasons why images
were included are complex and manifold. One motive must have been to enhance the
attractiveness or prestige of a book in a highly competitive market where many books
remained unsold.63 The printing press of San Jacopo a Ripoli in Florence, for instance, faced
financial difficulties in 1482 because its books were not selling sufficiently.64 The addition of
the Pains of Hell illustration could be seen as a way to add interest to the book, with details
such as the writhing bodies lending an element of black comedy to an otherwise highly
abstract account of Hell. Equally, it relates Bettini’s theological work to Dante’s widely known
and extremely popular Commedia.
The first two images, as demonstrated, also enhance the core function of the book as a
spiritual guide to contemplative vision. In this respect they compare with the woodcut
illustrations in Torquemada’s Meditationes, printed in 1467 in Rome, which provide the visual
stimulus for the meditations (fig. 5.22).65 The Monte sancto di Dio is a very different work, but
like Torquemada, Bettini recognised the powerful role of images in promoting higher forms of
spiritual and intellectual cognition. Following the theories of Augustine, he emphasises the
role of signs – whether from the natural world, allegories, parables, prophecies or through the
figure of Christ himself – in guiding an individual towards an internalised, transcendent
experience of God.66 He demonstrates how the body of Christ was the most perfect sign
through which the intellect can understand and see God.67 Signs were by far inferior to the
true, complete and immediate vision of God through the intellect: they were understood as
Paul’s ‘mirror’ through which one sees God ‘only darkly’, or the ‘shadowy prefaces’ of the
complete vision of God witnessed by Dante in his Paradiso,.68 But they were potent tools in
stimulating devotion and the image of Christ resurrected was the consummate sign of the

63
Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance, New Haven and London, 2010, pp. 50-51.
64
Conway, The Diario of the Printing Press of San Jacopo a Ripoli, p. 58.
65
Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, pp. 227-228.
66
Bettini, Monte sancto di Dio, pt. 1, ch. 99: ‘Delli segni per li quali lo intellecto entra alla cognition di
dio’, fols 94r-94v.
67
Bettini, Monte sancto di Dio, pt. 1, ch. 99, fol. 89v ‘et questo e quello nobilissimo segno naturale et
positivo o vero sopra naturale, per lo quale meglio et piu altamente potiamo per intellecto contemplar
et vedere la divina maiesta [...] Questo e quel segno per lo quale ci mostra la ineffabile et infinita sua
carita [...] Questo e quello segno el quale e via. Questo e quel cristo huomo per lo quale vediamo et
cognosicamo idio.’
68
Beatrice, describing to Dante the river of light and ‘topazi’ says they ‘son di lor vero umbriferi prefazi’
(are shadowy prefaces of their truth). Dante, The Divine Comedy, vol. 3, canto 30, l. 38, p. 434.
176
glories in a beatific vision of Heaven.69 According to this logic, the second illustration of the
book, the image of Christ’s resurrected body, can be seen as foreshadowing the promised
vision and thus inciting readers to continue on their journey towards it.

The Mnemonic Diagram

The Mountain of God illustration complements the reading of Bettini’s text in a more
complex fashion by providing a mnemonic diagram of the schema described in the book. The
condensation of difficult theological concepts within an allegorical schema is characteristic of
several printed allegorical diagrams from across Europe, many derived from older images in
manuscripts. In Northern Italy, for instance, engravers produced the Tree of Virtues (fig.
6.34), which in its general layout, is comparable to tree diagrams in medieval manuscripts of
the Speculum Theologiae, a compendium of figures used for visual exegesis and instruction
(fig. 6.35).70 The structure of the tree is used to convey, like the Mountain of God, the three
theological virtues, the four cardinal virtues, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as the
acts of mercy, the articles of the Apostles’ Creed and the five senses. They are presented as an
index of the main tenets of Christian life in an upward direction from bottom to top.
As scholars have demonstrated, such diagrams were rhetorical tools, and can be linked
with the classical art of memory as it was explained through texts such as the Ad Herennium.
As noted in Chapter Four, these texts suggested that objects, such as a tower or a tree, could
be constructed in the mind or on a page in order to organise and reinforce the material to be
remembered.71 The image of the ladder, though not found in the Speculum Theologiae, had
frequently been used by theologians as a similar tool for outlining, in an accessible way, the
internal journey of contemplation. Theologians including John Climacus, Augustine, Benedict,
Bernard and Bonaventure, to name a few, drew on the vision of Jacob’s ladder as recounted in
Genesis. 72 Unsurprisingly, it was adopted in several religious prints in the fifteenth century
from across Europe. The Dante Workshop, for instance, produced The Ladders of Pride and
Humility that is loosely based on Bernard of Clairvaux’s De gradibus superbiae et humilitatis
(fig. 6.13).73 Not long after Bettini’s book was published, two woodcuts were produced in

69
For a survey of theologians’ thoughts on the role of images in understanding imago dei, see Jeffrey F.
Hamburger, St John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology, Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 2002, pp. 185-201.
70
Bolzoni, The Web of Images, pp. 58-61.
71
Yates, The Art of Memory, pp. 17-34; Carruthers, The Book of Memory, esp. pp. 324-37; Bolzoni, The
Web of Images, pp. 41-81.
72
For a history of this metaphor in text and image, see Heck, L'échelle céleste dans l'art du Moyen Âge.
73
Ibid., p. 172.
177
Germany that also visualise a journey towards heaven. The first is an illustration for Johannes
Gobius’ Scala Coeli published in Strasbourg in 1483, and shows a stairway leading up to heaven
and the Coronation of the Virgin (fig. 6.36).74 The illustration does not represent a passage or
allegory described in the work, but develops the metaphor of the book’s title: the ladder of
heaven. The second is a sheet from the Upper Rhine, dated to the 1480s, which shows a
mountain with a series of steps that lead upwards, each of which is explained through a label
(fig. 6.37).75 At the base of the mountain a Dominican nun kneels in prayer and is surrounded
by symbols of penitence, including a flagellator’s whip and the thorns of Christ.
The ladder and stairway were also popular rhetorical devices for preachers, especially
for the Florentine Dominican Observants with whom Bettini had so many links. One of the
‘word pictures’ or ‘fantasmi’ of Fra Girolamo Savonarola’s sermons, for instance, elaborated
upon Jacob’s ladder of Genesis, by describing its seven rungs, each denoting a specific virtue
and leading upwards towards Christ. 76 Shortly before the sermon was delivered on Good
Friday 1496, the schema was reproduced in a woodcut illustration of Savonarola’s letters
published in 1495 (fig. 6.38). A similar allegory is found in the Scala della vita spirituale by
Savonarola’s follower, Domenico Benivieni where his description of the spiritual life is
organised around the image of a ladder that leads up through the spheres of heaven. In the
printed edition of this text published in Florence in 1496, an engraved diagram was included
midway through the book (fig. 6.39), accompanied by an explanation: ‘And so that you can
better understand [‘intendere’] and fix in your memory [‘mandare a memoria’] what we have
said about this ladder, I will outline [disegnerò] a diagram [‘figura’] which in short contains
everything’.77 Benivieni then goes on to refer to individual parts of the diagram, explaining
their significance. The image is a tool which condenses everything (‘ogni cosa’) described in
the text, and helps the reader to grasp it more fully in his memory, before applying it to his
own practice.
Although Bettini does not refer to the image as explicitly as Benivieni, the schematic
illustration of the ladder on the holy mountain, positioned after the prefatory summary and

74
Albert Schramm, Der Bilderschmuck der Frühdrucke, 23 vols, Leipzig, 1920-1943, vol. 19, fig. 910 and
Walter L. Strauss and Carol M. Schuler (eds), German Book Illustration Before 1500, The Illustrated
Bartsch, vol. 83, pt. 4: Anonymous Artists 1481-1482, New York, 1982, cat. no. 8382.1482/130.
75
Parshall and Schoch, Origins of European Printmaking, pp. 290-91, cat. no. 91.
76
Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra Amos e Zaccaria, ed. Paolo Ghigheri, 3 vols, Rome, 1971-72, vol.
3, pp. 252-83. See also Anne Borelli and Pastore Passaro (eds and trans), Selected Writings of Girolamo
Savonarola: Religion and Politics, 1490-1498, New Haven and London, 2006, pp. 11-30. It was also
recorded in a late-fifteenth century zibaldoni. See Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the
Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence, University Park, 2004, p. 171.
77
Domenico Benivieni, La scala della vita spirituale, Florence: Bartolommeo de’Libri, 1496 (Hain 2787),
sig. a.10v. ‘Et accio che meglio possiate intendere et mandare a memoria quello che habbiamo decto di
questa scala, Vi disegnero qui la figura di quella Nella quale in brevita si contiene ogni cosa.’
178
the contents page undeniably serves a similar function. It is a visual index, equivalent to the
textual indices that organise the structure of the written work. It provides a clear visual
outline of the internalised, spiritual journey that Bettini describes in his book, from penitence
and humility to perfect love and understanding and the encounter with the Son of God, Christ.

The Exemplum

The Mountain of God enhances this mnemonic diagram by dramatising the journey
towards Christ in a way that celebrates the penitential and ascetic values of the Jesuats and
similar religious communities active in Tuscany. This embellishment of a schematic image with
narrative figures was not unique: in the Strasbourg Scala Coeli woodcut (fig. 6.36), a university
doctor is shown at different points on the stairway. At the bottom he is caught between the
devils and the angel, halfway up the stairs, and at the top, he kneels before the Virgin and
Christ in Heaven. Like the struggle between the young repentant male and the devil in the
Mountain of God, the doctor and a fashionably dressed female are shown caught between the
clutches of devils and angels – creatures that represent in external form the internal struggle,
or psychomachia, between good and evil in a person’s soul.
The figure of the Jesuat on the ladder, however, demonstrates this journey in a way
that is pertinent to contemporary readers of the book and to Jesuat spirituality. Gazing up at
the crucifix in a rocky setting, he bears comparison with the many images of St Jerome in
penitence that were popularised in the fifteenth century.78 The iconography was based on a
letter then attributed to Jerome:

How often, when I was living in the desert, in the vast solitude which gives hermits a
savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among
the pleasures of Rome I used to sit alone because I was filled with bitterness ...
Helpless, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus... I remember how I often cried aloud all
night till the break of day and ceased not from beating my breast till tranquillity
returned at the chiding of the Lord.79

This moment particularly resonated with the Jesuats who took Jerome’s humility and
penitence as their model.80 Between 1439 and 1444 Bettini’s convent, San Girolamo in Siena,
commissioned an altarpiece from Sano di Pietro, with one of the predella scenes representing
this moment. The saint is shown in rapt contemplation in a cave as described in the letter, set
78
See Meiss, ‘Scholarship and Penitence in the Early Renaissance’, pp. 134-140; Daniel Russo, Saint
Jérome en Italie, pp. 201-221; Wiebel, Askese un Englichkeitsdemut in der italienischen Renaissance, pp.
17-64.
79
Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6, p. 24, letter 22.
80
Gagliardi, I Pauperes Yesuati pp. 108-09.
179
within the mountainous landscape, and dressed in the white Jesuat habit, like that of the cleric
climbing the ladder in the book illustration (fig. 6.40).81 In other versions of this iconography,
such as those by Filippo Lippi (fig. 6.41), Francesco Botticini (fig. 5.51), and contemporary
engravers (fig. 1.50, 6.42), Jerome also looks at Christ on the cross, as does the Jesuat on the
ladder in the Mountain of God.82
It is probable that many of the book’s early readers were involved in conventual life or
lay confraternities where penitential behaviour was prevalent; one copy, at least, of Bettini’s
book was owned by the confraternity of the Disciplinati at Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, a
lay religious group devoted to penitence and self-flagellation.83 But the image and practice of
penitence were by no means solely of interest to such people. Both Jerome and the Jesuat are
engaged in an act of penitence in front of a crucifix – a method of devotion that was familiar to
readers in domestic environments. In the diary of the Florentine merchant Giovanni di Pagolo
Morelli, discussed in Chapter Five, the author describes his attentive and penitential looking at
the image of Christ’s suffering.84 The ready availability of crucifixes in domestic as well as
religious environments and the popularity of penitential devotion in Florence ensured that it
was a widely adopted practice.85
The Jesuat in the engraving therefore operates on several different levels. He is
symbolic of the soul’s ascent towards God, but he is also a literal example of how, like Jerome
and the Tuscan readers of the book, the reader might initiate this spiritual ascent by
meditating upon a material, physical cross. The attitude of the Jesuat can thus be compared
with images and text in the Dominican guide to prayer, the De modo orandi, where novices
were shown how to begin their devotion by contemplating a crucifix in different positions and
with diverse physical gestures.86 The ineffable vision of God must begin with the meditation

81
Sano di Pietro’s representation of the scene corresponds with other early depictions of Jerome in
Penitence, such as those by Lorenzo Monaco and Fra Angelico. See Meiss, ‘Scholarship and Penitence in
the Early Renaissance’, pp. 134-135 and Luciano Bellosi (ed.), Masaccio e le origini del Rinascimento,
exh. cat., Casa Masaccio, San Giovanni Valdarno, 2002, Milan, 2002, cat. no. 24, pp. 172-73.
82
Jeffrey Ruda, Fra Filippo Lippi: Life and Work with a Complete Catalogue, London, 1993, cat. 15, pp.
382-84. For Lippi’s wilderness landscapes, see pp. 169-73.
83
Luigi de Angelis (ed.), Capitoli dei disciplinati della venerabile Compagnia della Madonna, Siena, 1818,
p. 131, no. 214.
84
Morelli, Ricordi, pp. 475-91. See also Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, pp. 172-86 and
Rubin, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence, pp. 181-83.
85
Patricia Rubin discusses the role of such images in domestic and conventual spaces, see Rubin, Images
and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence, pp. 179-180. For penitence and the flagellant confraternities
in Florence in the fifteenth century, see Henderson, ‘Penitence and the Laity in Fifteenth-Century
Florence’, pp. 229-49, and John Henderson, Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence, Chicago, 1997,
pp. 113-54.
86
William Hood, ‘Saint Dominic’s Manners of Praying: Gestures in Fra Angelico’s Cell Frescoes at S.
Marco’, The Art Bulletin, vol. 68, pp. 195-205.
180
on Christ’s suffering humanity, just as it did for Jerome in the wilderness, as well as the Jesuat
on the ladder of perseverance and his allegorical mountain.
With their complex relationship to the text, the first two images were evidently
intended to enhance and stimulate the process of contemplation of devotion described by the
author. The third picture was apparently added at a later point in the book’s creation, since it
is awkwardly positioned alongside a text that it inaccurately illustrates. This idiosyncratic
combination of images bears testament to the way that illustrated printed books were not tidy
packages in which the content was always coherent or complete. They were often not the
result of a carefully scrutinised and unified plan made at the outset, but were sometimes
produced more more hapharzardly with several parties involved. Hence, Francesco
Berlinghieri’s Geographia contained errors in its text maps while the third illustration in the
Monte sancto di Dio includes the Pains of Hell engraving, not a literal illustration of the book.
Nevertheless, the engravings, the first in a Florentine printed book, not only represent an
intriguing experiment with copperplate engravings as book illustrations, but also demonstrate
how engravings could be – and were – used to illustrate complex, theological texts and to
assist the practice of devotional contemplation.

181
Conclusion

The Achievements of Early Florentine Engravers

This thesis has sought to demonstrate the complex web of historical circumstances
surrounding Florentine engravings from around 1460 to 1485, especially in the context of
devotion. As shown through chapbooks, incunabula, paintings, northern European prints,
sermons, inventories and diaries, Florence was well equipped with appropriate networks of
trade, artisinal techniques and materials, a growing book printing trade and a general
appreciation of images that allowed the new medium to develop. Having said this, the
engravings and their designs were not simply the effect of pre-existing conditions, but also
helped to change and shape them. Manuscript owners already decorated their own books and
collected texts and pasted items within them, but the acquisition of prints made these
practices much easier, since they could be coloured, cut and pasted as the owner chose. And
while the techniques of engravers’ workshops were based on those applied to other forms of
work, notably copying and adapting motifs from model books, the new medium also allowed
artists to think differently about what sort of compositions they could create and how they
might make them. In the vita prints, for instance, the engravers copied designs from other
artists, but they did this within a new format which, though inspired by archaic vita paintings,
fuelled a new pictorial tradition in works on paper.
In particular, engravings played an important role in changing patterns of devotion. As
noted in this thesis, the printed image, like the writings and sermons of the Pseudo
Bonaventure, Archbishop Antoninus, Cherubino da Spoleto, Giovanni di Nesi and, later in the
century, Girolamo Savonarola, helped people to organise their mental experience of the
divine, whether in relationship to the saints, to the Virgin, to Christ or to God. This conclusion
relates, in part, to Hans Körner’s assesment of the fifteenth-century German woodcut.1 For
Körner, the printed image suited the internalisation of religious experience, and also gave
artists and patrons more flexibility in inventing iconographies and composing images. The
Florentine engravings prompted devotion in different ways from the woodcuts described by
Körner and were targeted at another audience: they catered for the local taste for all’antica
art, an appreciation of the heroic nude, a pleasure in contemporary sartorial fashions and built
upon familiar artistic frameworks such as the Tuscan vita panels. But the general purposes and
possibilities of the printed image in Florence were similar to those North of the Alps, and, as

1
Körner, Der früheste deutsche Einblattholzschnitt, pp. 40-41.
182
this thesis has shown, the woodcuts and engravings of Northern Italy, Germany and the
Netherlands had an undoubted impact on the making of Florentine prints.
Devotional engravings also allowed images to reach new audiences, since they were
less expensive than their older counterparts in manuscripts and paintings and they could be
widely disseminated. They provided, therefore, ways of visualising and structuring mental
experiences that had previously been conveyed through sermons and were primarily confined
to fairly limited communities. This was achieved in varied ways. Some prints organise a
narrative by laying out images within a grid on a single sheet, others comprise of a series of
prints with images underscored by texts, and others illustrate complex ideas through allegories
such as a ladder, a mountain, and the pits of Hell. Because of these pictorial techniques, many
of which can be related to the arts of memory, the prints can be seen to constitute a period of
transition between the manuscript and preaching cultures of Italian mendicants leading up to
the death of St Bernardino of Siena in 1444 and the dissemination of mnemonic texts and
images through the sixteenth-century book printing trade.2

Secular and Semi-Religious Engravings

This focus of this thesis has been on the innovations of the devotional print. Similar
developments are seen in the many secular and semi-religious engravings also produced in
Florence, although a detailed study of them is beyond the scope of this thesis. Nevertheles,,
these are worth mentioning here in order to demonstrate how the Fine Manner devotional
prints are part of the broader achievements of the Florentine engravers.
Particularly important are the many single sheet prints (including the Otto prints) with
satirical, chivalric and amorous themes, in round, oval and rectangular shaped impressions,
some of which have been fruitfully examined by Adrian Randolph.3 These have a striking
relationship with the courtly interests and artistic works associated with the circle of the
Medici in the second half of the fifteenth century and again signal how engravers resourcefully
combined archaic and foreign pictures and formats with contemporary interests and local
fashions. The iconography of the Monkeys and the Pedlar (Hind, A.I.76-77), for example, may
have been copied from a vase in the Medici collection or from a northern European woodcut;
another Otto print representing a fat lute player was probably based on a Netherlandish

2
The first period is outlined in Bolzoni, The Web of Images, and the second in Bolzoni, The Gallery of
Memory.
3
Randolph, Engaging Symbols, pp. 223-28, 269-77.
183
painted canvas on display in a Medici villa.4 Other engravings allude to the amorous themes
explored in poetry exchanged by members of this elite community. Two images of Cupid
chastised (Hind, A.IV.7-8), possibly derived fom the ceremonial of Giuliano de’ Medici designed
by Botticelli, relate to a poetic tradition developed by Petrarch and revisited by Lorenzo de’
Medici in his own writings.5 Some prints are more satirical and develop imagery originating in
northern Europe, parodying cuckolds and jealous or engraged women.6 These prints provided
new types of pictures copied from fashionable Netherlandish art.
Equally significant are three series of engravings, each presenting a sequence of
pictorial tableaux: the Prophets and Sibyls (Hind, C.I.1-24, C.II.1-12), the Triumphs of Petrarch
(A.I.18-23) and the Children of the Planets (A.III.1-7). All sets of several single-sheet prints,
they illustrate didactic texts with costumes, decorative elements and compositions that convey
the festive spirit of contemporary spectacles. The Prophets and Sibyls series, consisting of
thirty-six engravings showing twenty-four Old Testament Prophets and twelve pagan Sibyls, is
a clear example of this. The iconography was probably based on a description of paintings
commissioned by Cardinal Giordano Orsini, while many of the figural designs were modelled
on the Apostles by the Master ES.7 Beneath each character are verses – corrupt versions of an
Italian versification of the Ordo Prophetarum, or Procession of the Prophets, a traditional Latin
liturgical spectacle in which Old Testament Prophet and pagan Sibyls prophesied the
Incarnation of Christ.8 More obvious to contemporary Florentines would have been the prints’
relationship to the speeches in the prologues of Piero di Mariano Muzi’s sacra
rappresentazione of the Purification of the Virgin performed in Florence 1442 and Feo Belcari’s
of the Annunciation dramatised in 1468 and 1471.9 As Dempsey comments, ‘the engravings
reflect in some sense the lavish production of this play [...] and that the appearances of the
prophets and sibyls, if they do not faithfully reproduce the costumes created for that
performace, nevertheless strongly evoke them’.10 In a similar way, the Triumphs of Petrarch
and the Children of the Planets are depicted with triumphal chariots and festive decorations

4
Warburg, ‘Artistic Exchanges between North and South in the Fifteenth Century’, p. 277. For the
northern woodcut, see McDonald, The Print Collection of Ferdinand Columbus, vol. 1, p. 341, pl. 14, vol.
2, pp. 313-14, inv. no. 1749.
5
Randolph, Engaging Symbols, pp. 223-40 and Charles Dempsey, Inventing the Renaissance Putto,
Chapell Hill and London, 2001, p. 165.
6
These include the Fight for the Breeches (fig. 1.89), the Combat between Women and Devils (fig. 1.88)
and King of the Goats (Hind, A.II.23). The Fight for the Breeches is explored in Warburg, ‘Artistic
Exchanges between North and South in the Fifteenth Century (1905)’, pp. 275-80. The Combat between
Women and Devils is briefly analysed in Randolph, Engaging Symbols, pp. 275-76.
7
Dempsey, The Early Renaissance and Vernacular Culture, p. 123, 159.
8
Ibid., pp. 117-316.
9
Ibid., pp. 117-316, esp. p. 144.
10
Ibid., p. 155.
184
that may have recalled contemporary civic rituals.11 In the three series, the engravings
combine text and image to disseminate ideas in a way that is consistent with prevailing artistic
tastes. In this respect they compare with the Vienna Passion series of prints that, as shown
here, illustrate Christ’s death with Biblical excerpts and fashionable all’antica motifs.

Transformations and Inventions

The examples cited above merit further study, but nevertheless validate the argument
presented here that Florentine engravings, alongside the development of woodblock printing
and the typographic press, had an important role in the local – and wider – community. As a
whole, it is probably best to conceive of their impact as part of a cultural ‘shift’, as Elizabeth
Eisenstein terms the invention of the printing press, or as ‘transformations’ in visual
communication. The formats and designs of the engravings ‘cross over’ or ‘move beyond’ the
status quo, but do not reject it completely. As Eisenstein comments, ‘given the use of new
media, such as woodcuts and metal engravings, to depict medieval cosmologies, we cannot
think simply of mere survival but must consider a more complex process whereby long-lived
schemes were presented in new visual forms’.12 This is clear in terms of the devotional images
presented in this thesis. The vita prints had precedents in vita panels and frescoes; the Passion
cycles in illuminated manuscripts and painted panels, and the allegorical book illustrations in
medieval diagrams. These older frameworks were transformed with fashionable decorative
details and captions and by being printed on a comparatively small scale.
As such, the early Florentine engravings reflect the entrepreneurial sprit and artistic
innovation for which Florence has been celebrated. Although certain scholars, many of whom
were influenced by the cultural history of Aby Warburg, have recognised this, the reception of
intaglio printmaking – especially of devotional engravings – has never been sufficiently

11
For the relationship of the Children of the Planets to such festivals, see Bessi, ‘Lo spettacolo e la
scrittura’, p. 104 and Blume, Regenten des Himmels, pp. 183-91. For the link between the Triumphs of
Petrarch and local pageants with floats conveying the Triumph of Love, see Konrad Eisenbichler, ‘Political
Posturing in some ‘Triumphs of Love’ in Quattrocento Florence’, in Konrad Eisenbichler and Amilcare A.
Ianucci (eds), Petrarch’s Triumphs: Allegory and Spectacle, Ottawa, 1990, pp. 369-81 and Rossella Bessi,
‘Lo spettacolo e la scrittura’, in Paola Ventrone (ed.), Le tems revient, 'l tempo si rinuova: Feste e
spettacoli nella Firenze di Lorenzo il Magnifico, exh. cat., Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, 1992,
Florence, 1992, pp. 103-17. Especially notable is that led by Lorenzo de’ Medici in honour of Bartolomeo
Benci in 1464. For discussions of illustrations of the Triumphs, see Trapp, ‘The Iconography of Petrarch
in the Age of Humanism’, pp. 11-73; Trapp, ‘Illustrations of Petrarch’s Trionfi from Manuscript to Print
and Print to Manuscript’, pp. 507-548; Riccardo Pacciani, ‘Immagini, arti e architetture nelle feste di età
laurenziana’, in Ventrone, Le tems revient, ‘l tempo si rinuova, pp. 119-37. Margaret Ann Zaho, Imago
Triumphalis: The Function and Significance of Triumphal Imagery for Italian Renaissance Rulers, New
York, 2004, pp. 26-45.
12
Eisenstein, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, p. 50.
185
emphasised. Giorgio Vasari helped to condemn Florentine engravings to the sidelines of art
history when he described their ‘cattiva maniera’.13 But, as this thesis has shown, the
engravers were extremely inventive in the designs and in using the material resources
available to them. Through this inventiveness, they transformed the way in which both artists
and viewers in Florence could relate to pictures, and with the devotional prints, to the saints,
the Virgin, Christ and God.

13
Vasari, The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, vol. 2, p. 87. For the Italian see Milanesi, Le
opere di Giorgio Vasari con nuove annotazione e commenti di Gaetano Milanesi, vol. 3, p. 317. ‘Mise in
stampa ancora molte cose di disegni che egli haveva fatti, ma in cattiva maniera, perchè l’intaglio era
mal fatto’.
186
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This list includes manuscripts consulted directly, rather than those seen in other publications

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MS. II.127 (Vita di San Giovanni Battista, copied by Giovanni di Michele Sextini)
MS. II.II.89 (Compilation owned by ‘ghostantia donna ... di benedetto cicciaporci’)
MS. II.II.445 (Vita di San Giovanni Battista, copied by Zanobi di Paolo Perino, 1409)
MS. II.III.197 (Boccaccio, Il Filocolo)
MS. II.IV.51 (Compilation copied by Girolamo di Pagholo)
MS. II.IX.42 (Compilation copied by Gianozzo di Bernardo Salviato)
MS. II.XI.19 (Raphael Prayer Book)
MS. VII. 1104 (Piero Bonaccorsi, Il Cammino di Dante)
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MS. 1122 (Piero Bonaccorsi, Il Cammino di Dante)
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MS. 1402 (Piero Bonaccorsi, Quadrageismale)
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187
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