Beschreibung:

CICERO, Marcus Tullius, De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Paradoxa Stoicorum , in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Florence, c.1450-1460]. An engaging humanist manuscript containing three seminal texts by the great Roman politican and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, bound by Jean de Gonet, one of the best-known and most controversial modern French binders. 241 x 171 mm. i + 42 + i leaves, complete, modern foliation in pencil 1-46 followed here. 28 lines of text, ruled space: 157 x 96 mm, vertical catchwords survive. 8 initials in gold, one penwork initial on f.36v added later, four large, white vine initials (minor marginal staining and rubbing). Modern flexible cedar wood covers by Jean de Gonet (b. 1950). Fitted box. Provenance : Unidentified coat of arms on f.1, azure a lion sejant erect or – Antonio Lanza of Padua (16th-century): a sonnet by Petrarch ‘Pace non trovo, et non ò da far guerra’ in Lanza’s hand on f.40v and a Latin couplet copied out using three different cyphers on f.41 (one replacing the vowels with numbers, another replacing the vowels with down strokes, and a third replacing the vowels with dots). Several other pentrials and verses in 16th- or 17th-century hands on final leaves, one mentioning Antonio Fracanzani – possibly the same Antonio Fracanzani (1506-1567) of Vicenza who was one of the greatest doctors of the 16th century – Monogram ‘MF’ on f.40 – Later collection note ‘no CLXXXVI’ on f.1. Contents : De Senectute ff.1-16v; De Amicitia ff.17-32; Paradoxa Stoicorum ff.32v-39v. De Senectute ('On Old Age'), the first text in the present manuscript, was written in 45-44 BCE, and dedicated to Cicero’s friend Titus Pomponius Atticus (109-32 BCE). It is composed in the form of a dialogue between Cato, Scipio, and Laelius, applying the principles of philosophy to lighten the troubles of old age, the so-called ‘heaviest burden of life’. The second text, De Amicitia – also dedicated to Atticus – was written by Cicero in 44 BCE, shortly after the death of Julius Caesar and before the conflict with Antony. He based his work on early Greek philosophers such as Plato and Theophrastus. Again the text is written as a dialogue between prominent figures, in this case Gaius Laelius and his sons-in-law Gaius Fannius and Quintus Mucius Scaevola – teacher to Cicero himself. Cicero's Paradoxa stoicorum , the third text, was only rediscovered in the early 15th century. Cosimo de’ Medici is known as owner of an early Monte Cassino manuscript since 1418 and Florence may have been the centre of dissemination of this text. The Paradoxa is an introduction to Stoicism in which Cicero lays out six stoic principles and tries to make them understandable for the ‘average’ reader. Decoration : Written in a neat humanistic hand by one scribe who also added the rubrics; the manuscript is carefully corrected. The major illumination consists of four large, four- to eight-line white vine-scroll initials in gold on red, green and blue grounds (ff.1r-v, 17, 32v). On f.1 there are also two butterflies and a full lower border with two deer and a lion in gold, possibly an unidentified coat of arms. The three animals in the lower margin on the opening leaf are interestingly woven into the vine-stems and are an integral part of the decoration. All three figures are known as designs taken from the inventory that the Master of the Playing Cards (Germany, c.1455-60) used for his copperplate engravings – a use we often see in northern manuscripts and early printed books, but less in Italian humanist manuscripts. However, they were part of the stock of designs of Francesco d'Antonio del Chierico as is illustrated in Florence, Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana, ms 82,3, containing Pliny the Elder’s Natural History , written in Florence in 1458.