Bartolomeo Sanvito. The Life and Work of a Renaissance Scribe

The first volume of Professor A. C. de la Mare's Handwriting of the Italian Humanists was published in 1973. She devoted the last decades of her life to a study of Bartolomeo Sanvito (1433-1511), the pre-eminent scribe of the Renaissance. Unitl sixty years ago, Sanvito was unknown to scholars of illuminated manuscripts. His identification and discovery have contributed greatly to the better understanding of the relationship between art, scholarship and the written and painted word at this formative period of western civilization. Sanvito was a member of the Paduan cultural and artistic circle around Mantegna, seeking inspiration from the classical world, which they saw as the Golden Age. Through Sanvito this classicism found expression in the script and ornamentation of manuscripts. Inspired by surviving Roman tombstones, Sanvito drew architectural title-pages with titles in coloured capitals modelled on Roman epigraphic script, and faceted initials in imitation of the lettering on Roman imperial monuments. The splendour of late antique manuscripts led him to experiment and to copy texts in gold and silver inks on purple or saffron dyed parchment. Openings with a full-page drawing in silver, gold and colours on dyed parchment became a common feature of his manuscripts. His fruitful collaboration with famous miniaturists, Franco de' Russi, Marco Zoppo, Gaspare da Padova and Antonio Maria da Villafora, resulted in the creation of manuscripts with majestic decoration often inspired by antique architecture, cameos, coins and medals. Sanvito was patronized by papal and princely courts, and his work was clearly known to illuminators working in the Veneto, Rome, Naples and Bologna. His influence on editors and publishers of printed books ultimately determined the format and design of frontispieces and title-pages for centuries. His effortlessy elegant cursive hand is his most successful and lasting legacy. Widely copied, it played a major role in the replacement of gothic script by italic. Sanvito was a prolific scribe. 123 manuscripts have now been identified as in his hand. In this volume, a series of introductory essays sets Sanvito in context and gives new details of his life. These are followed by a fully illustrated catalogue raisonné of the manuscripts themselves, revealing many of them to be important witnesses to the culture of the Renaissance. This book, completed by Laura Nuvoloni, is a monument both to the skills of a fine scholar and craftsmanship of a remarkable scribe.