Milan, in or shortly after 1513 289 x 205mm. ii + 140 + iii leaves: 1-14 1 0, COMPLETE, 27 lines written in brown ink in a cursive humanistic bookhand between two verticals ruled in metalpoint and on 27 horizontals ruled in brown, justification: 228 x 125mm, running headings to first work, opening capitals in margins (small tear in margin of f.1, very small hole in upper margin ff.115-118). Contemporary Milanese olive-brown morocco over pasteboard tooled in gilt, gauffered gilt edges (worn, corners and joints rubbed, top of spine defective, lacking four clasps). LEONARDO DA VINCI AND UTOPIAN LITERATURE: AN UNKNOWN MILANESE TEXT OF 1513 PROVENANCE: 1. The text was composed in Milan in 1513. This handsomely bound copy may have been made for the dedicatee, Simon Crotto, or for one of the circle of poets, painters and musicians to which the author belonged. 2. The Barnabite College of St Michael, Vienna: Collegij Sci Michaelis Vienna on first added paper; shelf marks on spine E, N above a number obscured by paper label A.2.1. The Barnabites, noted for their scholarship, had been founded in Milan in 1530; the Barnabite architect Gian Ambrogio Mazenta (1565-1635), General of the Order 1612-1617, played an important role in the preservation of Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts and wrote a memorial on their dispersal (C. Pedretti, Leonardo da Vinci on Painting, a Lost Book (Libro A), 1964, pp.252-9). This tantalising link may explain how the Isola beata came to Vienna, where the Barnabites were granted St Michael as their first Austrian house in 1626. In 1923 it passed to the Salvatorians. CONTENT: Henrico Boscano (doc.1513-1528), Isola beata ff.1-92: title f.1, prefatory sonnet by Antonio Fileremo Fregoso opening Piaceri et meraviglie in queste carte... f.1v; Book I comprising dedication to Simon Crotto, Knight of Jerusalem and patrician of Milan, opening Si come gli auctori diconi... ff.2-3; letter purportedly from Andrea Boscano to his cousin Henrico from the Isola beata, opening Da poi che per gran desiderio di vedere dil mondo..., last two lines on f.5v to twenty-third line of f.7 inked over, ending Impossibile exprimere tal beatitudine di viver. Data a lisola beata iiij Aprile. 1510, ff.3v-8; brief description of the island ff.8v-10v; table of contents ff.11-14; Books II-IX, opening El primo giorno che desmontassemo de Barcha..., detailing Andrea's reception, the island's geography, trees, animals, birds, plants, inhabitants, and god, ff.15-80v; Book X, with Andrea's message to Henrico, the ensuing debate on whether the island is truly blessed between a theologian, a physician, a learned knight skilled in astronomy and a geometrician, who is an excellent painter and good cosmographer, the debate summarised in a letter to Andrea, dated in Milano a xx di Magio 1513, and the exchange between Henrico and Andrea's messenger from the island, ending...hai somno tene renderia mille auctorita per ciascuna de tue prepositione. Finis, ff.81-92; f.93 ruled blank. This description of the Blessed Island apparently predates the publication of Utopia, Sir Thomas More's fictional island, by three years. Both use the framework of a traveller's account and Boscano makes the authenticity of the narration a subsidiary issue in the final debate. It is, however, the author's imagination and invention that is stressed in the prefatory poem and dedicatory letter. Boscano did not, like More, write primarily to criticise the reality of his own country. Instead he delights in the natural history of the island and then focuses on whether a pagan 'Blessed Island' can be integrated into Christian eschatology. Boscano probably drew on classical ideal communities, most famously Plato's Republic, and on the traditions of Atlantis that had helped inspire the account of St Brendan's voyage to the Promised Island of the Saints. This was well known in Italy and St Brendan's Island appeared on Italian maps of the 14th and 15th centuries (M.A. Grignani, La 'Navigatio sancti Brendani' in antico veneziano, 1975; E.G.R. Waters, An old Italian version (Lucchese) of the 'Navigatio sancti Brendani', 1931). The Isola Beata, with its sources and possible influence, offers exciting new material and insights into what would come to be known as Utopian literature. Blessed Odoric Mattiuzzi da Pordenone, De rebus incognitis, in Italian, the account of his missionary journey overland to China and Tibet 1319-c.1330, copied with Northern Italian orthography from the edition printed at Pesaro in 1513 by Ponticus Virunius, known from a unique copy in the Biblioteca Palatina, Parma, ff.94-124. All the printer's prefatory and concluding texts are repeated with the final colophon altered to Impressus Texanri, Tassara near Alserio in Lombardy, perhaps where the scribe was working. This manuscript was unknown to L. Monaco and G.C. Testa, Odorichus De rebus incognitis. Odorico da Pordenone nella prima edizione a stampa del 1513, 1986. Letter from Alexander to Aristotle, headed Copia della littera di Alexandro Magno Re di Macedonia la qualle scrissi ad Aristotile suo precettore de le cose maravigliose de lindia, opening Carissimo e dopo la matre mie e mie sorelle accettisimo... and ending...ottimo Aristotile ponderatamente consideraraij valle, datum in Fasiace, ff.125-138v. This influential description of mythical people and beasts originated in the seventh century and was widely circulated both as an independent text and within the Alexander Romance. Although translated into many languages, only one Italian version, in the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, is recorded by D.J.A. Ross, Alexander Historiatus, 1963, p.29; an independent translation by Tommaso Porcacchi was published in Venice in 1559. Italian demand was apparently satisfied by the Latin original or by the variants available within the Romance tradition (see G. Grion, I nobili fatti d'Alessandro Magno, 1872, pp.cxxx-clxxi and 237-65). The circle within which, and for which, the Isola beata was composed is indicated when 'Andrea Boscano' writes of his cousin Henrico's achademia and its principal participants (ff.9-10). Heading the list are the two magnifici cavaglieri Gaspar Vesconte e Antonio Philoremo da Campo Fulgosio who, with Niccol• da Correggio, were named by Calmeta in 1504 as the leading poets around Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan. Gaspare Visconti (1461-1499) and Antonio Filoremo Fregoso, as he is usually known (d. c.1530), wrote in the vernacular, sometimes in an exchange of verses. The proper form for literary 'Italian' and the merits of Tuscan and regional dialects were much debated, the context of Boscano's assertion that he is writing lingua milanese. In fact, his text is not in Milanese dialect but in a partly latinised form of Tuscan with Northern Italian accents, termed a lingua cortegiana (see P. Bongrani, Lingua e letteratura a Milano nell'et… sforzesca, 1986). Fregoso's opening sonnet to the Isola beata appears to be unknown: it is not included in the edition of his works by G. Dilemmi ( Collezione di opere inedite o rare, Commissione per i testi di lingua 135, Bologna, 1976; see also R. Renier, 'Gaspare Visconti', Archivio Storico Lombardo, XIII, 1886, pp.509-62 and 777-824). Fregoso's association with Boscano continued since Boscano wrote a prefatory letter, invoking l'amicitia nostra antiqua, for his edition of the Opera nova del cavalier fregoso Antonio phileremo...Lamento d'amore, printed in Milan in 1525 and 1528; this included the poem De la probit… al probo Enrico Boscano. The other literary members of the Academy, Bartolomeo Simonetta, (fl.c.1500), Cesare Sacco (fl.c.1480-1525), Bernardo Accolti, l'unico aretino, (1458-1535), Antonio Pelotti (fl.c.1470-1513), Cornelio Balbo (fl.c.1500) and Ambrosio Archinto (fl.1481-1519) were all interconnected as members of the same Milanese circle. Not all were permanently resident in Milan. In 1498 Gaspare Visconti, thinking that Accolti might be in Rome, sent him his greetings pero che altre volte qui in Milano havemo havuto qualche familiar domestichezza insieme (Renier, 'Gaspare Visconti', p.823). The fall of Ludovico Sforza in 1499 brought further disruption with the end of the court patronage that had welcomed such creative talents. Fregoso, named Fileremo for his love of secluded places, may have encouraged Boscano's account of a remote Blessed Island. Archinto had evidenced an interest in travellers' tales when in 1481 he edited Santo Brasca's account of his journey to the Holy Land (see A.L. Momigliano Lepschy ed. Viaggio in Terra Santa di Santo Brasca, 1966). Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), the first of the Academy's three pictori e ingegneri, shared this interest. He owned Mandeville's Travels and wrote imaginary accounts of eastern marvels (C. Pedretti, The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci - Commentary, 1977, II, pp.259-60, 277, 293). Leonardo da Vinci was in Milan from c.1482 to 1499, briefly in 1506 and then from 1508 until September 1513. He served the Sforzas, and then the French, as engineer, painter, sculptor and musician and actively pursued his literary education. Despite his attempts to learn Latin, the circle of Visconti and Fregoso that fostered vernacular writing would have been particularly congenial. Visconti's poem on the painter who always paints himself is taken to refer to Leonardo, who owned a copy of Visconti's Rime and of Fregoso's Cerva bianca (Pedretti II, p.362; E. F”rster, 'Fnf Bcher Leonardos' and 'Antonio Fregoso und Leonardo da Vinci', Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, 1883, pp.2378-2379 and 4470-4471). He and Cesare Sacco shared a patron in Gian Giacomo Trivulzio (J. IJssewijn, Coryciana, 1997). The importance of Leonardo's Milanese associates for his intellectual development is frequently stressed and this previously unknown list is of great significance for establishing the members of his circle, where poets, artists and musicians came together to share their interests. It is not cited by E. Villata, Leonardo da Vinci, i documenti e testimonianze contemporanee, Milan, 1999. The second artist is the painter, architect and poet Bramante (1444-1514), who left Milan with the French invasions of 1499 and unlike Leonardo, never returned. His relations with Gaspare Visconti were especially close and their importance is summed up thus by Richard Schofield: 'during his Milanese period, Bramante transformed himself into a learned man of extensive cultural interests' ('Gaspare Visconti, mecenate del Bramante', Arte, committenza ed economia a Roma e nelle corti del Rinascimento, A. Esch and C. Frommel eds, 1991, p.304). The third is Cristoforo Foppa, known as Caradosso (c.1452-1526/7), goldsmith and jeweller to Ludovico il Moro. He remained in Lombardy after 1499 until he moved to Rome in 1505. Although he enjoyed great fame for his knowledge of antiquities, little now survives beyond his medals. The musicians in the Academy are headed by Giovanni Maria Giudeo, a lutanist of legendary skill, followed by three Northerners in Sforza service: Janes da Liege, Pietro da Olli, who came to Milan in 1473 and left for France with Janes in 1492, and Gaspare Werbecke, who ran the ducal chapel from 1472 to 1499, when he moved to Rome. Giovanni Cieco da Parma (d.c.1500) was a poet who improvised to music, travelling from court to court. See F. Malaguzzi Valeri, La corte di Ludovico il Moro, Milan 1913-23, IV pp.195-6. By evoking these names in 1513 under a precariously restored Sforza duke, Boscano was looking back to the golden age of Sforza patronage which preceded the French invasions. The speakers in the final debate, summoned by Boscano as quatro sapienti mei carissimi, were presumably still in Milan. The learned knight is surely Antonio Fregoso, the only survivor of the literary knights celebrated by Calmeta, and the geometrician, excellent painter and cosmographer, who says per che io sono pictore me piaceno le fabule (f.85), is surely Leonardo da Vinci. The priest and theologian may be the Dominican Cornelio Balbo; further research may identify the physician. In creating the ideal setting for their discussion, as well as in the description of Crotto's surroundings (f.2), Boscano offers a detailed insight into their expectations and assumptions: the little room opening onto a garden is simple come a simili huomini conveneva, with no tapestries or eastern carpets but suitable books, oil paintings con diverse figure e prospective, antique medals of worthy and illustrious men, carved gems, musical instruments, eastern marvels and natural curiosities (f.82). The handsome contemporary binding of the Isola beata is entirely in keeping with the appreciation of fine craftmanship and appropriate decoration so evident in this section. Although the Academy remembered by 'Andrea Boscano' may be as fictional as the debate, both reflect the reality of the cultured Milanese circles so productive in their own right and so crucial to Leonardo's development. The identities of one circle and the diversity of its interests are revealed by the Isola beata, a significant addition to Renaissance Utopian literature that antedates Sir Thomas More's coinage of the term, and by the texts which accompany it: the popular travellers' tales of Odoricus and Alexander, both in uncommon forms.
