Ermolao Barbaro

The frescoes of the Egyptian story of Isis, Osiris and the bull Apis that were painted by Pinturicchio and workshop on ceilings in the Vatican Palace in 1493 have attracted attention, particularly since the rooms were restored in the late 1890s. That they were commissioned for Rodrigo Borgia (1431–1503) for a room, the Sala dei Santi, in his private suite, the Appartamento Borgia, shortly after he became Pope Alexander VI in August 1492, has added to speculation as to how they should be interpreted. It has been widely held that they were inspired by Annius of Viterbo (1424–1502), a Dominican monk and fraudster, because a few years later he included a similar story in a genealogy of Pope Alexander VI. Leading interpretations have assumed Annius’ involvement and have suggested that the story was chosen for these frescoes because the Borgia emblem incorporated a bull, or to reflect the Ottoman threat to the Church.

This thesis demonstrates that Annius could not have inspired these frescoes and thus challenges previous interpretations. By considering who else might have inspired this theme it proposes an alternative interpretation. The Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro (1454–1493) was well positioned to have been involved. In May 1490 he had visited Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) who had recently been translating the Neoplatonist Plotinus’ works relating to daímones, intermediaries between man and the gods. Plutarch’s account of the Isis and Osiris myth, knowledge of which would have been necessary to have specified the detail of the frescoes, casts Isis and Osiris as daímones. It is proposed that these frescoes depict an allegory of intermediation with the gods as part of a theurgical programme of syncretising Christianity with ancient religions, and that the central figure in the largest wall fresco in the room is a portrayal of Plotinus.

Статья посвящена впервые публикуемому экземпляру издания 1511 года «Десяти книг об архитектуре» Марка Витрувия Поллиона (M. Vitruvius per Iocundum solito castigatior factus cum figuris et tabula ut iam legi et intelligi possit. Venetiis, 1511) c многочисленными маргиналиями XVI века из фонда Научной библиотеки ГМИИ им. А.С. Пушкина. Авторами рассмотрены состав и типология рукописных помет на полях и в тексте трактата, описан путь атрибуции текстовых маргиналий, представлен опыт их датировки. На основе анализа содержания помет, а также благодаря сопоставлению образцов почерка экземпляра из ГМИИ с рукописями из Национальной библиотеки Марчиана в Венеции (Италия), сделан вывод о принадлежности помет венецианскому гуманисту Даниэле Барбаро. Рукописные маргиналии датированы серединой 1560-х годов.

The article focuses on the copy of the 1511 edition of "Ten Books on Architecture" by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (M. Vitruvius per Iocundum solito castigatior factus cum figuris et tabula ut iam legi et intelligi possit. Venetiis, 1511), housed in the Research Library of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia). This treatise includes numerous marginal notes from the 16th century, the content and typology of which the article’s authors analyse in order to describe their approach in identifying the author of the writings and the process of dating. Based on the analysis of the markings and their contents, as well as by comparing the handwriting samples from the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts with the manuscripts from the Marciana National Library in Venice (Italy), the authors concluded that the writing belongs to the Venetian humanist Daniele Barbaro and dates to the mid-1560s.

The article discusses the relationship between language and truth in Giovanni Pico’s works. This problem is thematized by Pico from the epi- stle De genere dicendi philosophorum, where he develops an analysis about the limits of language that is strictly related to his conception of philosophy. Showing how Pico deepens his investigations, this essay try to show how the criticism of the language has an important role both in the refutation of astrology that Pico offer in the Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, and in the project of a philosophy of concordia that Pico develops in the De ente et uno.

Este libro traza por primera vez en su conjunto el complejo panorama de la recepción de las obras de Sidonio Apolinar (430/431-c. 487 d. C.) desde su muerte hasta la primera mitad del Cinquecento, el momento crucial en que los textos de dicho autor (y de tantos otros escritores tardoantiguos) quedaron sepultados en el olvido y la incuria.

Questo libro dipinge per la prima volta nel suo insieme il complesso panorama della ricezione delle opere di Sidonio Apollinare (430/431-c. 487 d. C.) dalla sua morte fino alla prima metà del Cinquecento, il momento cruciale in cui i testi di questo autore (e di tanti altri scrittori tardoantichi) furono seppelliti nell’oblio e l’incuria.

Recent research on the only Greek manuscript of Ptolemy’s Geography in America, Ayer MS 743 (Newberry Library, Chicago, identical with Codex Romanus Monasterii Sancti Gregorii in monte Coelio 15 which until recently was thought to be lost) reveals that it was copied for the famous humanist Francesco Barbaro in Venice by two Byzantine scribes working for him in the 1410s. The manuscript is therefore the oldest extant document testifying to the presence of Ptolemy’s Geography in Venice. Its unusual and complicated structure provides insight into the beginnings of the transmission of the Geography in Western Europe. Later on, Ayer MS 743 belonged to Francesco’s grandson Ermolao and to the library of the Venetian monastery San Michele di Murano before moving to Rome, London, and finally Chicago.

This paper studies the second of the two codicological units that make up MS Paris gr. 2939 (ff. 64-251), signed by Nikolaos Vlastos in 1484. It contains the prolegomena and commentary on some orations of Demosthenes attributed to the rhetorician Ulpian of Antioch, intercalated with the relevant parts of the Demosthenic text. The exemplar of the Paris codex can be identified as Ambr. A 54 inf., copied in 1483 by Ioannes Rhosos for Giorgio Merula. This in turn is a copy of Paris gr. 2940, copied in the 13th century by George Pachymeres, one of the most important witnesses for the Ulpian commentary. Paris gr. 2939 belonged to the Venetian humanist Ermolao Barbaro, whose marginalia, some of them published here for the first time, are very interesting.

Se analiza la presencia del 'Cornu Copiae seu Linguae Latinae commentarii' de Niccolò Perotti (1429-1480) en la obra de Lucio Flaminio Sículo, un italiano afincado en España a finales del siglo XV y profesor en la Universidad de Salamanca entre 1504 y 1509. Recién llegado a la ciudad del Tormes el joven siciliano publicó una miscelánea que contenía entre otros escritos un 'Commentariolus in Plinii prohemium', primer comentario pliniano impreso en España, cuya presentación editorial era deudora a su vez del primer comentario pliniano impreso en Europa, en 1481, obra del mismo Perotti, que fue divulgado en un principio con el nombre de 'Epistula ad Franciscum Guarnerium'. Esta epístola, que abarcaba, como el texto de Flaminio, sólo el prefacio de la Naturalis Historia, fue pronto falsificada por el editor Antonio Moreto y añadida con el nombre de 'In Plynii Secundi prooemium Commentariolus' al final de la tercera edición véneta del 'Cornu Copiae' del arzobispo de Siponto, de 1490, obra esta que, comenzando como un comentario sobre Marcial, se convirtió pronto en un vasto repertorio filológico de la lengua latina, en el que Plinio el Viejo ocupaba un lugar preeminente y que Flaminio a menudo extractó para su opúsculo con silenciamiento de la fuente.