- N.P. : Marchbanks Press 1939
- tall 12mo.
- cloth-backed marbled paper-covered boards, top edge cut, others uncut.
- Not paginated.
- Order Nr. 109179
- Price: $ 260.00

Bartolomeo Sanvito was one of the most active and famous scribes of fifteenth century Italy, and the supreme exponent of the italic script. He was born in Padua in 1435 into a family reduced to near-hardship by the deaths of his uncle and father. He worked first for a notary, but was soon employed to copy manuscripts by the young Bernardo Bembo, who remained a lifelong friend, the scholarly Francesco Buzzacarini, Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan, patriarch of Aquileia, and the Venetian patrician Marcanonio Morosini. When the Venetian Pietro Barbo was elected Pope as Paul II Sanvito made a first exploratory visit to Rome and moved there permanently (though with frequent visits to Padua) in 1466. He was appointed a member of Cardinal Frencesco Gonzaga's household, possibly as the result of a recommendation by Mantegna, and after the cardinal's death to that of the Pope's nephew Cardinal Raffaelle Riario. Pope Sixtus IV was one of his principal clients. He was also an illuminator, and on occasion collaborated with famous artists -- Franco de' Russi and Marco Zoppo in the north, Gaspare da Padova in Rome. Towards the end of the century he moved back to Padua, to become a canon of the Collegiate Church of Sta Giustina at Monselice and to collaborate with Fra Giovanni Giocondo on collecting examples for his Sylloge of ancient inscriptions. His last great enterprise was to copy and illustrate two large service-books as gifts to the Church of Sta Giustina. He died in 1511.

Published by the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie & The Handwriting of Italian Humanists, this book is a biography of one of the legends in the history of calligraphy. Detailing everything from illumination, bindings and his experimentations in book design, Laura Nuvoloni put together a beautiful book based on the notes of the late A. C. de la Mare. Includes contributions by Scott Dickerson, Ellen Cooper Erdreich and Anthony Hobson, as well as an annotated catalogue of Santivo's manuscripts by Nuvoloni.

Albinia ('Tilly') de la Mare (1932-2001) was one of the outstanding paleographers of the twentieth century. Her achievement was in tracing the careers of the hundreds of scribes writing the newly introduced humanist script in Italy in the fifteenth century. After completing her thesis on Vespasiano da Bisticci. the Florentine bookseller and historian, she was an Assistant to the Bodleian Library until her appointment as Professor of Paleography at King's College, London. She held the chair from 1989 until retirement in 1997. Besides volume I of The Handwriting of Italian Humanists, which discussed eight scholars of the Quattrocento, she published the catalogue of the Lyell manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, The Italian Manuscripts in the Library of Major J. R. Abbey (with J. J. G. Alexander), the section on 'Clients and Scribes' in Miniatura Fiorentian del Rinascimento by Annarosa Garzelli, and numerous articles in specialised periodicals. She had been collecting material on Bartolomeo Sanvito for many years and had visited several countries to see his manuscripts.