BOOK, Platina’s Papal history in Italian, 1583.

Bartolomeo Platina:

Delle vite de’ pontefici. [...] Tradotto di Latino in lingua volgare.

Venice, Domenico Farri, 1583. 8vo. 14,5 x 10 cm. 461 leaves (recte 468), irregular pagination.

Contemporary vellum, worn and soiled, slight damage and joints cracked; slight worming, waterstained throughout, some neat old annotations in ink, circular stamp to title, “Residentia Salisburgensis S. J.”.

Bartolomeo Sacchi (1421-1481) is known as Platina after his birthplace (Piadena). He was an Italian Renaissance humanist, writer and gastronomist, author of a theoretical treatise on Italian gastronomy entitled De honesta voluptate et valetudine ("On honourable pleasure and health"), which achieved considerable popularity and has the distinction of being considered the first printed cookbook. Pope Sixtus IV (Francesco della Rovere) made him Vatican librarian in 1475. Platina wrote an innovative and influential history of the lives of the popes that gives ample space to Roman history and the themes of Antiquity.

See description.