23-02-2026, 08:39 PM
(23-02-2026, 03:29 PM)Koen G wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Well, for starters, I don't think a hypothetical copy of book 3+4 for the emperor would have necessarily gone to Barbara. But since we don't even know whether such a copy existed, musing about its destination is compounding speculations.
What I find more likely is that someone else got the chance to browse Taccola's autograph, or even the sketches he made in preparation. We know that he was concerned about copyright, but it's not like he was writing in some dungeon, hissing at anyone who came too close. He worked as the secretary of the "Sapientia", a charitable organization for poor scholars, which also housed the court in 1432. It was also connected to a hospital. I mean, this guy was "out there", meeting students, international visitors, renaissance figures...
If only one of those had been allowed at any point to copy part of Taccola's work, that's enough to create a possible point of contact. We also don't know what happened to books 3+4 when they were finished. Unlike books 1+2, they were not added to by Taccola, so perhaps they were kept elsewhere.
Yes, I agree. However, if Sigismund did not, receive a copy (and there is no evidence for it), we must assume that something went terribly wrong for Taccola. He clearly put a lot of work into book 3-4 and had specifically dedicated it to the emperor. Judging his personality and the way he let St. Dorothy speak praises about him, I guess he would have boasted about an imperial copy - and also published it later. Instead the whole project just vanishes without a trace and the sketchbook only pops up again (presumably still in Siena) decades later after his death.
Here's a wacky hypothesis:
What if Taccola's sketchbook had gone lost in 1433? Either he lost it immediately after finishing it, or it got lost at the workshop that was supposed to create the copy for Sigismund. That would explain a few things, including how the VM artist could have gained access to it. I can't imagine Taccola would have voluntarily given this sketchbook away.
Yet he recieved the desired title from Sigismund in Mantua, which means he probably did send him an appropriate gift. Whether it was that manuscript copy or something else. we'll probably never know.