Palatino 766 pipes, pools, cliffs, streams... (by Taccola)

[Koen G]

As for Barbara, I'm less convinced by this. I think there's some coincidences, but right now my feeling is that's all they are...

Just to be clear, I'm also not convinced of any direct involvement of her as a person. But the fact remains that we're probably looking at the higher echelons of society.

[MarcoP]

The question is what happened to the original notebook (Palatino 766)? I tried to inquire its provenience from BNCF but got no reply. I understand they are busy. But please, if someone, preferably Italian (hint-Marco) could look into this, I am sure it would help us greatly. We must know how and when Palatino 766 ended up in the Florence Library and where it was before!!

This is what Prager and Scaglia say about the subject You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

There is no evidence in Palat.766 that Sigismund, to whom it is dedicated, received this particular manuscript, or accepted it, or made it part of any library of his. However, there is indirect evidence that Mariano did not keep it. While the condition of Lat. 197 suggests that a book that stayed with Taccola soon changed its aspect, Palat.766 contains no significant additions of notes or insertion of sketches. There are minor supplements relating to woodwork near the end of Palat.766, apparently unrelated to his plan for the treatise. He made these drawings probably during a relatively short time that he retained the codex. Substantially nothing is added by persons other than Taccola. Since several of the Quattrocento copies of Palat.766 are of Sienese origin, we are inclined to think that the codex remained in Siena for some decades. In modern times, Palat.766 and the copybook, Palat. 767, appear together in Florence. This copybook, to be described later, belonged to the Strozzi family in the seventeenth century, and the autograph may also have belonged to this family of humanists. The Strozzi were book collectors even before Taccola's time. We do not know exactly when or how these two manuscripts came to the Biblioteca Nazionale, and the catalogs do not specify.

Palat.767 is discussed at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Prager and Scaglia date it to 1467-75.

[Bernd]

Thanks Marco!
I just hoped there had been any progress regarding the proveniance in the 50 years since the Prager and Scaglia publication.
I read it - but obviously not well enough, I missed the part about Palatino 766 presumably staying in Siena for decades. This would rule it out as the gift to Sigismund - which would have been very odd. Taccola was famous but still such notebook would have been an inapproproate gift for a freshly coronated emperor. He would have had the time and money to make a more luxurious copy. Btw, the later You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. copy has lost nearly all VM-related imagery. No star-sun, no references to Sigismund either.

So that leaves 2 paths.
One with the alleged copy that was given to Sigismund and may have ended up with Barbara of Cili
One with the original that stayed in Siena

In any case, the point that this work was not widely distributed still stands. How and where did the VM author gain access to it?

[Bernd]

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.

[Bernd]

Looking for provenance of Palatino 766, I came across this entry I must have overlooked:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Machine translated to:

On the occasion of Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg’s stay in Siena, while he was traveling to Rome to be crowned by Eugenius IV, Mariano di Iacopo took the opportunity to give a definitive form to the third part of his Liber de ingeniis, a work on which he had been engaged for some time. It seems that portions of the Munich manuscript—Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, CLM 197.II, containing Books I–II—can be dated to 1427.

From a larger work that must have been lying on his desk in the form of loose sheets—or perhaps only lightly bound—he then gathered the sheets relating to Book III, removed a bifolium that was probably blank (the jump in the numbering in his own hand described above does not appear to have resulted from an error), and added a dedication, paratextual material, and decorative elements:
“This book contains within it many questions posed to me by the most serene prince and unconquered king of the Romans, Lord Sigismund, by the grace of God, awaiting his coronation with the imperial diadem. I see that these questions contain measurements made with the compass. And whenever my mental capacity lacks the ingenuity to understand them, I submit to being reproached by him and always instructed in matters in which I am deficient, as well as in all other weights and measures. And with all due reverence I, Mariano, ask for indulgence, that I may be forgiven if I have been too bold in the matters stated above and in every single one of them.” (fol. 1r)

There is also a drawing of the emperor in armor, in the act of receiving from God the task of defending his flock and crushing the tail of the Marzocco (fol. 1v); and a dedication beside a drawing of Saint Dorothy walking with the Christ Child. In this dedication, the saint speaks in the first person, offering Mariano’s services to the sovereign:
“For you, most serene prince Sigismund, king of the Romans, ever august, I beseech almighty God and the Word of the Father, through whom all things were made, to preserve you in faith, long-lasting health, and charity, so that you may be able to fight against our enemies and gain victory over them, and receive the imperial crown of the whole world; and at the end of the age may He lead you to eternal life. Amen.
To your sacred Majesty I continually commend Sir Mariano Iacobi, chamberlain of the House of Wisdom of Siena, who composed this little book and depicted me. May you deign to receive him into your household as one of the members of your court, and approve him, by the authority of your privilege, as master of the arts of waterworks. His intention is to live in your lands in Hungary and there bring his days to an end, to devote himself to all constructions involving water, and to describe in books all the deeds and actions carried out by you, the kings of Hungary, and your predecessors; to gather them, as far as he is able, from every place, and to mark them and illuminate histories in those books, at the beginning and in the margins.” (fol. 42r)

After supplying the manuscript with these elements and signing it, he had it bound—or bound it himself (see above)—in order to present it to the emperor.

Whether the gift was ever actually presented, or whether Sigismund subsequently lost interest in the manuscript, is difficult to determine with certainty. The Palatino 766 was still in Tuscany several years later, when it was copied in Palatino 767, a parchment copy enriched with drawings from another source.

Later, at least by the eighteenth century, it was in the private Florentine collection of the Niccolini family, whose inventory, drawn up in 1730 by Luca Giuseppe Cerracchini, lists it as De aedificiis tractatus cum figuris (“Treatise on buildings with illustrations”). On fol. 1r there is an oil stamp bearing the initials M.N., to be expanded as Maggiorasco Niccolini.

The Niccolini family’s scientific, literary, and manuscript library was auctioned in 1824 and was apparently purchased by the Florentine bookseller Giuseppe Pagani for 12,500 lire (see Guida, Plinio e Poliziano, 292–293, and Moroni, Antica gente, 182–183 n. 87).

On December 24, 1828, Giuseppe Molini proposed the purchase of three manuscripts for the Palatine Library—Palatino 161, Palatino 774, and Palatino E.B.15.6—selected from the catalogue sent by Pagani to the Library. The approval of the chief steward, Prince Rospigliosi, arrived on January 1 of the following year (see Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Archivio Palatino, I, fols. 220r–222r).

Inside the front cover, in pencil, are the old Palatine shelfmark, “21.2 vecchio 366,” together with the current one, “numero nuovo 766.”

So if this is correct, Taccola worked with loose parchment sheets which he later amended, compiled, numbered and bound. At least one bifolio was removed, resulting in a jump in numbering. Does this sound familiar?
Unfortunately, the text does not cite sources. Also is it really true that the later copybook Palatino 767 contains imagery that is exclusively found in Taccola's Palatino 766, but not in his earlier works Book I+II? I imagine having looked into this but found nothing remarkable. I currently lack the time for this research but maybe someone wants to give it a look.

Palatino 766
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Palatino 767
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.?


What is the implication of this?

• Taccola began work on De ingeneis I-II as early as 1419 and continued to make amendments until the completion of De machinis in 1449. The Munich manuscript containing Book I-II (BSB, Clm 197,II) dates from 1427 and is the earliest known book from Taccola.
  
• Book III-IV (Palatino 766) was created 1432-33. and finished on Jan. 13, 1433. Loose precursor sheets of parchment may have existed since 1430.
  
• Palatino 766 remained in Italy with near-certainty and never made it to Sigismund. There is a gap in provenance until 1730 when it shows up in a Florentine collection.
  
• Palatino 767 draws on Taccola's works, but in my opinion is not a direct copy of Palatino 766. Same goes for all alleged copies of Palatino 766. All dated to the late 15th century. None of their imagery is even remotely as close to the VM as Taccola's original:
  Urb. Lat. 1757 (ca. 1465–1470)
  British Library Add. MS 34113 (ca. 1470s)
  MS Ob. 13 (ca. 1470-1500)
  Siena S.IV.5 (ca. 1470-1500)
  Palatino 767 (ca. 1475-1500)
  

That leaves us with 2 possible paths:
1) The VM author used Palatino 766 as reference. This places at least the Balneo section post-1433.
2) The VM author had direct access to Taccola's workplace in Siena and copied the imagery from there. This would place a lower bound for the Balneo section in the 1420s. Due to the similarities in structure between the VM and Taccola's works, I'd actually favor this hypothesis now.

• created as loose sheets
  
• later binding with missing page numbers
  
• continuous amendments and revisions
  

I'm not saying Taccola made the VM, but the possibility that it was someone close to him has substantially increased.

[MarcoP]

is it really true that the later copybook Palatino 767 contains imagery that is exclusively found in Taccola's Palatino 766, but not in his earlier works Book I+II?

Who said that? I cannot find it in the passage you quoted.

According to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Pal.767 also contains material from Books I and II.

EDIT:

As noted by Gentile (1885) and Jähns (1889), the manuscript [Pal.767] contains a copy of Palat. 766. It also contains material from Books I and II and the Mill, Pump, and Gear Complexes. In all cases the copying is close. The manuscript copies Books III and IV in a form independent of Urb. Lat. 1757 and in much wider selection, while it copies large portions of the other contents in a form that repeats peculiarities of the Urbino codicetto. In particular, many deviations from Lat. 197, found in the Urbino booklet, reappear here. The impression arises that Palat. 767 is based on Palat. 766 and Urb. Lat. 1757, not Lat. 197.

So they apparently believe that 767 derives from the "codicetto" by Francesco di Giorgio Martini Urb.Lat.1757, a copy of Taccola's Books I and II autograph Lat.197. They say it appears to derive directly from Taccola's autograph Palat.766 for Books III and IV.

Palatino 767 draws on Taccola's works, but in my opinion is not a direct copy of Palatino 766.

Personally, I have no problem believing that this is a direct copy, but I am not an art historian.
   

[Jorge_Stolfi]

• created as loose sheets
  
• later binding with missing page numbers
  
• continuous amendments and revisions
  

These "features" are probably shared by the notebooks of all inventors and scientists.  Why carry around a bound blank book to write notes that would later have to be amended, revised, and probably sorted by topic rather than by the time they were made? 

By the way, I wonder how the Palatino 766 was bound.  In an "industrially" produced book, one would expect the text and drawings be written on bifolios in the proper order, then folded and nested to form quires that would then be sewed together.  

But from the images on that site  it seems possible that the text and drawings were written on loose folios, not bifolios, and these were later pasted together to form bifolios for binding.  Could that be the case?  

There are a few figures that span two consecutive pages, and normally those would be on the bifolios at the center of their quires.  However, some of those two-page figures are on pages that cannot be on the same bifolio.  Like pages 29+30 and 31+32; or 15+16 and 17+18 and 19+20; or 45+46 and 47+48.  Indeed, in some of the two-page figures the two halves do not seem to join properly (and the mismatch does not seem to be an artifact of them being scanned separately).  As if they were drawn on two loose folios side by side, before these were bound into the book. 

IIUC, the medium is paper, not vellum, and therefore the ink must be a tempera-like suspension of a brown pigment (sepia/ocher/siena/whatever) in water and binder.  Apparently a dilute version of the same ink was used to paint some of the figures before their outlines were drawn on top.  I wonder if the light translucent yellow paint on the VMS could have been the same: diluted ink, applied before drawing the outlines (unlike all the other color paints).

All the best, --stolfi

[Bernd]

You are probably correct, Jorge.
It looks like Palatino 766 was bound from loose paper leaves rather than bifolios - even though the manus description mentions a removed bifolio.

Da un più ampio lavoro che doveva avere sul suo scrittoio in forma di fogli sciolti (o legati in maniera leggera), raccolse allora quelli relativi al lib. III, eliminò un bifoglio probabilmente bianco (il salto nella num. di sua mano sopra descritto non sembra dovuto a errore) e aggiunse un apparato di dedica, paratestuale e decorativo

As noted by Gentile (1885) and Jähns (1889), the manuscript [Pal.767] contains a copy of Palat. 766. It also contains material from Books I and II and the Mill, Pump, and Gear Complexes. In all cases the copying is close. The manuscript copies Books III and IV in a form independent of Urb. Lat. 1757 and in much wider selection, while it copies large portions of the other contents in a form that repeats peculiarities of the Urbino codicetto. In particular, many deviations from Lat. 197, found in the Urbino booklet, reappear here. The impression arises that Palat. 767 is based on Palat. 766 and Urb. Lat. 1757, not Lat. 197.

So they apparently believe that 767 derives from the "codicetto" by Francesco di Giorgio Martini Urb.Lat.1757, a copy of Taccola's Books I and II autograph Lat.197. They say it appears to derive directly from Taccola's autograph Palat.766 for Books III and IV.

Yes, I'm aware of that. But I'd like to determine to what degree this really is the case. You showed a very compelling example of a faithful reproduction of 766 imagery in 767. But the vast majority of 766 imagery appears not to have been copied (including all relevant for the VM). Neither in 767, nor in Urb. Lat. 1757. Calling them copies of 766 is a stretch. They contain a fraction of the imagery. But this is just my preliminary assessment. I want to find out exactly which unique 766 imagery is found in any of the alleged copies - but not in Taccola's Book I-II or De machinis.

[Rafal]

I want to find out exactly which unique 766 imagery is found in any of the alleged copies

I recall this scary image of giraffe appearing in both Palatino 766 and 767 

   

[JustAnotherTheory]

I'm not saying Taccola made the VM, but the possibility that it was someone close to him has substantially increased.

Perhaps of note is the fact that Alberti met Taccola in Siena in 1433 (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). Alberti is the inventor of the cipher disk.