New evidence about the incunabulum Auct. Q. 1. 2 of the Bodleian Library, containing collations and notes of Angelo Poliziano on the Naturalis Historia of Plinius, confirms the great interest, after ...the death of Politianus, in the texts annotated by him, which were also lent, bought and copied. The Bodleian Pliny is indeed a copy of a lost original, as shown by Lucia Cesarini. It was inherited at the middle of XVII century by the Niccolini family, studied in Florence a century later for the first time by Gian Rinaldo Carli and then by Angelo Bandini on behalf of Carlo Rezzonico, who also tried to involve J. Winckelmann in a collation of Pliny’s dedicatory letter to Titus.
Pliny the Elder's fascination with the world around him resulted in his death in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, but his Natural History was to remain influential for centuries after his death. ...Central to Pliny's thought was the relationship between man and nature, highlighted in his study of the human race in Book 7, where he ponders topics as diverse as monstrous races, sex changes, breech births and near-death experiences. This volume provides the first detailed commentary on this key book, together with a translation and introduction, and highlights its interest and importance as a cultural record of early imperial Rome.
An essay is presented that discusses the second edition of Giorgio Vasari's "Lives," done in collaboration with Vincenzio Borghini and Giovanni Battista Adriani. The autograph manuscript of Adriani's ..."Lettera sull'arte degli Antichi" ("Letter on the ancients' art") is inserted in the second edition of "Lives." This 16th-century manuscript is examined for its historical significance, the collaborations, the drafting stages and textual modifications, and Vasari's methodologies.
PDF
