Marsilio Ficino, Argumentum in librum Mercuri Trismegisti ad Cosmum Medicem, discussions of the works of the Hermetic philosopher Mercurius Trismegistus for Cosimo de’ Medici, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy (Parma or Padua), second half of fifteenth century]

Estimate

7,000 - 9,000 GBP

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Description

Vellum

74 leaves (plus 5 original endleaves), complete, collation: i-vi¹⁰, vii⁸, viii⁶, catchwords, single column, 22 lines in the humanistic hand of Phillippus Butinus of Parma (see below), rubrics in red, thirteen one-line initials in gold with fine purple penwork tracery, two large ornamental initials in burnished gold on red and blue grounds (fols.1r and 4r), within coloured frames and enclosing interlace knotwork designs, both on leaves once cut out and trimmed to edges of text (perhaps for framing), now restored and set within replacement paper leaves, nineteenth-century “G.29” on fol.1r, excellent condition, marbled pastedowns, early twentieth-century dark red morocco over pasteboards

Provenance

provenance

(1) Written and illuminated by a scribe from Parma in the second half of fifteenth century. A colophon in red at the end of the text records the work was “scriptus per me philippum butinum civem parmen[ensis]”. The illumination may be Paduan.

(2) Acquired by William John Monson, 6th Baron Monson (1796-1862) in Padua in 1844: his inscriptions on endleaves at beginning and end of volume; by descent.

Catalogue Note

text

Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) was one of the leading lights of the Italian Renaissance. He was a priest, a doctor and a musician, but is best remembered as an author and translator of Greek Classical works. After the Council of Florence in 1439 brought Greek scholars to the Medici court, Ficino was elected the head of the Platonic Academy, and controversially maintained that the philosopher’s works should be read in church as well as claiming Socrates and Plato as forerunners of Christ.

He was the son of the physician of Cosimo de’ Medici, and received the patronage of that family. This work is a translation of On the Divine Wisdom and the Creation of the World sections of the Corpus Hermeticum, attributed to the Platonic philosopher Hermes Trismegistus, made at the behest of his patron.