Pichiana: Bibliografia delle edizioni e degli studi (review)

This bibliography is the tenth and most recent volume to be published in the series Studi Pichiani, a program of critical editions, conference proceedings, and monographs exploring the work of the Italian polymath Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and his nephew, editor, and biographer, Gianfrancesco Pico. The volume is an unparalleled contribution to the study of these two important Renaissance figures; it is scrupulously researched, intelligently organized, and beautifully produced. In addition to historical essays and detailed bibliographical material, it contains over fifty photographs of early editions of the two philosophers' works, including rare incunabula and editiones principia. By treating both of the philosophers together, the volume appears to follow the prescription laid down by Eugenio Garin, the dean of Giovanni Pico scholarship, who counseled against isolating the work of the two Picos.

The chapters constituting this book can be considered along three divisions. The first section chronicles the printings of the works of the two philosophers and may interest readers of the history of early book publishing in addition to students of the famous philosopher and his nephew. Of special note in this section is an essay by Leonardo Quaquarelli that presents a reliable account of the trajectory of scholarship on Giovanni Pico since the late 1800s. The middle section of the volume is the largest and contains a detailed catalogue of printed editions and translations of Giovanni's and Gianfrancesco's published works. Here the editors have not been parsimonious with their inclusion of details. Entry §1, which concerns Gianfrancesco's 1496 Bologna edition of his uncle's works, contains generous transcriptions of the title page, tables of contents, and colophons, as well as a listing of known extant worldwide copies of the work with notes concerning their provenance. Entry §8, which concerns Giovanni's ill-fated 1486 edition of his Conclusiones DCCCC, contains a transcription of the advertisement Giovanni appended to his book, where he offered to pay the expenses of any Philosophus or Theologus willing to travel ab extrema Italia to dispute over his collection of wide-ranging theses (147). To the ample listings in this section should be added Thomas Elyot's rendering of Giovanni's Regulae duodecim (The Rules of a Christian Lyfe, London, 1534) and Thomas Stanley's rendering of Giovanni's Commento (A Platonick Discourse upon Love, London, 1651).

The concluding section of the book identifies nineteenth- and twentieth-century editions and translations, with a substantive listing of secondary literature covering the same period. The identification of editions and translations is quite thorough, though one could add to it a modernized version of Thomas More's translation of Pico's letters and religious opuscula by W. Campbell in The English Works of Sir Thomas More (1931), as well as an Oxford edition of the Commento found in The Poems and Translations of Thomas Stanley (1962). Editorial material for 764 identified items of secondary literature helpfully indicates which chapters in books pertain specifically to the elder Pico and notes scholarly reviews for major works. Since no secondary literature before the nineteenth century is listed, early works like Edward Jesup's The Lives of Picus and Pascal (1723) are absent.

The last portion of the bibliography, "Studi del XX Secolo," is more generous than its title suggests: works up to the year 2005 are included. Nevertheless, a reviewer is obliged to speculate about what could have been added to the plenti-ful listings. Perhaps additional works treating unacknowledged borrowings of Giovanni's corpus warranted inclusion: Davy Carozza, "Another Italian Source for La Magdalena of Malon de Chaide," Italica 41 (1964); John O'Malley, "An Ash Wednesday Sermon on the Dignity of Man for Pope Julius II, 1513" in Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore (1978); Martin Dzelzainis, "Samuel Daniel and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Letter," Notes and Queries 35 (1988). Additionally, while the avvertenza that...