Gli annali di Giorgio Rusconi (1500–1522) (review)

Giorgio Rusconi, who scarcely if ever fails to record his Milanese origin in his colophons, was a successful printer at Venice during the relatively short period 1500–22, and Lucia Gasperoni has succeeded in locating 199 editions printed by him, plus nine attributions of unsigned editions. Finally she lists ten ‘ghosts’ — but some of these appear rather to be real editions that have now vanished. The British Library holds eighty-four editions by Rusconi himself, plus ten by his sons Giovanni Francesco and Giovanni Antonio, and seven by his widow Elisabetta, Giorgio himself having died before 29 April 1522. It is a pity that Gasperoni does not include the books printed by Giorgio Rusconi’s widow and sons. She writes a long and detailed analysis of his productions, drawing attention to the fact that she has found almost no original archival documents to add to the picture of his life and work, which has therefore been compiled almost exclusively from the books themselves. Since Rusconi frequently collaborated with the better known printer-publisher Niccolò Zoppino during the years 1515–18, it is good to know that the director of her original thesis, Prof. Lorenzo Baldacchini, is now nearing completion of his catalogue of the annals of Zoppino, numbering over 400 editions.

Giorgio Rusconi seems to have begun his Venetian career in the workshop of Manfredo Bonelli, who had been printing since 1491. The names of the two men appear together in four editions of the year 1500, while Rusconi alone signs two editions in the same year. It is probable that Bonelli taught Rusconi the art of printing. Gasperoni has unfortunately conflated two different editions of Bartolommeo Miniatore, Formulario et epistolario, thinking that they are one and the same (no. 4). But IGI 6442 is dated 30 April 1500, collates A–K⁴, and is recorded in one copy only at the Biblioteca Comunale of Ferrara, while no. 4 here is dated 17 October 1500, collates a–e⁸, and is recorded by her only at the British Library, IA. 24783. An edition missed altogether by Gasperoni is quoted in small type by IGI (vol. v, p. 209), indicating that it belongs to the sixteenth century. This is one of the many editions of Translatio miraculosa ecclesiae Beatae Mariae virginis de Loreto in Italian translation, Venice, [Rusconi, after 1500], known to Reichling 1885, Essling 2377, and Sander 4283. There is a copy in the Biblioteca Trivulziana, Milan. The author has also missed EDIT 16 F 1521: Formularium diuersorum contractuum, 25 September 1506, copy at Trento, Fondazione Biblioteca San Bernardino. Her no. 106 (Vincenzo Calmeta, Compendio de cose noue, 24 January 1516) does not agree with EDIT 16 F 1087, which is not attributed to Calmeta and has a title beginning ‘Fioretto de cose noue’. The British Library also has this edition (G. 10345(3)), which names no author.

Gasperoni has an annoying habit of calling two editions of the same text ‘variante A’ and ‘variante B’, thus cataloguing them as one edition, when they have different dates. As examples, her no. 26, Granollachs, 26 August and 28 September 1506; no. 41, Foresti, Supplemento, 7 and 17 August 1508; no. 92, Chiesa Cattolica, Expositio pulcherrima hymnorum, 14 February and 25 May 1515; no. 118, Cornazzano, Vita e passione de Christo, 22 January and 20 August 1517; and no. 119, Vita di Maria, 30 January and 22 August 1517. In some of these cases, not only the dates of the two so-called ‘variants’ are different, but so is the wording or capitalization or abbreviations, showing that there are two different editions that should have been catalogued separately. The worst case of all is no. 145, Formularium diuersorum contractuum, 26 July 1518, where one ‘variant’ was printed by Rusconi at Venice and the other at Ancona by Soncino. These have been kept separate by EDIT 16 as F 1527 and F 1528, but because the collation and...