Bartolomeo Sanvito: The Life and Work of a Renaissance Scribe (review)

The Paduan-born scribe Bartolomeo Sanvito (1433–1511) remained anonymous until his rediscovery by Augusto Campana and James Wardrop in 1947. He is now considered to be the pre-eminent scribe of the Italian renaissance, in no small part due to the work of the late Albinia C. de la Mare. Persistent research and scholarly collaboration have enabled de la Mare and Laura Nuvoloni to reconstruct his impressive oeuvre, unsurpassed in the quantity of manuscripts and the quality of their execution. Their joint publication, made possible by the generosity of the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, commences with a translation of the article written by de la Mare for the 1999 exhibition catalogue La miniatura a Padova dal Medioevo al Settecento.

This is fitting as an introduction and masterfully establishes a chronological and geographical classification of Sanvito’s manuscripts in twelve sections. De la Mare relies on palaeographical, codicological, stylistic, and textual evidence, while the manuscripts’ provenance histories often give important leads. Reproductions from certain manuscripts illustrate the more distinct developments of Sanvito’s career appropriately. Unfortunately the anonymous translation is rather inaccurate and fails to integrate the corrections of some serious misprints and omissions referred to by de la Mare in 2002 (‘Marginalia and Glosses in the Manuscripts of Bartolomeo Sanvito of Padua’, in Talking to the Text: Marginalia from Papyri to Print, Messina, 2002, pp. 459–555(p. 459, n. 1)). A copy of the exhibition catalogue at the Bodleian Library incorporates a full set of corrections (Oxford, Bodleian Library, R.Cat. Exh. Padua 4). Fortunately the detailed catalogue that follows puts things right to some extent.

The introduction is followed by Scott Dickerson’s chronology of Sanvito’s (family) life and contacts. The reader is warned to expect divergent conclusions between this biography, predominantly compiled from archival sources, and de la Mare’s account. Though usually in agreement they do indeed clash on some points — most notably concerning Sanvito’s whereabouts between 1466 and 1469 — and this occasionally creates confusion. Whilst some editorial choices do not clarify matters, the underlying causes appear to be mainly methodological in nature and to originate from the dichotomy between documentary evidence (where he was) and paleographical and codicological evidence (where he was copying). The introduction and catalogue are, generally, more convincing, but Dickerson’s contribution does offer interesting new facts, tempting hypotheses, and above all succeeds in painting a very human picture of Sanvito.

Ellen Cooper Erdreich discusses Sanvito as an illuminator, an activity documented, according to the author, by his 1509 Epistolarium and Evangeliarum ‘manu sua impensaque conscripta ornataque’ (no. 121), a payment entry in a Vatican register of 1478, and a contract of 1466 involving Squarcione. Although Cooper Erdreich also regards as evidence Sanvito’s Roman pocket volumes of 1494–1501, they are barely remarked upon in the pages that follow. Instead she hypothesizes about Sanvito’s mastery of the white vine-stem decoration and analyses his stylistic development within the Paduan antiquarian academy of Squarcione, Mantegna, and Zoppo. His decorative language all’antica is examined and described as creative archaeology, and some of his iconographic choices are considered in the light of their relationship to the text. Sanvito’s collaboration with Gaspare da Padova and an anonymous crafts - man is also touched upon. The essay is a fairly sound critical study, albeit somewhat disorganized. The attributions in the catalogue entries referred to explicitly by the author are, moreover, occasionally quite divergent (comparenos 18, 28, 30 with pp. 68, 74) and little to no effort has been made to highlight the undoubtedly defining wishes of Sanvito’s patrons or his contacts with the sculptor Andrea Bregno.

The following chapter by Anthony Hobson examines the fashionable gilt-tooled bindings adorning Sanvito’s manuscripts. Three groups are...