NOTES ET MATERIAUX
HARVARD MS RICHARDSON 23 : A « PENDANT » TO VATICAN
MS URB. LAT. 276 AND A SIGNIFICANT EXEMPLAR FOR P. C. DECEMBRIO'S OPUSCULA HISTORICA
Pier Candido Decembrio was not a born politician. He served Filippo Maria Visconti as secretary faithfully and well, and his attachment to his de facto patria, Milan, led him to participate actively in the short-lived Repubblica Ambrosiana (1447-50). But his undisguised awareness of Francesco Sforza's motive for coming to the aid of the Republic against the Venetians served him ill when the condottiere, who had partially legitimized himself by Filippo Maria's daughter Bianca Maria, was named Duke of Milan. Sforza's disfavor was to have negative consequences for much of the remainder of Decembrio's long life (1399- 1477) (1). For six years, from 1450 to 1456, he found welcome at the papal curia under Nicholas V and, briefly, Calixtus III. After the latter pope's death, Decembrio resided for two years at the court of Alphonse of Aragon in Naples. The years from Alphonse's death in 1458 until 1467, when he was finally taken in by Borso d'Esté at Ferrara, were years of struggle and uncertainty for the venerable humanist, although he had returned to Milan (2). It is then that we find him sending works to various princes of Italy in the hope of finding stable Such works include his De animantium naturis, presented to Ludovico Gonzaga in 1460 (3), his biography of Francesco Sforza (1461) (4), his De anima, presented to Francesco Visconti (a supporter of Francesco Sforza) around the same time (5), as well, in all likelihood, as the manuscript under study.
The Gonzaga copy of De animantium naturis is now Vatican manuscript Urb. lat. 276 (6). This parchment manuscript was commissioned from Decembrio by Ludovico, prepared and transcribed (by an unknown scribe), then corrected and dated opposite Decembrio's own in the hand of the author. Gilt initials of Books and major subdivisions were decorated in the white-vine manner, with blue, green and red background. The first folio was further embellished with a miniature (See PI. 20 a) depicting two diaphanous singing angels in pale rose
(1) F. Cognasso terms him a firm enemy of Francesco by 1448 : « La Repubblica Ambrosiana », Storia di Milano, ed. G. Treccani degli Alfieri, vol. VI, Milan, 1955, p. 425. — For Decembrio's biography generally, M. Borsa, « P. C. D. e l'umanesimo in Lombardia », Archivio storico lombardo, XX (1893), p. 5-75, 358-441, here, esp. p. 358- 375. See too E. Ditt, « P. C. D. Contributo alia storia dell'umanesimo italiano », Memorie del R. Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere, vol. XXIV (XV délia série III), fasc. 2 (1931), p. 21-108 ; P. Argelati, Bibliotheca Scriptorum Mediolanensium, Tomus Secundus, Pars Altéra, Milan, 1745 : Scriptores Exleri, XXVI, «Decembrius Petrus Candidus», cols. 2099-2105. On Decembrio's birthdate, C. M. Pyle, «Pier Candido Decembrio and Rome», Umanesimo a Roma nel Quattrocento, Milan, 1980, p. 295-307, p. 296.
(2) Borsa, p. 392-393, 397-398.
(3) Edited in a facsimile edition of the Vatican MS Urb. lat. 276 by C. M. Pyle : Das Tierbuch des Petrus Candidus. Codex Urbinas latinus 276. 2 vols. Zurich, 1984 (Codices e Vaticanis Selecti, LX).
(4) Annotatio Rerum Gesiarum in Vita Illmi. Francisci Sfortie, Quarii Mediolanensium Ducis, in L. A. Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ab Anno Aerae Christianae Quingentesimo ad Millesimumquingentesimum, Tomus XX, Milan, 1731, cols. 1021-1046, and in Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XX, 1 eds. A. Bum, F. Fossati, G. Petraglione, Bologna, 1925-58, p. 439-989.
(5) Edited by P. O. Kristeller in his Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, II, Rome, 1985, p. 281-300, 567- 584.
(6) On its composition and arrival at the Vatican through Urbino, see Pyle, Das Tierbuch des Petrus Candidus. Codex Urbinas latinus 276. Eine Einfûhrung, Zurich, 1984, Chapter V. More detailed findings in Pyle, «P. C. D. and Rome» (n. 1, above).
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