A Florentine Poetic Anthology (MS Can. Ital. 99)

Paper; mm 210x140; ff. II+179; verses written in one single column in a humanistic minuscule. Coloured initials in red and blue. For the beginning of Dante’s canzoni (long lyric poems) series, a golden initial [D] on a ground of blue and red; painted multi-coloured leaf border with gold balls on the left, superior, and inferior margin. Medici coat of arms, held by two naked putti, in the bas de page. Title rubric in gold on a ground of red.
Red leather binding with gold decoration.
Italy, Florence; Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805; Giuseppe Canonici, -1807. Purchased by the Bodleian in 1817.
 

This poetic anthology is opened by a series of nineteen of Dante’s canzoni (long lyric poems) and ballads. It pairs Dante’s lyric poetry with poems by Lorenzo de’ Medici, Angelo Poliziano (rispetti), Petrarch (a sonnet), Tebaldeo (an eclogue), and others. It testifies to the success and the authoritative role attributed to Dante in late fifteenth-century Florence - for his Commedia but also for his so-called ‘minor’ works - when the Medici appropriated the illustrious Florentine vernacular literature, and especially Dante, to support their cultural and political influence. The most famous example is the Raccolta Aragonese: this collection of Tuscan early and contemporary vernacular lyric poetry was prepared by Poliziano and Lorenzo de’ Medici – with Lorenzo adding his own poetry - to send to Federico of Aragon, the younger son of the King of Naples.