A Poetic Anthology from the Veneto (MS Can. Ital. 81)
Italy, Venice or Padua; 15th century.
Paper; mm 2058x137; ff. II+176+I’, with original numbering; written by one hand in a merchant cursive script; verses copied in a single column; rubrics in violet. Pen-flourished initials, alternately in blue and red with violet decoration.
On fol. iiiv, a full-page drawing of a pine tree, with the Morosini coat of arms (18th century?).
Matteo Luigi Canonici, 1727–1805; Giuseppe Canonici , -1807. Purchased by the Bodleian in 1817
The codex contains a selection of poems from Petrarch’s Canzoniere (80 sonnets, then canzoni and sestine), entitled “Flores sonetorum Petrarce;” a series of canzoni by Dante (9 poems), Simone Serdini, and Jacopo Sanguinacci.
This paper manuscript pairs a minor poet from Padua, Jacopo Sanguinacci, with one of the most successful poets of the fifteenth century in Italy, Simone Serdini, and with the two poetic authorities of the time, Petrarch and Dante. This selection locates the manuscript in the Veneto and testifies to the success in this area of Petrarch, whose poems where sometimes followed by some by Dante.