An Overlooked Manuscript of the Italian Mandeville Tradition: Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 1699, Viaggio di Giovanni Mandevilla tradotto in italiano

Abstract

Although there has been significant research on the dissemination and production of Italian translations of Mandeville’s Travels, the role of Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Ashburnham 1699 has been ignored for a long time. Among more than fourteen exemplars produced in Italy during the fifteenth century, Ashburnham 1699 remains mysterious and overlooked by scholars. The aim of this study is to investigate provenance and watermark evidence, and decorative and paleographical aspects of the manuscript, which has, until now been considered only for its association within the reconstruction of the Italian Mandeville stemma codicum. After a brief review of the most recent studies regarding the dissemination of early copies of Mandeville’s Travels in Italy, a discussion about the origins of Ashburnham 1699 and its movement across Europe provides a clearer understanding of the manuscript’s chronology up to the present day. Originally likely stolen by Count Guglielmo Libri, Ashburnham 1699 was sold to the Earl of Ashburnham as a fourteenth-century manuscript. The second part of the paper focuses on watermark, decorative, and paleographical evidence to demonstrate that this manuscript is instead a product of the fifteenth century, rather than the fourteenth century, as has been commonly supposed.