FORESTI, Giacomo Filippo [Jacobus Philippus DE BERGAMO]. Supplementum chronicarum. Venice: Bernardo Rizzo. 15 February 1492/93.
Folio. 16th-century limp vellum (seemingly reused from an earlier binding) with remains of ties, title in ink to spine and upper edge of text block, endpapers renewed; ff. [2], 256, [12] (collation: a10, b-z8, [et]8, [con]8, [rum]8, A-F8, 2A-B6), 60 lines and headline, a1r title, a1v frontispiece comprising woodcut vignettes of the six days of Creation enclosed within woodcut border, border repeated on a2r, 46 woodcuts from 39 blocks, woodcut initial on a2r, 2- to 6-line initials spaces with guide-letters, F8v colophon, printer’s device (Husung 194), 2A1r verses on Rizzo by Orlandinus Glerolus, tabula, B5v dedication to Magistrate of Bergamo, B6v blank; light creases and tiny worm holes to covers; some variable light staining, tiny worm holes to final leaf (one touching a letter), tiny worm hole to outer margin of ff. a1-b5 (far from printed surface), subtle minor repairs to lower margin of final leaves, else a very good, clean and fresh copy; some early marginal annotations and corrections in ink; note in a contemporary hand to f. 209v: “Epithaphium [sic] Dantis. Iura monarchiae superos … genuit parvi Florentia mater amoris. Ravannae in eius sepulchro Lapideo apud sanctum Franciscum” (see below); early 20th-century bookseller’s ticket “C. E. Rappaport Libri Rari Roma” to front pastedown.
Third illustrated edition, augmented with chronicle entries up to 1490, with a manuscript note about Dante by a contemporary reader.
Giacomo Filippo Foresti, also known as Jacobus Philippus de Bergamo (1434-1520), was an Augustinian friar from Solto in the territory of Bergamo. His Supplementum chronicarum was first printed in Venice by Bernardino Benali (Bernardinus Benalius) in 1483. Conceived as a general history, Foresti aimed to “gather in a single volume the noteworthy events deserving to be passed down to posterity, which until then had been scattered across various texts” (DBI, transl.). The narrative is divided into fifteen books, with events organised chronologically by year. The Supplementum enjoyed significant popularity, resulting in multiple incunable editions. The first illustrated edition was published by Benali as early 1486, and Bernardino Rizzo of Novara (Bernardus Rizus Novariensis) issued three editions within just two years, including the present illustrated one. Foresti’s work, moreover, inspired notable imitators, such as the German Hartmann Schedel (author of the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493) and the Dutch Jan van Naaldwijk.
The Supplementum was updated regularly, both by the author and, after his death in 1520, later publishers. Foresti dates the invention of printing to 1458, attributing it to either Gutenberg or Fust; “what is certain”, he concluded, “is that nothing in the world could be more praiseworthy, laudable, useful, divine, or blessed” (transl.). This edition covers events up to 1490, including the Spanish war against the Emirate of Granada. The final entry records the death of Matthias Corvinus on 6 April 1490. Rizzo reused many woodcuts from the earlier illustrated editions, but he also commissioned improved and recut views of Rome, Venice, Genoa, and Verona. Several other city views, however, remained imaginary and repeated. Additionally, he incorporated the decorative borders which had appeared earlier the same year in the Legenda Aurea printed by Manfredo Bonelli, as well as the Creation frontispiece and a Noah’s Ark cut from the 1490 edition of Niccolò Malermi’s Italian translation of the Bible.
Provenance: In the margin of the section dedicated to the life of the poet Dante Alighieri, an early annotator transcribed in full the poet’s epitaph, a Latin poem attributed to Bernardo Canaccio (1297-after 1357). This epitaph, describing Florence as “a mother of little love”, was engraved on Dante’s sarcophagus during its remodelling by Pietro Lombardo in 1483 and is also mentioned in Boccaccio’s Life of Dante. The annotation in this copy of Foresti’s work thus serves as a rare testament to Dante’s reception in the fifteenth century.
Goff J-212; ISTC ij00212000. See Megli Fratini, “FORESTI, Giacomo Filippo”, DBI, vol. 48 (1997).
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