Vespasiano da Bisticci

Who was Vespasiano da Bisticci?

Vespasiano da Bisticci was an Italian humanist and librarian .

Born near Rignano sull'Arno, not far from Florence, he was chiefly a dealer in books, or cartolaio, and had a share in the formation of all the great libraries of the time. When Cosimo de' Medici wished to create the Laurentian Library of Florence, Vespasiano advised him and sent him by Tommaso Parentucelli a systematic catalogue, which became the plan of the new collection. In twenty-two months Vespasiano had 200 volumes made for Cosimo by twenty-five copyists. Most of them were, under the circumstances, books of theology and liturgical chant.

He had performed important services for the diffusion of classical authors when Nicholas V, the true founder of the Vatican Library, became pope. He devoted fourteen years to collecting the library of Federico da Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, organizing it in a quite modern manner; it contained the catalogues of the Vatican, of San Marco, Florence, of the Visconti Library at Pavia, and Oxford.

Vespasiano had a limited knowledge of Latin, and he is one of the few writers of the time who acknowledged it. Untrained as a writer, but with a discernment and intelligence in the appraisal of important figures, he left a collection of 300 biographies that is a major source of shrewd observation and reliable facts for the history of 15th-century humanism: Vite di uomini illustri del secolo XV. He retired in 1480, disheartened by the advance of the printing press that was displacing the beautifully lettered manuscripts that were his stock in trade and his love. He is not to be compared to Italian historians such as Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini, but he depicts the atmosphere of the period and its intellectual life. His accounts plunge the reader into the social world of Florence; they contain delicate pictures of manners, charming portraits, noble female figures, of which last point it is possible to judge by reading the biography of Alessandro Bardi. The general tone is that of a moralist, who shows the dangers of the Renaissance, especially for women, warns against the reading of the novelists, and reproaches the Florentines with usury and illicit gains. Vespasiano is a panegyrist of Nicholas V, the great book-lover; he is severe to the point of injustice against Pope Callistus III, the indifferent lender of books, which, however, he did not give over to pillage, as Vespasiano accuses him of doing.