Giacomo Mazzocchi

Who was Giacomo Mazzocchi?

Giacomo Mazzocchi, in Latin on his titlepages Jacobus Mazochius, was a learned bookseller, printer, and noted antiquarian in papal Rome during the High Renaissance. For humanists he might publish such scholarly works as the first printed repertory of Roman inscriptions, Epigrammata Antiquae Urbis, a folio of some 3,000 inscriptions, mostly of epitaphs, in which his collaborator was the Florentine priest Francesco Albertini. For even more limited circulation he published ephemera that have become bibliographical rarities, but that show him as a trusted printer for the inner circle of Roman humanists: a tract on Roman calendars, a letter on sculptures in the Cortile del Belvedere by the nephew of the famous Pico della Mirandola, or twelve panegyrics composed by Petrus Franciscus Justulus of Spoleto, honouring the Papal nephew Cesare Borgia.

At the same time, under the title Carmina Apposita Pasquino, he published annual collections of satirical pasquinades that were circulating in Rome, which had been applied furtively by night to the Pasquino or other talking statues of Rome. Presumably Mazzocchi omitted any of these that were too critical of the Pope or the curia, for Mazzocchi, under papal privilege, also published the bullae of the Third Lateran Council, 1512.