Add MS 78158

Teofilo Gallaccini: bound volume composed of sheets and notebooks mostly in the hand of the Sienese scholar Teofilo Gallaccini (b.1564, d.1641); 17th cent. Latin and Italian. The volume, bearing the title 'Diverse Raccoltre dal Gallaccini', f. 1, is mainly composed of informal notes and sketches, written and drawn by Teofilo Gallaccini, antiquarian, mathematician and architectural theorist, and tutor to Fabio Chigi (b.1599, d.1667), who assumed the title Alexander VII when he became pope in 1655. Notable contents includes Gallaccini's drawings of ancient Romans bathing, after Pirro Ligorio, f. 2, extracts copied from Girolamo Mercurialis' De Arte Gymnastica, with additional comments and explanatory drawings by Gallaccini in the margins, ff. 8 et seq., and antique inscriptions, ff. 35 et seq., the last of which may have contributed to the inscriptions collected for possible publication by Pope Alexander VII, Vatican, MSS Chigi I. V.164, 165, 166. The letter of Leon Battista Alberti to Matteo de' Pasti, 18 Nov. 1454, once included within the present volume, numbered as '54', has been replaced by a twentieth-century reproduction, f. 31. The original is now in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, see Cecil Grayson, An Autograph Letter from Leon Battista Alberti to Matteo de' Pasti, November 18, 1454 (New York, 1957). For a more detailed listing of the contents, and the manuscript's possible relationship to the three volumes of inscriptions collected by Alexander VII, see Patricia Collins, 'Manoscritti Autografi di Teofilo Gallaccini in Gran Bretagna', Siena 1600 Circa: Dimenticare Firenze. Teofilo Gallaccini (1564-1641) e l'Eclisse Presunta di una Cultura Architettonica (Sienna, 1999), pp. 201-205. Another autograph manuscript by Gallaccini, containing his Trattato sopra gli Errori degli Architetti, dated 1625 and dedicated to Pope Urban VIII's doctor, Giulio Mancini (b.1558, d.1630), is also held at the British Library, catalogued as MS King's 281. According to Giovanni Girolamo Carli (b.1719, d.1786), Secretary of the Academia Reale of Mantua, the present manuscript was owned, along with King's 281 and other items, by Canon Antonio Amerighi, in Siena, see Patricia Collins, op. cit., p. 202. Acquired by the Monastery of S. Michael di Murano, Venice, 'codex num. 109', where a detailed inventory of its contents was drawn up by its abbot, Giovanni Benadetto Mittarelli, posthumously published as J. B. Mittarelli, Bibliotheca Codicum Manuscriptorum Monasterii S. Michaelis Venetiarum prope Murianam (Venice, 1779), cols. 431-433, with description and edition of the Alberti letter, cols. 663-664. Anicio Bonucci's claim that the Alberti letter, if not the whole volume, was still at S. Michele in 1847 (A. Bonucci (ed.), Opera Volgari di Leon Battista Alberti, vol. IV (Florence, 1847), p. 391) has been dismissed as conjecture, since the library of S. Michael was largely dispersed circa 1810, Cecil Grayson, op. cit., pp. 3-4. Unidentified sale catalogue description of the manuscript tipped in, early 20th cent., f. ii. Purchased of a London book dealer in 1982 by Patricia Collins, who presented it to the British Library, 19 Oct. 2001.

Paper; ff. iii+166. Largest leaves 300 x 215mm. Worn binding of thick brown card, patterned to resemble leather, with the title 'Gallaccini Raccolta Sanese MS' on spine.