Taccuinum Sanitatis

Item data

Title

Taccuinum Sanitatis

Date / Origin

Date Created: 1460 (Approximate)
Place: Ferrara?

Library Location

Spencer Collection
Shelf locator: Spencer Coll. MS. 65

Genres

Manuscripts
Drawings
Illustrations
Botanical Illustrations

Notes

Citation/Reference: Kup article. Dictionary catalog. Library dossier. Listed in Digital Scriptorium, University of California, Berkeley.
Content: Most pages have two quarters devoted to pictures and two to text (4 to about 20 lines). A few pages are full text. No visible ruling.
Content: 408 colored drawings of plants, trees, food, animals, and activities.
Content: Red and blue initials with opposing-color decoration. Placemarkers.
Date: Dated to ca. 1475 by notes in dossier; in a northern Italian dialect. Acc. to Kup, the direct ancestor of the illustration cycle in our ms. is the Latin Tacuinum Vienna ONB 2644 (from ca. 1385 for the Cerruti family; facsimile in bibliography).
Content: Compiled in Arabic by Ibn Butlan, late 11th c., deriving from Dioscorides. A Tacuinum ms. in Vienna with ownership note from 1472, very like this ms., is ascribed to Cadamosto (as translator?). Here, table of contents, ff. 1-2v.
Biographical/Historical: Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts are vehicles of the collective memory of western European culture, and provide a material connection between the scribes, illuminators, and patrons who produced these works and the audiences who view them today. The works represent diverse genres, from Bibles and missals to romance literature and science texts. Dating from the turn of the 10th century until well into the period of the Renaissance, these works give vivid testimony to the creative impulses of the often nameless craftsmen who continually discovered new ways of animating the contents of hand-produced books through inventive and sometimes exuberant manipulations of all the elements of the book: form and format, layout, script, decoration, illustration, and binding. Drawn from the Spencer Collection and the Manuscripts and Archives Division, the New York Public Library’s collections of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts focus on the 9th through the 16th centuries -- seven hundred years of political, ecclesiastical, social, and intellectual change in Western Europe and the world.

Physical Description

Extent: 109 leaves, bound : paper, ink, manuscript, illuminations ; 393 x 281 mm
Paper

Languages

Italian

Identifiers

NYPL Catalog ID (bnumber): b22850158
Photo Order: 51453
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): f9c63e40-1325-0131-64c7-58d385a7bbd0

Rights

The New York Public Library believes that this item is in the public domain under the laws of the United States, but did not make a determination as to its copyright status under the copyright laws of other countries. This item may not be in the public domain under the laws of other countries. Though not required, if you want to credit us as the source, please use the following statement, "From The New York Public Library," and provide a link back to the item on our Digital Collections site. Doing so helps us track how our collection is used and helps justify freely releasing even more content in the future.

Type Of Resource

Text
Still Image

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