Vespasiano da Bisticci

Vespasian as Bisticci (* 1421, † 1498) was a Florentine bookseller and publisher.

Bisticci have held a workshop for making often splendidly decorated manuscripts and author of an extensive collection of biographies of contemporaries ( Vite di uomini del illustri secolo XV). This represents a significant source of the Italian early Renaissance, were but his principal for religious, political and intellectual elite of his time. Thus, this collection of biographies of his contemporaries contains among others by Cosimo de Medici, Lorenzo de Medici and Federico da Montefeltro, an important of Lorenzo's political opponents, such as that of popes and cardinals. Furthermore, it provides, inter alia, Biographies of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus and John Tiptoft, the Earl of Worcester. Particularly relates to the people of Florence or Rome. Women also come in his descriptions. At the rank of historical works of his contemporaries as Pope Pius II, Francesco Guicciardini or Machiavelli later his work, however, is not enough zoom. Nevertheless, it gives an impression of his time, from the characters of his contemporaries. It falls quite some critique of social conditions. He criticizes, for example, the rampant profiteering in Florence.

The bookseller Bisticci was also reflected in the promotion of ancient studies deserves. For example, collections of antiquities and studies of leading humanists such as Niccolo Niccoli purchased or the distribution supported by the copying of the copies. Even with Giannozzo Manetti he had relationships. Not least, it reveals itself on a biography to Manetti, which is represented in his collection. Yet his trade remained at paragraph copying of ancient texts, which were based predominantly on medieval copies, not limited to Florence, but at the same time formed the basis for the construction of libraries such as, inter alia, in Urbino, Federico da Montefeltro for the Bisticci put together. The collections of the popes have been served. Special support should Bisticci have received through the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici. So he may have also contributed to the foundation of actually emerged from the house library of Cosimo de Medici Laurentian Library in Florence. He is regarded generally as the first at the same time also pursued the commercial purpose of the copying. So he employed a number of copyists transcribing the texts, before he began to print this after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. It later followed other as, inter alia, Federico da Montefeltro, who employed a veritable staff of copyists. Bisticcis bookstore was also meeting point of the humanist circles at all.

Works

• Biographies of famous men of the Quattrocento / Vespasiano da Bisticci. Selected. , Trans. & Inlaid. v. Paul Schubring. - Jena. Diederichs, 1914 - XII, 380 S.: Ill.
• Great men and women of the Renaissance: thirty-eight biographical portraits / Vespasiano da Bisticci. Selected. , Trans. and introduced by Bernd Roeck. [ Translator's from the Ital. Under ... al. by Monika fur and Marcella Tantardini ], Munich 1995.
• Heinz -Willi Wittschier, Vespasian as Bisticci and Gianozzo Manetti, in: Romanesque research, volume 79, 1967, pp. 271 - 287