The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance
Ross King | 496 pgs | Atlantic Monthly Press
A thrilling chronicle set against the dramatic artistic and scientific advances and turmoil of the Renaissance in Florence, The Bookseller of Florence, by bestselling author Ross King, tells the forgotten story of “the king of the world’s booksellers,” Vespasiano da Bisticci.
Vespasiano produced and sold many hundreds of volumes from his bookshop over four decades at a time when all books were made by hand. Works of art in their own right, his books were copied by the finest scribes and miniaturists. He counted the elite as his patrons: popes, kings, and princes across Europe. Vespasiano reached the height of his influence as the era’s most prolific purveyor of knowledge when a new invention appeared in the 1450s: the printed book. Within 30 years, his world was upended by this technological disruption that brought cheap books to the masses.
BOOK DISCUSSION
The Bookseller of Florence
Join docent Matt Adams for a discussion of Ross King’s newest work which zeros in on the era when written communication shifted from handwritten manuscripts to printed pages.
MUSEUM STORE
The Bookseller of Florence is an ode to books and bookmaking that charts the shift from script to print through the life of an extraordinary, unknown titan of the Renaissance.