L’occhio sul presente. Varia cultura di due codici riconducibili a Gaspare Ambrogio Visconti

Two codices are examined in this paper, the Italian Ms. 1543 of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and the Sessoriano Ms. 413 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome. It has been confirmed that they were commissioned by Gaspare Visconti, who had them prepared in rapid succession, between 1492 and 1496. Gaspare saw to the transcription of anything new and notable that came into his possession – whether the work of high-flown or almost unknown authors from Milan, Lombardy or elsewhere in the Italian peninsula. The manuscripts contain Latin, Tuscan and vernacular texts, written in prose or verse and concerning poetical, literary, theatrical, historical, annalistic and fictional matters. Such variety shows Gaspare’s breadth of interests, while the uniqueness which characterizes many of them from a philological and historical-critical point of view makes his cultural operation even more noteworthy.