Platina, Bartolomeo Sacchi - Vitae Pontificum - 1485

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Platina, Bartolomeo Sacchi. Vitae Pontificum. Treviso, impensa magistri Ioannis Vercellensis [Johannes Rubeus Vercellensis], 10 de febrero de 1485.
134 hojas. 30x20cm

This incunable is considered the first systematic manual of the history of the papacy. Platina combines medieval ecclesiastical sources with humanist historiography and the demand for literary elegance, and intertwines papal biographies with the history of kingdoms and empires, without sparing his own comments and harsh censures of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The text closes with the hostile portrait of Paul II, his former jailer, which conditioned the image of that pope for centuries.

It is the third incunable edition, after the Venetian edition (1479) and the Nuremberg edition (Koberger, 1481). It was the eighth and penultimate work that Giovanni Rosso de Vercelli printed in Treviso between 1480 and 1485, before moving his workshop to Venice.

This folio-sized work contains 134 leaves, with collation A10 B-Q8 R6, in roman type at 52 lines, with tiny titles and spaces for the initial letters and wide margins.

The binding is of flexible parchment and belongs to a 15th-century manuscript with some wear from use. The work is detached from it. Endpaper folded and with some tears. Stains of oxidation on some pages and a hole in the margin of the last leaves and in the center of the last.