Corio - Historia di Milano - 1554

MILANO WAS TOLD AS ETERNAL: Chronicle and Power in the Heart of Lombard Renaissance
L’Historia di Milano by Bernardino Corio, printed in Venice in 1554 by Giovan Maria Bonelli, represents one of the foundational texts of Milanese historical identity in the Renaissance period. Written in the vernacular, the work blends humanistic erudition, civic memory, and the political construction of the past, offering a continuous narrative from the city’s mythical origins to the imperial era. In an era marked by tensions between imperial power and local autonomies, Corio constructs an ancient, noble, and centrally placed Milan in the Italian and European panorama. The edition is ornamented with a printer’s mark on the frontispiece and at the end, bound in an elegant seventeenth-century parchment binding with a gilded spine plaque.
MARKET VALUE
Copies of the 1554 Venetian edition, complete and in good condition, with an old binding, generally range from 3,000 to 6,000 euros, with variations depending on the state of conservation, the presence of ancient manuscript Provenances, and the freshness of the paper. Exemplars with particularly wide margins or coeval bindings of high quality can surpass this range.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Frontispiece with an engraved printer’s mark; mark repeated at the end of the volume. Text in Roman type, arranged in two columns. Copy in a seventeenth-century full parchment binding, smooth spine with gold title on a plaque; sober boards, solid structure. Slight signs of use and handling consistent with the volume’s age; sporadic marginal foxing. Cards (1); 34; 557; (1)
Overall good conservation. In old books, with a centuries-long history, a few imperfections may be present, not always noted in the description.

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
L’Historia di Milano volgarmente scritta dall’eccellentissimo oratore M. Bernardino Corio gentil’huomo milanese. Nella quale non solamente si veggono l’origine, i fatti, & le fortune di essa Città nello spazio di duo mille e trecento anni; ma gli accidenti, & le revolutioni di quasi tutta l’Italia, & di molte Provincie, & Regni del Mondo ancora. Con le vite insieme di tutti gli Imperatori, incominciando da Giulio Cesare fino a Federico Barbarossa.
In Vinegia, per Giovan Maria Bonelli, 1554.
Bernardino Corio

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
L’Historia di Milano is considered one of the most important Milanese historiographical works of the Renaissance. Written in the vernacular, it sits within the tradition of great city histories of Italy, alongside Florentine and Venetian chronicles, but with an approach that aspires to a nearly universal dimension. Corio does not limit himself to local narration: the history of Milan becomes a mirror of the transformations of Italy and Europe, intertwining imperial events, conflicts among communes, dynastic struggles, and major political changes.
The second edition of 1554 consolidated the work’s fortune, spreading it at a moment when urban historical memory assumed identity and political value. The choice of the vernacular broadened its audience and contributed to the construction of a shared civic consciousness. The Venetian printer’s mark also testifies to the work’s insertion into the great publishing circuit of the Serenissima, a central hub of European printing in the sixteenth century.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Bernardino Corio (1459–1519), a Lombard humanist and historian, served the Sforzas and was deeply tied to the ducal court. Trained in the Lombard humanist milieu, he composed his Historia as both celebration and critical reflection on the city’s affairs. His work, the product of archival research and earlier chronicle tradition, contributed decisively to defining Milan’s historical image in the modern era.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The first edition of the Historia appeared in 1503. The Venetian reprint of 1554, described as “newly reprinted, and in many places reformed,” testifies to the text’s enduring fortune and its editorial updating. Venice, the printing capital of the time, guaranteed wide diffusion within the Italian and European context. The sixteenth-century editions of Corio are today sought after for both their historiographical value and their importance in the panorama of Italian municipal histories.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
EDIT16 – Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico, CORIO Bernardino, L’Historia di Milano, Venezia, Giovan Maria Bonelli, 1554 (censimenti e localizzazioni esemplari).
ICCU – OPAC SBN, record dell’edizione veneziana 1554 con indicazione delle biblioteche conservatrici.
Graesse, Trésor de livres rares et précieux, II, Dresden 1863, p. 274 (sub Corio).
Brunet, Manuel du libraire et de l’amateur de livres, II, Paris 1860, col. 273–274 (sub Corio).
Gamba, Serie dei testi di lingua e di altre opere importanti nella italiana letteratura, Venezia 1839, p. 203–204.
Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, VII, Modena 1789, pp. 121–123 (per il profilo storico-letterario di Corio).