Giacomo Mazzocchi

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Giacomo Mazzocchi, in Latin on his titlepages Jacobus Mazochius, (working 1509[1] — 1527) was a learned bookseller, printer, and noted antiquarian in papal Rome during the High Renaissance.[2] For humanists he might publish such scholarly works as the first printed repertory of Roman inscriptions, Epigrammata Antiquae Urbis (April 1521), a folio of some 3000 inscription, mostly of epitaphs, in which his collaborator was the Florentine priest Fra Francesco Albertini.[3] For even more limited circulation he published ephemera that have become bibliographical rarities, but that show him as a trusted printer for the inner circle of Roman hiumanists: a tract on Roman calendars (1509),[4] a letter on sculptures in the Cortile del Belvedere by the nephew of the famous Pico della Mirandola (1513),[5] or twelve panegyrics composed by Petrus Franciscus Justulus of Spoleto, honouring the Papal nephew Cesare Borgia (1510).[6]

At the same time, under the title Carmina Apposita Pasquino, he published annual collections of satirical pasquinades that were circulating in Rome, which had been applied furtively by night to the Pasquino or other talking statues of Rome. Presumably Mazzocchi omitted any of these that were too critical of the Pope or the curia,[7] for Mazzocchi, under papal privilege also published the bullae of the Third Lateran Council, 1512.[8]

He disappeared during the Sack of Rome (1527) and nothing subsequent is known of him.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ ViaLibri: Books of 1509: Procopius, De Bello Persico: the first Latin translation, and the first notice of Mazzocchi as a printer; a bibliography of books published by Mazzocchi is F. Ascarelli, Annali di Giacomo Mazzocchi (Florence) 1961.
  2. ^ D.S. Rhodes, "Further notes on Publisher Giacomo Mazzocchi", Papers of the British School at Rome 40 (1972:239-42).
  3. ^ "Inscriptions of the Ancient City [of Rome]". Mazzocchi signs the dedication, but the antiquarian and bibliographer "Gorio" accused him of dishonesty and ascribed the collection of Roman inscriptions to "Francesco degli Albertini" [sic] (The Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge vol. I pt ii (London, 1842) s.v. "Albertini, Francesco degli" ) but The Cambridge Modern History (1902: vol. I:549) ascribes the work to Mazzocchi and his "collaborator" Francesco Albertini. Illustration of the open book); for the scholarly context of this publication, see W. Stenhouse Reading Inscriptions and Writing Ancient History. Historical Scholarship in the Late Renaissance (Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 86) University of London, 2005.
  4. ^ Untitled tract of 1509 in the British Library, Case 125 dd 22, noted in Ruth Olitsky Rubinstein, "'Tempus edax rerum': A Newly Discovered Painting by Hermannus Posthumus" The Burlington Magazine 127, No. 988 (July 1985):425-36) p. 426, note.
  5. ^ E. H. Gombrich, "Hypnerotomachiana" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14.1/2 (1951:119-125), noted p. 123, note 1.
  6. ^ R. Garnett, "A Laureate of Caesar Borgia" The English Historical Review 17 No. 65 (January 1902:15-19) p. 15.
  7. ^ As Robert W. Scheller remarks in passing, "L'union des princes: Louis XII, His Allies and the Venetian Campaign 1509" Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 27.4 (1999:195-242) p. 207.
  8. ^ ViaLibri: Books from 1512: "Concilium Lateranense V"