Segreti : estratti di un libro di C. P., il mese di Novembre, l'anno 1614.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Author/Creator:

Medici, Antonio de', 1576-1621, compiler.

Contributor:

Porta, Giambattista della, approximately 1535-1615.

Teniers, David, 1610-1690, artist.

Couché, François-Louis, 1782-1849, engraver.

Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

Italian

Subjects (All):

Alchemy--Early works to 1800.

Alchemy.

Medicine--Formulae, receipts, prescriptions--Early works to 1800.

Medicine.

Medicine--Formulae, receipts, prescriptions.

Genre:

codices (bound manuscripts)

diagrams

seals (marks)

Engravings

Recipes.

Manuscripts, Italian -- 17th century.

Manuscripts, European.

Penn Provenance:

Sold by Martayan Lan (New York) to Lawrence J. Schoenberg, May 2002.

Deposit by Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle, 2012.

Gift of Barbara Brizdle Schoenberg, 2019.

Physical Description:

368 leaves : paper ; 106-290 x 70-205 mm bound to 320 x 235 mm

Production:

[Florence], 1614.

Language Note:

Italian, with occasional passages in Latin.

Summary:

Extensive collection of alchemical and medical recipes copied and compiled by Antonio de' Medici over a number of years, written on paper of widely varying dimensions. Many items were posted to the compiler and therefore display folds, addresses, and remnants of seals. One such item is a recipe for erections from Giambattista della Porta (f. 100r-103v), posted from Naples. Other areas of interest represented in the collection include glassmaking, magnets, and astrology (horoscope for a birth date in August 1576, probably for Antonio de' Medici, f. 109v). Some leaves previously very fragile due to oxidation; treatment completed in 2023 (Steven Miller Conservation Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania Libraries).

Notes:

Ms. codex.

Title from title page (f. 3r).

Foliation: Paper, i (18th-century paper) + 368 + i (18th-century paper); earlier pagination in pencil only on pages with writing, upper outer corners; modern foliation in pencil, lower right recto, [1-368]. References in this record are to foliation.

Script: Written in cursive script, by the hand of Antonio de' Medici and many others.

Decoration: Diagrams of laboratory apparatus in ink (f. 139r, 279r); occasional manicules (for example, f. 50r, 59v); late 18th or early 19th-century engraving by François-Louis Couché based on a painting by David Teniers of an alchemist in his laboratory, inside upper cover.

Binding: Contemporary (early 17th-century) heavy cartonato; ink title on spine abraded and illegible; pastedown and flyleaf inside each cover formed from a printed leaf from the geographical index of Lodovico Antonio Muratori's Rerum italicarum scriptores, published in Milan in multiple volumes from 1723 to 1751.

Origin: Collected in Florence in 1614 (title page, f. 3r); component items written in various Italian cities with dates of 1608 (f. 176v); 1610 (f. 180v), 1612 (Giambattista della Porta recipe, f. 102r), 1613 (f. 2r, 22r, 218r, 222v, 226v, 253r, 355r), and 1614 (f. 38r, 69r, 134r).

Cited in:

Described in Transformation of knowledge: early manuscripts from the collection of Lawrence J. Schoenberg (London: Paul Holberton, 2006), p. 112 (LJS 448).

Cited as:

Antonio de' Medici, Segreti (Oversize LJS 448). Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.

OCLC:

802354158

Access Restriction:

Access to this item is subject to staff review.

Online:

The Lawrence J. Schoenberg and Barbara Brizdle Manuscript Initiative Fund Home Page