HISTORY of the BOOK: Spotlight

De Claris Mulieribus (On Famous Women) by Giacomo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo, 1497

Historical Background

Printed in Italy in 1497, UCLA’s copy of De Claris Mulieribus (full title De plurimis claris sceletisque mulieribus) was a well-known and popular moral encyclopedia of women’s biographies ranging from ancient to contemporary. Its author, an Augustinian monk named Giacomo Filippo Foresti da Bergamo (1434-1520) adapted his book from a very famous work of the same name printed in 1361 by Giovanni Boccaccio.

Dedicated to Beatrice of Aragon, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Foresti’s book narrates women’s lives from the Bible, the ancient world and classical mythology, as well as holy and famous Renaissance figures. It contains large, continuous blocks of text and 172 woodcuts of famous women (some of blocks reused throughout). The women’s images complement the first paragraph about their lives, deeds and accomplishments. The women's stories at the end of the book are of actual 15th century Italian noblewomen, but many of the other biographies are semi-mythical figures who would were well-known (like the Virgin Mary and goddesses from Roman myths) and used for education on morality and character.

The Images

The woodcuts of women in this book depict their subjects as static, posed portraits, not intended to imitate real life features or details; they function more as heraldic devices than realistic reproductions. Many of the woodcuts are used over and over, for women of similar statuses like empresses and queens. These woodcuts show a more generic deference and do not correlate to the text surrounding the image. In fact, some of the more negative and inflammatory texts (used as cautionary tales and moral lessons) clash considerably with the respectful, stately, or innocuous images of a renowned female figures in some of the woodcuts.

UCLA’s Copy of De Claris Mulieribus

This book, in a large folio-sized format, was rebound in the 19th or 20th century using cardboard boards. Its modern binding is a light brown half-calf with simple green pastedowns and boasts a blind and gilt tooled spine with “Bergomensis 1497” printed in gold. The binding shows signs of wear, with discoloration and minor deterioration like wormholes, but also there are some paper repairs, which tells us that this book was important to someone who had access to book conservation.

A magnificent title page sets the tone for the volume, printed with in a large, imposing, Italian blackletter typeface. Proof of multiple provenances is identifiable on the title page, which is sprinkled with inscriptions from the past entities who previous enjoyed the book. One amendment blacks out a letter in the title text as a “correction” of the Latin itself.

This copy has 172 woodcuts, including the repeated images, from 56 separate blocks. On the first few pages, a very elaborate full-page woodcut of an architectural border frames a centered woodcut of Giacomo Foresti presenting his book to Beatrice of Aragon. Another two full-page border lavishly decorates the first few paragraphs of text, including a detailed compilation of eight images illustrating milestones in the Virgin Mary’s life, whose biography is first in the book.

The typeface is a heavy, but neat and even, gothic typeface in Latin, with abbreviations. The book offers a “Tabula” or table of contents, which is alphabetized by the women’s names with the page number in Roman numerals on where to find their stories. It also has running titles and is quite easy to navigate. It was not printed with catchwords, but signatures are present throughout. Printed glosses and manuscript marginalia have been partially trimmed off, which is evidence of the textblock having been cut down for rebinding, perhaps more than once.

Conclusion

The 14th century Boccaccio work that inspired Foresti’s On Famous Women is considered by Susan Gaylord to be “Europe’s first postclassical history of women,” in her article on imagery of Renaissance women. The common content from the original Boccaccio and its descendants (Foresti included) has been considered both feminist and misogynist for its opposing views on women’s reputations and mythologies. Foresti added many contemporary women in his work and omitted some of the original classical biographies. His book was a major influence on the 16th century fashion for portrait books, but there are also versions of his text printed without images. His work would continue to influence the genre of encyclopedias of women's biographies for centuries to come.

References

“[De claris mulieribus],” University of California, Los Angeles Library Catalog entry, BELT* A1 .F762d. Accessed February 17, 2020.

Allen, Prudence and Filippo Salvatore. “Lucrezia Marinelli and Woman’s Identity in Late Italian Renaissance,” Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Fall 1992). Pp 5-39.

Gaylord, Susan. “De mulieribus claris and the Disappearance of Women from Illustrated Print Biographies,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, Vol 18, No. 2 (September 2015), pp. 287-318, The University of Chicago Press.

Goff, Frederick R. “Incunabula in the Library of Congress,” Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1944), pp. 3-14. Library of Congress.

Gundersheimer, Werner L. “Bartolommeo Goggio: A Feminist in Renaissance Ferrara,” Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 2 (Summer, 1980), pp. 175-200. Cambridge University Press.