Ordino altresì in Treuigi, secondo il suo disegno la pittura della Giustizia, della Misericordia, e della Coscienza nella sala del Vescovado, perche quegli, che quiui giudicaua, hauesse alle dipinta cose particular riguardo.

Francesco da Barberino

Francesco da Barberino, the author, and Francesco da Barberino, the scribe, were perhaps not two separate individuals, that mistake in the scholarship coming about from Federigo Ubaldini’s 1640 Renaissance edition of the Documenti d’Amore carried out for the Barberini Popes, where he claimed that the father of the author, Francesco da Barberino, was one “Neri di Rinuccio da Barberino da Valdelsa”.Footnote 1 This led to the false identification of the Documenti’s author as being the notary who signed himself as “Et Ego Franciscus Neri da Barberino” who had atrocious handwriting and had long disappeared from the archival records after 1302.Footnote 2 Instead we have the very active, versatile, and long-lived “Ser Franciscus ser Nardi de barberino vallis pese…”,Footnote 3 who was Dante’s fellow student, whose handwriting was excellent in cancelleresca (in the Commedia manuscripts likely copying Dante’s own use of that script); in littera textualis (in the Tesoro manuscript, imitating Brunetto’s own lovely rounded hand, Plate XXXIIIFootnote 4), in perhaps commissioned libraria or his own third hand (in the recently found Officiolum and in the BML Strozzi 146 Tesoretto); and who had himself also authored the Officiolum, the Documenti d’Amore, the Reggimenti delle Donne, and the lost Fiore Novelle, perhaps Il Fiore. This chapter will show that Francesco da Barberino, unlike Dante, would return from exile to Florence and proceed energetically to rehabilitate his fellow student perhaps with the Bargello 20 fresco of him (Plate XV) and the publication of multiple copies of the Commedia.

Though scholars for centuries accepted Federigo Ubaldini’s 1640 mistaken identification of Francesco da Barberino as being “Francesco da Barberino di ser Neri”, this chapter will propose instead that it was “Franciscus ser Nardi”, the married cleric with daughters needing dowries, who was author of the Officiolum, the Documenti d’Amore, the Reggimenti delle Donne, and the Fiore Novelle, while himself illustrating the Officiolum and the Documenti. It will also show that he could be the illuminator known as the “Master of the Dominican Effigies” and the “Tesoretto Master”. He was the head of the officina employing scribes, rubricators, and miniaturists, some even prisoners in the Stinche and elsewhere, producing copies of manuscripts, including those by their teacher, Brunetto Latino, and the Commedia of his fellow student, Dante Alighieri, the “Danti del Cento”, using the efficient Arabic method for copying multiple manuscripts.Footnote 5 This “Francesco di ser Nardi” lived a long life until struck down at 84 in the Black Death in 1348, and who is buried in 43. Santa Croce with an epitaph written by Giovanni Boccaccio that echoes the writings of both Brunetto and Dante.Footnote 6

In “Chapter 2: Dante’s Circle in Space” we had sought Dante among the columns, churches, towers, and palaces built from stone still to be found in Florence. In this “Chapter 4: Dante’s Colleague, Dante’s Editor” we seek instead to find his presence, that of his teacher, and those of his fellow students, on parchment inscribed in ink, by consulting manuscripts in libraries and documents in archives and their scripts. The Commune of Florence, we noted, published a booklet in 1865 on the true 25. Dante House in which they also gave a facsimile of Dante’s relative’s signature as “Alagerius”, a judge and notary,Footnote 7 from a document now in the Florentine State Archives but which had been held by the Olivetans of 44. San Miniato al Monte (Plate II ASF 1239 Settembre 29, Firenze, S. Miniato al Monte).Footnote 8 In that document in the State Archives of Florence we can see that his parent typically wrote the letter “r” as extending below the line, seen in the words, merito, juramenti, -stare, expedire, brigauiunt, jure, possidere, etc.

Then we have the signature of Brunetto Latino, Dante Alighieri’s guardian, in a rounded Chancery script or cancelleresca, used in writing legal documents (Plate IV a, b, ASS 20 April, 11 June 1254, Plate VI ASF, Libro di Montaperti, 1260, fols. 33r–35r, Plate XXXIII a, ASF, Cap. Fir., Reg. 29, 25 August 1254, San Lorenzo, fol. 191r; b, ASF, Libro di Montaperti, 1260, fol. 33r; c, Vatican Secret Archives, Misc. Instr. 99, detail, 1263, Plate XXXVI; c, Vatican Secret Archives, Instr. Misc. 99; d, Westminster Abbey, Muniment 12843, 1254), as well as others, totaling ten signed documents in his hand, as well as the Libro di Montaperti which is unsigned.

A hand that could be hypothesized as Dante’s in both juvenile and mature manuscripts compromises between these two other scripts, using the “r” that descends below the line of his relative’s habitual use and the letters being taller and less rounded than his teacher’s, yet now imbibing his teacher’s skill in a flowing cancelleresca or Chancery hand that Leonardo Bruni describes he saw in some Epistles Dante wrote: “fu ancora scrittore perfetto, ed era la lettera sua magra e lunga, e molto corretta, secondo io ho veduto” [he had perfect writing and his letters were thin and tall and very correct, according to what I saw].Footnote 9 Here we may be seeing, in this chapter’s Plate XXXIX a, b, Dante’s juvenile script copying out Brunetto’s Tesoretto, BRicc 2908, fol. 16v, and copying out Brunetto’s Rettorica, BNCF II.IV.124, fol. 1r, while the third example, c, is perhaps Dante’s mature script copying out Brunetto’s Tesoro, BML Plut.42.20, fol. 17r, a hand also to be found in BAV Chig L.VI.210. Perhaps also in the BAV lat 3793 Canzoniere he was copying out Sicilian and Florentine lyrics composed between 1276 and 1300, including those by Ser Brunetto Latino and Ser Guglielmo Beroardi, continuing that same “r” below the line, though folio 99v, which gives his own “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore”, is by a different scribe.

The hand of the scribe, which I hypothesize as being Dante’s, clearly became more mature in the two Tesoro manuscripts, BML Plut 42.20 and BAV Chig L.VI.210, but continued to use the familial “r” extending below the line. The spelling and vocabulary are consistently the same in both the immature Tesoretto and Rettorica versions and the two mature Tesoro versions. It is a cancelleresca or Chancery hand that fits Leonardo Bruni’s description while the majority of the other cluster of the 1280–1290 period Tesoro manuscripts, written in littera textualis, literary script, do not. Nor will his son Pietro copy his father’s hand.Footnote 10

Plate XL a. Tesoro, BNCF II.VIII.36, fol. 31v, dated 1286, Lunar Tables; c, d, BNCF II.VIII.36, fols. 82v–84r with horoscope; Dante’s hand, b, BML Plut.42.20, fol. 110v, gives an interesting comparison. The Tesoro manuscript of 1286 (BNCF II.VIII.36) is in littera textualis and clearly does not fit Leonardo Bruni’s description. I like to hypothesize that it could be by Guido Cavalcanti. Its horoscope and its Sommetta, studied by Helene Wieruszowski, with its formulae in Italian for writing to Popes and Emperors, to Archbishop Ruggieroì of Pisa about Ugolino della Gherardesca, and so forth, gives names closely connected with Brunetto’s coeval diplomacy which he is carefully teaching to his students and which will reappear in the Commedia.Footnote 11 Dante tells us they were being taught their Latin through Italian,Footnote 12 while early commentators say Brunetto wrote his students’ horoscopes.Footnote 13 Guidi Cavalcanti is named with Brunetto Latino in 1284–1285 communal documents concerning Ugolino della Gherardesca.Footnote 14

Of this cluster there are two other Tesoro manuscripts, BAmbrosian, G75 sup, and BNCF Magl VIII.1375, with the most complete Sicilian Vespers account and with astronomical drawings.Footnote 15 The Li Livres du Tresor in French had made use of Alfraganus’ Almagest, acquired by Brunetto in Spain, but this group of Tesoro manuscripts of the 1280s–1290s instead switches to using Gossuin de Metz’ Image du Monde, known by Brunetto during his exile in northern France, here translated into Tuscan Italian. All this cluster of manuscripts was carefully studied by Adolfo Mussafia,Footnote 16 Michele Amari,Footnote 17 and Sonia Minutello, though largely ignored by other scholars as they tend to vary, being incomplete and disordered, like lecture notes.Footnote 18

When Francesco da Barberino (whom I suggest is Dante’s fellow student) copied out or had copied Brunetto’s writings, the Rettorica (BNCF II.IV.127), the Tesoretto (BML Strozzi 146), the Tesoro (BML Plut.42.19), he took to imitating his Maestro’s rounded cancelleresca in libraria or littera textualis scripts, but with his fellow student’s Commedia, he was imitating, as described by Leonardo Bruni, Dante’s tall, fluent cancelleresca. (Plate XLI a, b, c, BML Plut.90 sup.125, Commedia, signed, Francesco da Barberino, 1347 at 83; d, Purgatorio, BTrivulzian 1080, scribe and miniaturist, signed, Francesco da Barberino, 1337).

Teresa De Robertis has expertly identified Francesco da Barberino’s two differing, but signed, hands (Fig. 1):

Fig. 1
A textbox with 3 pieces of text in a foreign language.

Comparison of Francesco da Barberino’s littera textualis and cancelleresca hands, Teresa De Robertis

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Fig. 2
3 sketch drawings. Left, a man dressed in robes and a large hat, sits at a small desk with a book, and looks out the window behind him. Center, a close up view of sketch on the left, focuses on 2 books behind the man. Right, a scene where many older men are seated on the ground reading or writing. A few cherubic figures are in the background.

Nicholas Poussin and Andrea Camessei, engravings to the edition of Francesco da Barberino, Documenti d’Amore, Rome, 1640

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Francesco’s entrepreneurship improved on Dante’s wastefulness and poor quality of parchment by creating texts that were both economically profitable yet eminently readable. Francesco “ser Nardi de Barberino” clearly copied their teacher’s Arabic industrializing practice that Brunetto Latino had observed in Seville at the court of Alfonso X el Sabio in 1260, of causing many copies to be made by multiple scribes,Footnote 19 in his Florentine officina, following his return there from exile. Of the Commedia’s legendary 100 copies made for his daughters’ dowries, the “Danti del Cento”, some sixty manuscripts survive.Footnote 20

Exiled like Dante from Florence, Francesco became a professor of literature in Padua and witnessed Giotto’s frescoing of the Arena Chapel there (Documenti d’Amore, “Hanc Padue in Arena optime pinsit Giotto”).Footnote 21 Francesco’s own writings, the Officiolum, which is exquisitely illuminated, the Documenti d’Amore, BAV Barb.lat.4076,Footnote 22 which is sketchily illuminated and roughly written in two languages, Italian poetry and Latin prose commentary, in different scripts in the manner of Bolognan legal commentaries, the Latin commentary’s tiny script being like that tiny script labeling the BML Strozzi 146 Tesoretto drawings, the unillustrated Reggimenti delle Donne, and the questionable Fiore (whose manuscript’s original provenance was Padua, then Troyes, then Dijon, finally Montpellier, and which is not in his hand)Footnote 23 are all early, the Officiolum likely created in Padua before or after Francesco was Notaio in Treviso to Corso Donati as Podestà. Whether in his own writings or when illustrating Brunetto’s works, Francesco, unlike Dante, in these texts used figures from personification allegory, the “Allegory of the Poets”. Dante’s teaching in the Commedia would be carried out through “chronicling” once flesh and blood people, using a pseudo-incarnational “Allegory of the Theologians”, mainly male, while Francesco’s teaching was through creating a virtual reality metaverse of allegorical Virtues and Vices, mainly female. The two writers are both similar, yet different.

Francesco da Barberino went from first Padua to Treviso to be Notaio to Corso Donati who was Podestà of that city, 1304–1309, both cities also visited by Dante. Francesco having already seen Giotto at work frescoing the Arena Chapel in Padua, in Treviso commissioned in turn the now lost fresco of the allegory of Justice: “Ordino altresì in Treuigi, secondo il suo disegno la pittura della Giustizia, della Misericordia, e della Coscienza nella sala del Vescovado, perche quegli, che quiui giudicaua, hauesse alle dipinta cose particular riguardo” [Commissioned in Treviso, according to his design, the scene of Justice, of Mercy, and of Conscience for the Bishop’s Hall, so that those in judgment there would have particular regard].Footnote 24 Francesco in this was anticipating Siena’s allegorical Good and Bad Government frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in particular their Giottesque figures of Justice (Plate XLV a, b, c, d, e).Footnote 25

Chronicle accounts are extremely negative concerning Corso Donati, Dino Compagni, as we noted, comparing him to a new Catiline,Footnote 26 but we do have the surprises, not only of his presence next to Dante in the 20. Bargello fresco (Plate XV Podestà’s Palace), according to Vasari,Footnote 27 but also that Taddeo Alderotti dedicated his Consilia medicina to him.Footnote 28 It is interesting that the beautiful 1474 Treviso editio princeps of Il Tesoro is the same “Second Redaction” Tesoro text as is Francesco da Barberino’s manuscript of Il Tesoro in BML 42.19, both of which return to the “First Redaction” form of the Piccardan French Li Livres dou Tresor, such as in the Verona Capitolare DVIII manuscript with its Dandalò associations to Francesco da Barberino, and both state they are written for “per amor del suo nimicho” [for love of his enemy].Footnote 29 Francesco was seeking to teach the Black Guelf oligarch Corso Donati, Brunetto Latino’s precepts concerning Good Government by the Podestà, previously taught so by Brunetto Latino himself to the tyrannical Charles of Anjou concerning the love of God, of neighbor, and of enemy.

Francesco wrote, as did Dante, Epistles to the Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg (who is portrayed by Pacino di Bonaguida in Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica, Emperor Henry VII, BAV Chig L.VII.296, fol. 197v), in the style Brunetto had taught them.Footnote 30

At the same time that Dante was writing the De Monarchia and had already been writing simultaneously the De vulgari eloquentia in Latin and the Convivio in Italian, it was perhaps Francesco who commissioned the two important manuscript compilations, likewise of texts in Latin and in Italian, that include Brunetto’s texts of the Aristotelian Ethics and Ciceronian Orations, Brunetto’ scathing Epistle to Pavia, here claiming it is written in Bologna “in studio bononiensis” by “Francesco Latino” (BRicc 1538, fols. 51v–61r). Both manuscripts are dated as being completed in 1313, one in Latin, which opens with images of the Emperor and the Pope, BML Plut.89 inf.41; the other in Italian, and which had the “Master of the Paduan Antiphoners” and the “Master of the Naples’ Gratian” sumptuously illuminate the bildercodex, BRicc 1538, its scribe, Bertus de Blanchus (Plate XIII a, BML Plut.89 inf.41,Footnote 31 fol. 1r, b, BRicc 1538, fol. 1r). It could well be that Francesco studied with the two miniaturists to learn how to illuminate his own texts and those of his teacher, Brunetto Latino, and of his fellow student, Dante Alighieri (who had himself painted angels, as he tells us, Vita nova XXXIV;Footnote 32 Leonardo Bruni also speaking of Dante’s skill in drawing, “di sua mano egregiamente disegnava”Footnote 33). The later fully illustrated BL Egerton 943 Commedia is similarly illuminated by the “Master of the Paduan Antiphoners”, while its libraria hand matches that of the Tesoretto (BML Strozzi 146), which I believe is either by Francesco da Barberino or commissioned by him. Could Francesco da Barberino and the “Master of the Paduan Antiphoners” have worked together on this Egerton 943 manuscript at Dominican Santa Maria Novella in the 1330s? It is clear that the Paduan Master is responsible for both BRicc 1538 in part and the whole of BL Egerton 943, while the colors of the later manuscript are darker than in the earlier Bolognan/Paduan context.Footnote 34

In the year, 1313, Francesco’s annus mirabilis, when he perhaps commissioned these two major manuscripts, BML Plut.89 inf. 41, BRicc 1538, we learn that he was notaio, judge, and scribe, having studied and taught literature at Padua, «vacando diutius studio litterarum, adeo in scientia Iuris vtriusque profeci … In Jure Canonico, & Ciuili», that [leaving the long study of literature he now undertook to become proficient in the science of canon and civil law], and also that he was married with children, “clericus conjugatus”, all this information given in the Papal Bull granted by Clement V at Avignon, 29 March 1313.Footnote 35

Following Padua, Treviso, and Bologna, Francesco worked for the 51st Venetian Doge, Giovanni Soranzo (1312–1328), on embassy to Avignon, Picardy, Navarre, and elsewhere, meeting among others Jean de Joinville. From association with Venetian Dandalò family members, who provided the 48th, 52nd, and 54th Doges of Venice, it could be conjectured that it was Francesco who was responsible for the Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare, DVIII, “First Redaction” Li Livres dou Tresor, presented to a Dandalò and bound with their arms.Footnote 36 Like Brunetto before him he was trilingual and proficient in Italian, French, and Latin.

It is interesting that all these writers so deeply connected with each other had their greatest periods of composing texts during their exiles, Brunetto with his three works, Rettorica, Tesoretto, Li Livres dou Tresor, in northern France, Francesco with the Officiolum, the Documenti d’Amore, the Reggimenti delle Donne, and the attributed Fiore Novelle, in Padua, Treviso, Bologna, Verona, and elsewhere, Dante with the De Monarchia, the De Vulgari eloquentia, the Convivio, the Commedia, all written in exile, only his lyrics, and the Vita nova recycling them, in Florence. When Brunetto and Francesco returned to Florence they took to more mundane tasks, to politics, and to publishing, adopting the Arabic practice learned from Alfonso X el Sabio of lectures dictated to multiple scribes, resting on their laurels. As with Boethius in his writing the Consolation of Philosophy on Death Row in prison, all three, Brunetto, Francesco, and Dante, exemplify Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy when in a condition rendering them meaningless, while the two who successfully returned to Florence ceased that creative activity as no longer an imperative for recovering shattered identities.Footnote 37

Brunetto had already written of the trauma of his exile, Tesoro, BML Plut 42.19, fol. 11r:

Et di ciò sae mastro burnecto latino la di=/ ritta ueritade. che fu nato di quella terra. Et al=/ lora che elli compilò questo libro/ sin era elli cacciato di fuori/ per la guerra de fiorentini.

Now both Francesco and Dante wrote of their traumatic exiles from their Florence, as if their mother, Francesco in his illumination of Florence as a chimaera who first tramples on him and then whom he overcomes (Plate XLII Francesco da Barberino, Officiolum, Allegory of Exile from Florence),Footnote 38 while Dante’s bitter, perhaps authored, tomb epitaph in distant Ravenna, will give:Verse

Verse Iura Monarchiae, Superos, Phlegethonta Lacusque lustrando cecini, voluerunt Fata quousque: sed quia pars cessit melioribus hospita castris, auctoremque suum petiit felicior astris, hic clauldor Dantes, patriis extorris ab oris quem genuit parvi Florentia mater amoris. [While Fortune turned, I wandered, singing the laws of Monarchy and the deep lakes of Phlegethon. But since a part has gone to a better camp and sought its Author among happier stars, I, crippled Dante, lie here, exiled from my fatherland, whom Florence, a scarcely loving mother, bore.]

Francesco da Barberino then successfully returned from exile to Florence in 1318. We recall that the Podestà’s Palace in Florence, now called the 20. Bargello, already had the 1255 Plaque (Plate V),Footnote 39 its Latin composed by Brunetto Latino, vaunting of Florence’s Primo Popolo Guelf successes, their immense pride going before the fall of Montaperti, and that it also kept the infamous Libro del Chiodo condemning Dante to exile and to death in that building (Plate XI Facsimile, Libro del Chiodo).Footnote 40 Now, following Francesco da Barberino’s repatriation, a fresco was commissioned for the 20. Bargello’s Magdalen Chapel Fresco (Plate XV). Generally the figure next to Dante is considered to be of Brunetto Latino, but that is a mistake, as we have already noted, for the figure one over is dressed correctly in scarlet and ermine as Maestro, while the figure beside Dante instead resembles the Podestà, the notorious Corso Donati, for whom Francesco da Barberino had served as Notaio in Treviso,Footnote 41 Giorgio Vasari noting Corso’s presence in the fresco.Footnote 42 This reconciliation of rivals, of enemies, is typical of what a family of Brunetto Latino manuscripts and its first printed text, published in Treviso in 1464, which state of King Charles of Anjou, that the Tesoro is written out of Christian “love of one’s enemy”: BML Plut.42.19, fol. 19r, “per amor del suo nimicho”; Treviso, 1464, fols. 25r a–b, “E con loro fu chacciato mastro Brunetto latino. Et allora sene ando elli per quella ghuerra. sichome ischacciato in francia. E la compilo elli questo libro. per amore del suo nimico”. We have noted that Francesco sought to educate Corso as had Brunetto sought to educate Charles. Also BML Plut.42.19 and the Treviso editio princeps of 1464 are products of Francesco da Barberino’s translation into Italian of the French “First Redaction” text of Li Livres dou Tresor as in the Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare DVIII, manuscript.Footnote 43

The kneeling, at that time living, figure in the foreground dressed in pink, recalls Francesco da Barberino’s authorial portraits of himself in his manuscripts as a married cleric (“clericus conjugatus”), habitually dressed in pink in both the Officiolum and the two manuscripts of the Documenti d’Amore.Footnote 44 He even in his copies of the texts by Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri garbs them in his own pink, subsuming their identities into his as their scribe (Plate LIV a, Rettorica BNCF II.IV.127; b, Tesoro, BML Plut.42.19, fol 51r; c, Inferno, BL Egerton 943, fol. 1r), and calling himself “Francesco Latino” in BRicc 1538. It may well be that he commissioned the 20. Bargello fresco portraying his fellow student Dante Alighieri, his ex-employer, Corso Donati, his teacher, Brunetto Latino, and his ex-employer Bishop, Antonio D’Orso, and including himself, while living, in this circle of his “Dead Masters”.

In this same period, on returning to Florence in 1321 following Dante’s death, we find in the Fiesolan Bishops’ archive that “dominus Franciscus de Barberino”, commissioned Tino da Camaino in 1322 to sculpt the tomb of Bishop Antonio D’Orso in Florence’s Duomo, with Francesco’s signature figure of Death shooting arrows bilaterally from two bows (Plate XIV a, Tino da Camaino, Tomb of Bishop Antonio D’Orso, b, detail).Footnote 45

In Padua Francesco had had access to illuminators such as the “Master of the Paduan Antiphoners” for the BRicc 1538 manuscript. He now, this chapter shall show, copied and illustrated, perhaps as the “Tesoretto Master”/“Dominican Effigies Master”, Brunetto’s Tesoretto and Tesoro and, in 1337 (BTriv 1080) and 1347 (BML Plut.90 sup.127), Dante’s Commedia. However, several of the manuscripts from the Florentine officina under Francesco da Barberino’s direction as if “impresario”, churning out the “Danti del Cento” and other texts, are illuminated by Pacino di Bonaguida. Vincenzo Borghini had noted that Francesco da Barberino copied out the Commedia a hundred times for his daughters’ dowries, some sixty of these still extant.Footnote 46 These other texts also include the Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica,Footnote 47 along with the multitude of copies of the Commedia, in some instances even created in a collaboration with the so-called Master of the Dominican Effigies”. For instance, BNCF Palatino 313 in its clumsiness in script and illumination appears to be a draft version for creating a bildercodex Commedia, in which both Pacino di Bonaguida and the “Master of the Dominican Effigies” collaborate (Plates XLIII a, b; XLIV a).

A particularly chilling miniature in Palatino 313 by Pacino di Bonaguida is of Dante and Virgil encountering Ugolino della Gherardesca devouring the head of Bishop Ruggiero, from which blood streams (as also shown by the “Master of the Paduan Antiphoners” in BL Egerton 943), while other figures are glazed in his very realistic portrayal of ice. The same miniaturist shows Dante’s telling in his dream vision poem the same tale as in the Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica, manuscript of documented prose history (Plate XLIII a, b, Ugolino devouring Ruggieri, Inferno XXXIII–XXXIV, Pacino di Bonaguida, BNCF Palatino 313, fol. 77r; c, Master of the Paduan Antiphoners, BL Egerton 943, fol. 58v; d. Giovanni Villani, Nuova Cronica, Pacino di Bonaguida, Ugolino arrested, BAV Chig L.VIII.296, fol. 143r). While the scene of Dante and Virgil meeting with Cato is identified by Francesca Pasut as the “Tesoretto Master”, who participated with Pacino di Bonaguida in the sandboxing of Palatino 313 (Plate XLIV a, Francesco da Barberino, Commedia, BNCF Palatino 313, fol. 82r, b, Tesoretto, Strozzi 146, fol. 1r). Similarly Giovanni Villani endites history in his Nuova cronica and his nephew Filippo writes out the Commedia, commenting in it that Dante “poetiza”, that he poeticizes, that he writes poetry in opposition to history, a perspective of the Commedia given in Pietro Alighieri’s commentary to his father’s poem.Footnote 48

I suspect the supposed “Master of the Dominican Effigiesr”, whose faces are strangely rounded, who drew and colored the figures of Justice in the Documenti d’Amore and the Tesoro, whose exemplar was by Giotto in the Arena Chapel, who had featured in Francesco’s lost Treviso fresco on Justice, and whose descendants will be in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Sala della Pace’s allegoryFootnote 49 and Nicholas Poussin’s engraving for Federigo Ubaldini’s edition of the Documenti d’AmoreFootnote 50 (Plate XLV Francesco da Barberino, Allegory of Justice, a, Documenti d’Amore, Barb. lat 4076, fol.87v, b, Tesoro, BML Plut.42.19, fol. 45r, c, Giotto, Arena Chapel, Padua, d, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Siena, e, Nicholas Poussin, Rome, 1640); who drew and painted the portraits of Brunetto in the Tesoretto and the Tesoro (Plate XLVI Francesco da Barberino, Brunetto with students; a, Tesoretto, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 1r; b, Tesoro, BML, Plut.42.19, fol. 72r); who drew and painted the allegorical figure of Amore, of LoveFootnote 51 in the Documenti and the Tesoretto (Plate XLVII Francesco da Barberino, a, b, BAV, Barb. lat. 4076, fols. 1r, 99v; c, d, Tesoretto, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 21r and detail); and of Death with two bows in the Documenti d’Amore and on the sculpted tomb by Tino da Camaino for the Bishop Antonio dell’Orso, and in the Tesoretto and the Tesoro, where figures (ourselves, his readers) lie comically prostrate beneath the pale horse and rider or who are smitten (the armored knight) or who flee (the naked philosopher beyond the frame) (Plate XLVIII Francesco da Barberino, Death with two Bows, a, BAV Barb. lat. 4076, fol. 15v; b, Tomb, Bishop Antonio D’Orso; Death on a Pale Horse; c, Tesoretto, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 23r; d, Tesoro, BML Plut.42.19, fol. 60v); who was fascinated with the Ages of Man, as shown in the Officiolum and the Tesoro (Plate XLIX Francesco da Barberino, Youth and Age, a, b, c, d, Officiolum; e, BML Plut.42.19, fol. 111v); who, like Dante with his Geryon, both composed beasts derived from Brunetto’s “Menticore”, Francesco’s first nurturing, then threatening, then vanquished, as an allegory of the city of Florence in the form of an Etruscan chimaera (Plate L Francesco da Barberino, a, Menticore chimaera, BML Plut.42.19, fol. 39r; b, Officiolum chimaera); and who illuminated the Trivulzian Commedia, and Orsanmichele’s Libro del Biadaiolo (Plate LI “Master of the Dominican Effigies”/Francesco da Barberino, a, b, c, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana 1080; d, e, f, g, Libro del Biadaiolo, BML Tempi 3; Impruneta, Museo Ecclesiastico, Antiphoner, Dormition of the Virgin, WikipediaFootnote 52) is the same person as the scribe, “Francesco di ser Nardi da Barberino”, who was moreover Dante’s fellow student. Perhaps the attribution of the “Master of the Dominican Effigies” should only be to the painter of the religious panels, but not these manuscripts. Nevertheless this Dominican association is also there in BLEgerton 943 with its Dominican commentary and in the Giovanni Villani, Cronica, BAV Chig L.VIII.196, fol. 124r, which shows the ambassadors conspiring against Charles of Anjou not in Franciscan but in Dominican garb.

The Tesoro BML Plut.42.19 whose scribe this chapter identifies as Francesco da Barberino, however, is illuminated by several miniaturists. It has a fine incipit portrait of Brunetto, fol. 4r, then exquisite Giottesque dreamlike drawings of the Seven Days of Creation, that are perhaps by Francesco da Barberino, fols. 5r–5v, these followed by expressive but immature drawings of Biblical and historical scenes by another, perhaps one of Francesco’s daughters, for he was a married cleric seeking funds for his daughters’ dowries. She seems, like Pacino di Bonaguida, to have seen BRicc 1538, the Bildercodex so richly illuminated by the “Master of the Paduan Antiphoners” and the “Master of the Naples’ Gratian”, the manuscript with connections to Brunetto Latino and Francesco da Barberino (Plate LII Tesoro, a, b, BML Plut.42.29, author portrait, fol. 4r, c, d, Creation, 5r, 5v, e, f, g, Old Testament scenes 9v, 10r, 10v).

But the following Bestiary, where the drawings of animals recall those in the delightful Tesoretto scenes with Natura, showing Adam and Eve, birds, serpents, donkeys, deer, sheep, unicorns, lions, dragonflies, snails, etc., BML Strozzi 146, fols. 2v, 9r, and its allegories of Virtues and Vices, are again illuminated by the “Tesoretto Master” (Plate LIII Francesco da Barberino, a, Tesoretto, Natura naturans, BML Strozzi 146, fol. 2v; b, c, d, Tesoro, BML Plut.42.19, Bestiary, fols. 31v, 35r, 39v; e, f, g, Allegorical Virtues, 45r, 46r, 46v), as well as the incipit page for the Rettorica section, fol. 72r, with the portraits of Brunetto and possibly of Francesco and Dante (Frontispiece, BML Plut.42.19, fol. 72r), these by the illuminator, identified generally as the “Master of the Dominican Effigies”, but who, I suggest, is Francesco himself as both scribe and miniaturist, as was his fellow student, Dante, in Vita nova XXXIV and in Leonardo Bruni’s observation.

Interestingly in the same Rettorica, Tesoro, and Trivulzian Commedia manuscripts for which Francesco was responsible, Brunetto often is not shown in the usual magisterial red with ermine, writing and teaching his book, nor Dante in the usual blue of the apprenticed student to Virgil’s magisterial ermine and red within the text, but both Brunetto and Dante are shown in pink, Francesco having taken on their personae as editor/scribe of their books, as we have noted (Plate LIV Brunetto and Dante in Pink, a, Rettorica BNCF II.IV.127; b, Tesoro, BML Plut.42.19, fol 51r; d, Inferno, BL Egerton 943, fol. 1r). The re-writings of Guillaume de Lorris’ Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun and Guillaume de Deguileville similarly transitioned the original author into their continuators, Guillaume de Deguileville even illustrating the pilgrim dreamer as himself, a tonsured Cistercian monk, though monks were forbidden to be pilgrims. In the sumptuous Paduan/Bolognan BRicc 1538, the scribe, writing “in studio bononiensis”, as we noted, even spoke of Brunetto Latino as “Francesco Latino” in connection with the Epistle to Pavia about the Abbot Tesauro of Vallombrosa.Footnote 53 We have already discussed the 20. Bargello Magdalen Chapel fresco’s kneeling living donor figure garbed in pink (Plate XV).

Scholars of Dante’s Commedia manuscript illuminations seem not to have noticed that they fall into these two groups: one, generally of the “Franciscus ser Nardi da Barberino” officina workshop of the “Danti del Cento” produced in the Arabic manner of multiple copying, which have Dante in gray pink, Virgil in red and blue; while the other school of manuscripts, generally non-Florentine, more correctly show Dante within the text in apprentice blue as the student, Virgil in red, and ermine as the Maestro teaching him, while the Dante writing the text as its author outside of it is the Maestro in red and ermine. Francesco da Barberino is always in pink in his own illustrated manuscripts of the Officiolum and the Documenti d’Amore, as well as in his portrait as the kneeling living donor in the 20. Bargello fresco in front of his dead patrons and friends, Dante Alighieri, Corso Donati, whose Notaio he was in Treviso when Corso was Podestà in that city, Brunetto Latino, an unidentified figure (perhaps Guido Cavalcanti?), and Bishop Antonio D’Orso (Plate XV). By thus garbing Dante in his own pink robe, instead of apprentice blue, he subsumes himself as editor into the figure of Dante in his officina’s “Danti del Cento” manuscripts of the Commedia.

Federigo Ubaldini, despite his erroneous attribution to the wrong Francesco da Barberino in the 1640 Documenti d’amore edition, was a dedicated editor, one who sought to make the printed text like the manuscript one, including giving its miniatures, now as engravings, some by Nicholas Poussin (Fig. 2).

Similarly Francesco da Barberino had taken care to return to the earliest and least contaminated versions of the texts he published, possibly inheriting Brunetto Latino’s library and papers to do so and including with the Commedia sometimes its commentaries in verse by Jacopo Alighieri, Dante’s son, and by Bosone da Gubbio, who was part of Dante’s later collegial circle in his exile, that also included Cino da Pistoia, so frequently cited in the De vulgari eloquentia, as well as Immanuello Romano, author of the Commedia in Hebrew.Footnote 54

Interestingly, Federigo Ubaldini also edited and published the 1642 editio princeps of Brunetto Latino’s Tesoretto, giving both these authors their first appearance in print.Footnote 55 I found the manuscripts of the Tesoretto that he collated marked up by him in pencil on their parchment. But he caused serious problems for later scholarship with this misidentification of the one Francesco da Barberino for the other.

In this continuum, this genealogy, from Alfonso el Sabio to Brunetto Latino to Francesco da Barberino to Nicholas Poussin, of textual illustration, there is a possibility that Francesco da Barberino, scribe and miniaturist of the Officiolum and the Documenti d’Amore, was not only the scribe but also the miniaturist, the so-called Tesoretto Master and so-called Master of the Dominican Effigies of the 1337 BTrivulzian 1080 Commedia, the BML Tempi 3 Libro del Biadaiolo, composed by Domenico Lenzi for the Compagnia dei Laudesi di Orsanmichele and the Impruneta Antiphoner of the Dormition of the Virgin (30. Orsanmichele, Plates XX, XXI, XXXII a, b, d, LI a, b, c, d, e, f, g) and of one of the illuminations in the BNCF Palatino 313 “sandbox” Commedia (Plate XLIV a, where Dante emerges from Hell into the encounter of the two classical figures, Virgil and Cato),Footnote 56 of two manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina Parmense, 3283 (“Parm”) and 3286,Footnote 57 as well as of the BML Strozzi 146 Tesoretto and part of the BML Plut.42.19 Tesoro (Frontispiece and Plates XLVII d, XLIX c, L a, LII a, b, LIV b, LVI e), thus perpetuating the texts of his teacher and of his fellow student visually and painting their memoried portraits. Also the miniaturist he perhaps commissioned for BRicc 1538, the “Master of the Paduan Antiphoners”, is the miniaturist as well for BL Egerton 943’s Commedia of the pink-garbed Dante figure.

Francesco, unlike Dante, returned to Florence and, to support his family as a married cleric (“clericus conjugatus”), took on the editorial task of publishing books, having multiple manuscripts be both written and illustrated, in particular those of Brunetto and of Dante. That admiring look Francesco turns to the figure of Dante in Brunetto’s lecture hall of this book’s Frontispiece seems to acknowledge the greater artistry of these others whose works he would now edit and propagate as their publisher. This can lead us to see “Franciscus ser Nardi di Barberino” as both scribe and miniaturist, responsible for his own writings and their illustrations, but also for the writings of others, among them editing the texts of Brunetto and Dante, which he also illustrates, in particular, the Tesoretto, the Tesoro, and the Commedia, on his return. The dates we have do not work for “Ser Franciscus Neri da Barberino”, active only from 1297 to 1302, but do exactly tally for “Franciscus di ser Nardi da Barberino”, active from the 1280s to 1348, whose last dated and signed work is again his coeval school friend’s Commedia, BML Plut.90 sup.125 in 1347 at 83 years of age (Plate XLI b, c, BML, Plut.90 sup.125, Dante, Commedia, Scribe, Francesco da Barberino, 1347, at 83). Francesco died in 1348 of plague at 84 and was buried in 43. Santa Croce with an epitaph written by Boccaccio, who next took on that mantle as publisher of Dante’s works in this catena through time.Footnote 58

FormalPara Study Questions

Discuss how Dante’s texts, particularly the Vita nova and the Commedia, came to be published before the printing press and after it. Explore the Laurentian, Vatican, and British Library digitized manuscript websites to see how these were written and illustrated. Take a digitized medieval manuscript and edit a folio of it, transcribing it diplomatically in Word, copying its layout, its memory color coding, and giving its miniatures in .jpg. Discuss Francesco da Barberino’s condemnation of Cecco d’Ascoli. Discuss the problems caused by faulty scholarship, for instance, the failure to identify the scribe and editor Francesco da Barberino as Dante’s fellow student and fellow author.