[109] Ibid. i. 163.
[110] Cappelli, l. c. The MS. was by Battista Guarino. The translation was first printed at Venice in 1532, the original at Paris in 1548.
[111] Prose volgari, p. 78.
[112] This poetess, of a Milanese family, was born at Venice about 1465, and is supposed to have died in 1558. Politian (Epist. l. iii. 17) addresses her: ‘O decus Italiæ virgo.’
[113] Florence, May 8, 1490, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 287.
[114] Vasari’s Life of Fra Giocondo (ix. 155 seq.) is very imperfect and leaves room for further study. On Giocondo’s works in his own city see G. Orti Manara, Dei lavori architettonici di Fra Giocondo in Verona, Ver., 1853. On his collection of inscriptions see G. B. de Rossi, I Fasti municipali di Venosa restituite alla sincera lezione, Rome 1853. (From vol. cxxxiii. of the Giornale Arcadico.) According to the Novelle letterarie di Firenze for the year 1771, p. 725, the Medicean copy was sent to Pope Clement XIV., but has never been seen either in the Vatican archives or the library. On the other copies, and the second collection, differing from the first in some respects, less numerous, and dedicated to Ludovico de Agnellis, Archbishop of Cosenza, cf. De Rossi, p. 7 seq. The dedication—‘Laurentio Medici Fr. Io. Jucundus S. P. D.’—is in Fabroni, ii. 279 seq. It ends: ‘Vale feliciter humani generis amor et deliciæ.’
[115] Med. Arch.
[116] Epist. ad J. Bracciolini, l. i. Prolegom. ad Platonis convivium.
[117] The work of the Sicilian Jesuit, P. Leonardo Ximenes, Del vecchio e nuovo Gnomone fiorentino, Flor. 1757, contains the history and explanation of the scientific value of the famous meridian, and of the more ancient mathematical and astronomical works in Tuscany.
[118] This controversy has never rested from the time of Angelo Maria Bandini, who published in 1755 the Vita e Lettere di Amerigo Vespucci gentiluomo fiorentino, down to our own days, which have witnessed a new defence of the Florentine’s claims by the Brazilian, F. A. de Varnhagen. It will be sufficient here to refer the reader to the facts published by Oscar Peschel in the Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 305 seq., and in an essay on Amerigo in the periodical Das Ausland (No. 32, 1858). Vespucci’s well-known work on his second journey (Bandini, p. 64) is addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the son of Pier Francesco.