Palaeography, Manuscript Illumination and Humanism in Renaissance Italy: Studies in Memory of A. C. de la Mare

Albinia de la Mare (1932-2001), OBE, FBA, Professor of Palaeography at King’s College London, was one of the last century’s outstanding palaeographers and the world’s leading authority on Italian Renaissance manuscripts. In November 2011 a conference was held at King’s College and the Warburg Institute to honour her memory, and this volume offers revised versions of most of the papers read on that occasion, as well as three additional contributions. Tilly de la Mare had exceptionally wide interests, including key individuals involved in manuscript and literary production, as represented here by studies on Vespasiano da Bisticci, Sozomeno da Pistoia, Matteo Contugi da Volterra, Lorenzo di Francesco Guidetti, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, Bartolomeo Sanvito, Bartolomeo Varnucci, Francesco Petrarca, Pier Candido Decembrio, Leonardo Bruni and Marsilio Ficino. Important themes in the history of palaeography - the emergence of humanist script; the relationship between script and illumination; the competing methods of palaeography and philology; the social, political, academic, geographical and cultural contexts of manuscript copying and production; and the role of palaeography in the transmission of classical texts - were also in the compass of her scholarship and are treated in this collection. The volume concludes with sixteen colour plates and indices of manuscripts, incunabula and names.