Renaissance Florence. These words conjure up images of the beautiful creations of master artists and architects. But no less significant were the achievements of creators in another field: Florentine manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars and booksellers, who brushed the dust of centuries from ancient knowledge, discovering and spreading which, they created a new enlightened world.
It was in this area that Vespasiano da Bisticci, the “king of booksellers,” achieved tremendous success. He is the subject of a new exciting book by Ross King, the author of the bestsellers “Leonardo da Vinci and the Last Supper,” “Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel,” and many others.
Enlightened monarchs and Roman pontiffs sought to adorn their libraries with the manuscripts created under the guidance of Vespasiano... But the collapse of the grandiose enterprise of the “king of booksellers” was a foregone conclusion: printing made books accessible to many.
The dramatic political and religious upheavals of the era, the history of philosophical thought and the European world of the period Ross King presents the events of this momentous and fateful change through the lens of the biography of an extraordinary man, unjustly forgotten by history, Vespasiano da Bisticci, a true titan of the Renaissance.