6 - Standardization and scholarship: editing in Florence, 1501–1530

Summary

Printing in florence in the first three decades of the Cinquecento was dominated by the press established by Filippo di Giunta. His output differed markedly from that of other contemporary printers in his city: while he concentrated on the standard texts of classical and Italian literature, imitating the Aldine press in Venice, others produced mainly short and relatively ephemeral works, often religious in content. In order to set the activities of the Giunta press in perspective, it will be useful to consider first a few examples of the editions produced by other printing houses.

To judge from the books printed for them, Florentine readers had sophisticated literary tastes but were at the same time linguistically provincial. Around 1510, for example, Bernardo Zucchetta undertook the first printing, without the author's knowledge or consent, of two works by Lodovico Ariosto, La Cassaria and I Suppositi, which belonged to the completely new genre of comedies on the model of those of Plautus and Terence but written in the vernacular. But the author was Ferrarese, and the language had to be adapted before it was acceptable to local readers. As a result, both these editions contained many forms typical of contemporary Florentine and foreign to Ariosto's own usage.

The same combination of characteristics can be found in some of the books published by Bernardo Pacini. He was the son of the leading Florentine publisher in the last years of the Quattrocento and at the start of the Cinquecento, Piero Pacini of Pescia.