Your access to this service has been limited If you think you have been blocked in error contact the owner of this site for assistance If you are a WordPress user with administrative privileges on this site please enter your email address in the box below and click "Send" You will then receive an email that helps you regain access Wordfence is a security plugin installed on over 5 million WordPress sites The owner of this site is using Wordfence to manage access to their site You can also read the documentation to learn about Wordfence's blocking tools or visit wordfence.com to learn more about Wordfence Click here to learn more: Documentation 5 May 2025 13:13:52 GMT.Your computer's time: document.write(new Date().toUTCString()); Metrics details Establishing and understanding large format paintings are key to provide accurate information about the artist’s palette and developing conservation strategies investigating the artworks of a population offers insight into its culture history and origins which reveals individual and collective identity through cultural heritage worldwide the ceiling of the Foyer at the National Theatre of Costa Rica (Central America) is decorated with three large format paintings from the nineteenth century made by the Italian painter Vespasiano Bignami the Music and The Dance) and have undergone restorations in the past their state of conservation is unknown and thus demands accurate scientific examination in order to document their status and the extent of undocumented previous restoration work we propose the application of a combination of non-invasive and in-situ techniques to carry out a qualitative assessment of the pigments and actual state of conservation we employed technical photography in the visible and near infrared regions using panoramic stitching techniques in order to obtain high resolution images of the very large artworks Several conservation problems were observed such as: detachment of pigments and sections with undocumented restorations In the IR and False Colour Infrared images we observed a very conspicuous behaviour of the red pigment used in the three paintings Particular areas with the red pigment were fluorescent and by means of ultraviolet fluorescence imaging we identified the pigment as through its red-coral fluorescence as Madder Lake by comparison to a historical pigments reference palette Measurements in five different red pigmented zones using UV–Vis spectroscopy in The Music show bands in the (550–650) nm region A Lorentz Model nonlinear curve fit to the bands allowed us to correlate the fluorescent pigment in the paintings of Vespasiano Bignami with Madder Lake The pictorial materials used by artists throughout history are strongly linked to their material availability in nature production technology and trends of the respective epochs pigments can be decisive time indicators in many cases Paintings are one of the most striking means that human beings have used to share our history Paintings reflect the connection between the artist and its time not only in the thematic and stylistic aspects but in the availability of art materials such as pigments Establishing and understanding these relations are key to provide accurate information about the artist’s palette and developing conservation strategies a vigorous decrease in the use of natural Madder Lake The aim of this study is to investigate qualitatively the pictorial palette and the state of conservation of three great nineteenth century paintings at the National Theatre of Costa Rica such as UV–Vis spectroscopy and technical photography An important consideration while examining these artworks is that the executive techniques traditionally used in Europe were not designed to withstand the effects of the climate and humidity of the tropics in Latin America Deterioration caused by these extreme tropical conditions is still largely unstudied underscoring the importance of the present research as a first starting point towards establishing affordable multidisciplinary methodologies on cultural heritage worldwide In the next sections we present a brief history of Vespasiano Bignami and his paintings followed by the application of our experimental set up to the examination of the paintings We continue with our main results and discussion regarding the state of conservation and the identification of Madder lake we finish with concluding remarks and detailed experimental methods and data One of the most important aspects of studying the work of an artist is that art is always linked both to the artist’s personal history and also to the history of a country and its society: It is a reflection of a specific moment in time Studying Vespasiano Bignami is taking a look into Costa-Rican society and history regarding the fact that Bignami was in charge of the three largest paintings for one of the most important cultural buildings of the nineteenth century in Costa Rica is not possible to establish similarities in technique and materials with those located at the National Theatre of Costa Rica The three paintings by Vespasiano Bignami which correspond to the artworks studied here cover the entirety of the ceiling of the Foyer at the National Theatre of Costa Rica The Foyer is a large area (roughly 176 m2) above the entrance lobby where people used to meet before a performance the Foyer is used for protocolary acts of the government The National Theatre is then a building of great importance for the Costa Rican culture Paintings a The Poetry (9.83 m length × 5.13 m wide) and b The Dance (9.83 m length × 5.13 m wide) located at the National Theatre of Costa Rica In spite of their preponderance inside the building these three paintings have not been subjected to a scientific examination in order to determine their state of conservation or to document their pigment composition along with correlate its use of pigments with Vespasiano Bignami’s technique this research will serve as a base for future studies and to investigate quantitatively the pictorial palette Vespasiano Bignami in other artworks worldwide We employed a combination of non-invasive techniques such as technical photography inspection with UV (ultraviolet) radiation in order to determine the state of conservation of each painting Analysis of technical photographs in the Vis as well as IRFC (Infrared False Colour) images allowed us to carry out a qualitative evaluation of the pigments in situ UV–Vis spectroscopy and fluorescence induced by UV radiation completed the identification of the pigments Technical photography has become one of the most important tools to assess the state of conservation throughout a painting This procedure was employed for The Poetry and The Music to obtain high resolution images in the Vis and IR regions of the electromagnetic spectrum The channels of IRFC were constructed using the luminosity channel of the infrared (IR) image and performing the usual channel substitution of the Vis image R Photographs were acquired with a Nikon D7200 camera modified for technical photography by Life Pixel equipped with a AF-D Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8 objective Images were captured in the visible spectral range (Vis)—400 to 780 nm—by using a XNiteCC1 M52 filter and for the infrared range (IR)—780 to 1000 nm—with a Heliopan RG1000 filter For both ranges we used a exposure time of 4 s using two halogen lamps of approximately 150 W for total illumination Prior to the photo shooting which was done by night to avoid as much as possible the city lights it was necessary to cover six windows of the Foyer as the Theatre is located downtown in Costa Rica’s capital city We also employed a 4 m tall scaffold for examining the artworks in the ceiling The image stitching process required that we kept the camera’s sensor perfectly aligned with the ceiling while the camera was displaced horizontally on a tripod We marked a grid on the floor to position the camera so there was enough image overlap for covering properly the whole painting and at the same time making sure we could mask out the “hot spot” of the IR region during the stitching Before starting the shooting of the Vis images a white balance calibration was made with an AIC target The calibration and exposure remained unchanged for the IR images The camera was manually focused and operated remotely using the tethering software Camera Control Pro 2 from Nikon Images were stored directly into the computer’s hard disk in RAW format for further processing In order to obtain image registration to the pixel level both the Vis and IR images were obtained at each position on the grid and the camera was carefully refocused each time that a filter was changed for the Vis and IR photos A total of 48 photograph pairs were acquired for the each of the two lateral paintings The Poetry and The Dance and 202 photograph pairs for The Music in Vis and IR We used the following editing process for the Vis and IR RAW data (as.NEF) files For the Vis images we created a colour-correction profile using a X-Rite Color Passport Checker® reference and the Color Checker Camera Calibration v1.1.1 software and applied it together with the proper lens parameters profile For the IR region the photos were exported from Lightroom and converted into grayscale files (the IR images) simply replace the IR image to the Red channel of the VIS image This procedure was carried out in the commercially available Adobe Photoshop® software To create the IRFC images for the three paintings each photo pair from the Vis and IR was aligned in Adobe Photoshop® After the alignment the exchange of the RGB channels between the Vis an IR was applied as described IR and the new IRFC image for each painting was exported in.TIFF format and they were used to create a high-resolution panorama of the whole painting using PT Gui Pro® software the lamp’s radiation does not interfere with observing the fluorescence of varnishes a Panorama of The Music (9.51 m length × 8.84 m wide) artwork b Section of The Music artwork showing the measurement points as M1 to M5 and the reference zone were the UV–Vis spectra were taken To carry out the UV–Vis induced fluorescence measurements an Avantes Model AvaSpec-2048 spectrometer with a grating set for (184–746) nm The measurement conditions were an integration time of 70 ms with an average of 30 scans to have a good signal to noise ratio and to avoid saturation on the optical fiber due to the UV radiation The experimental design consisted on a set of three replicas per measurement To achieve an identification of the fluorescent pigment we fulfilled data analysis from each spectra as follows: first a nonlinear curve fit (Lorentz Model) was applied to the band around (550–650) nm The latter was carried out in order to obtain information regarding the wavelength of the signal observed and also about the band’s Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) This fitting was implemented by using the Origin Pro® software in accordance with the next formula: The same fitting for the spectral band was applied and the data obtained were plotted as a box plot for making comparisons using the RStudio® software The history around a painting is a very important issue for a conservation proposal and to unveil possible relationships between pigments and artists The paintings made by Vespasiano Bignami are only 122 years old; nevertheless there is very little information regarding the conservation procedures applied to them since they were first displayed on the National Theater For that reason obtaining that kind of information is key to create a timeline among the artist To contribute to establishing the state of conservation of the three paintings and create the first scientific documentation about these monumental works of art we first employed detailed technical photography Photographs in the Visible (Vis) region made for The Poetry allow us to differentiate the original painting from the restorations We were able to determine and document issues related to cracks retouching with different types of strokes to which is applied the painting substrate All these features are more evident in the IR images These photographs correspond to the first experimental realization of high-resolution images and hence support us to establish an initial mark in time regarding their state of conservation As expected, all of the sections that were brighter in the IR images were also yellow in the IRFC. This is a first indication that the red pigment has the same composition on all of the three paintings. Features of the location of the pigments, and also the comparison among the Vis, IR and IRFC panoramas can be seen in Additional file 1: Figures S2–7 The information gathered about the pigments distribution can be of help for future works and to design experiments without making measurements in a random way identifying in a non-destructive and non-invasive manner regions of interest this was observed in the frames located in the center of The Music With these inspections it became evident which sections had undergone restoration and it will prove useful to identify conservation issues in each painting; information that was not previously available to our work which contains pigments from antiquity until early 1950 Comparison between Vis and Fluorescent response under UV radiation in areas of a The Poetry For the in situ measurements with the UV–Vis spectrometer five different zones on the painting The Music were selected, as was shown in Fig. 2 This painting was selected over the other two because it shows a specific zone where the fluorescence was more intense A comparison was made with the Pigment Checker from CHSOS where the Madder lake is present in two different zones to determine if the preparation on the pigment could affect the measurements of the spectra and therefore the colour observed a Measurements of UV–Vis in painting The Music (M1 to M5) showing the center wavelength (xc) and the measurements M6 and M7 for the Madder lake in the Pigment Checker, b Box plot with xc from painting The Music (M1–M5, see Fig. 2) Black points correspond to the experimental data along with the application method of the artist The calculated value of xc is sensitive to the mentioned factors, and the differences observed cannot be associated with just one them. Nevertheless, in Fig. 4a the xc range found among the measurements done on the painting (M1 to M5) is far larger than the measurements performed on the Pigment Checker (M6 to M7) The individual box plots show that our method is very precise as the individual xc data for each site are clustered closely together and thus variation among sampling sites can be assigned to a combination of factors that can affected the fluorescence response of the pigment therefore fluorescence response could be related to manufacture of the pigment purpurin and pseudopurpurin found in an specific sample of Madder lake This comparison also evidences the variability in the xc of Madder lake and even the way in which the artist applies the pigment to the object Those signals could be related to previous restorations with the exception of M5 where it was calculated with two replicas The FWHM is obtained from the Lorentz fit previously mentioned (see the UV–Vis spectroscopy section) It is observed that in the measurements made on The Music (M1 to M5), there is a decrease in the FWHM that could be related to a small particle size, which in turn is correlated to a shorter wavelength observed in Fig. 4b and accounting for the variation in the observed colour the Madder lake samples from the Pigment Checker (M6 and M7) both have the same pigment composition mixed with an acrylic binder which is an indication of how the preparation but also the scattering could affect the colour and also the xc associated with the identification of a pigment Limited access to cultural heritage is a challenge to restoration scientists seeking to obtain information quickly in a non-destructive and non-invasive manner the time evolution of artworks in highly-diverse environments the empirical findings in this study provide a new understanding of the pictorial palette and the state of conservation of three great nineteenth century paintings at the National Theatre of Costa Rica offering some insight into the few scenarios in which cultural heritage could be investigated in Central America along with Italy The evidence from this study suggests a qualitative identification of the fluorescent pigment as Madder lake in three paintings of Vespasiano Bignami with the aid of low cost and in situ equipment such as a modified commercial digital camera This identification method on The Music could also be extended to The Poetry and The Dance artworks given the fact that comparable coloured areas are very similar not only on the visible spectrum images but also on their behaviour in the IR and IRFC images our most important finding was that our method for calculation of xc gives very similar results to the reference and to previously studied samples with the same pigment it might be possible to use different techniques in order to carry out a qualitative assessment of the artist’s main colour palette and actual state of conservation the information obtained is a first step to develop a technical data sheet about these paintings and about Vespasiano Bignami’s techniques and it allows to implement measurements and sampling to study other pigments that are present in the paintings this is the first study that uses paintings from this artist we therefore encourage further studies in paintings of Vespasiano Bignami located in Italy to create a full data base of this remarkable artist Nature’s Palette the science of plant color Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; 2007 New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; 2010 Dooley KA, Chieli A, Romani A, Legrand S, Miliani C, Janssens K, Delaney JK. Molecular Fluorescence Imaging Spectroscopy for Mapping Low Concentrations of Red Lake Pigments: Van Gogh’s Painting The Olive Orchard. Angew Chem Int. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201915490 Bleaching of red lake paints in encaustic mummy portraits Red and blue colours on 18th–19th century Japanese woodblock prints: In situ analyses by spectrofluorimetry and complementary non-invasive spectroscopic methods In situ non-invasive characterization of the composition of Pompeian pigments preserved in their original bowls Technological insigths into madder pigment production in antiquity The identification of Red Lake Pigment Dyestuffs and a discussion of their use Fluorescence of Paint and Varnish Layers (Part I) Mult-technique characterization of madder lakes: a comparison between non- and micro-destructive methods An improved method for identifying red lakes on art and historical artifacts Image processing for the analysis and conservation of paintings: opportunities and challenges Introduction: easel painting in the age of Italian unification Pernich E, Vichi Andrea C. Bignami Vespasiano. Bignami Vespasiano; 2009. http://siusa.archivi.beniculturali.it/cgi-bin/pagina.pl?TipoPag=prodpersona&Chiave=47949 Mercato Culturale: El nacimiento de la ornamentación de un coliseo Análisis de la conformación del diseño arquitectónico y ornamental del Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica A Brief Insight Into the Secrets of the 120-Year-Old Main Curtain of the National Theatre of Costa Rica Through Non-Destructive Characterization Techniques Gli artefici italiani d’un teatro di Costarica Le Carte di Vespasiano Bignami donate da Carlo Bozzi alla Biblioteca D`Arte del Castello Cosentino A. Pigments Checker v.5. Pigment. Checker; 2019. p. 1–15. https://chsopensource.org/pigments-checker/ Anteproyecto sobre las obras de conservación y restauración de las pinturas de los plafones en los cielos rasos del Teatro Nacional de San José de Costa Rica; 1971 Primer Informe sobre el tratamiento de las pinturas en la sala del Foyer del Teatro Nacional en San José de Costa Rica; 1971 Primera Etapa del trabajo realizado en el Teatro Nacional de San José de Costa Rica Referencia de los trabajos realizados en la segunda fase de la restauración del Teatro Nacional San José (Costa Rica); 1978 Referencia a los trabajos realizados en la tercera fase y final de la restauración de las pinturas de Teatro Nacional de San José de Costa Rica; 1980 Use of ultraviolet light as an aid to pigment identification The technology of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century red lake pigments Effect of particle size on pigments colour “Treu Head”: a case study in Roman sculptural polychromy Identification of red colorants in van Gogh paintings and ancient Andean textiles by microspectrofluorimetry A study of UV fluorescence emission of painting materials In: 8th international conference non-destructive investigations and microanalysis diagnostics conservation of cultural and environmental heritage The use of microspectrofluorimetry for the characterization of lake pigments Color science in the examination of museum objects nondestructive procedures The technology of red lake pigments manufacture: Study of the Dyestuff substrate Application of the Kubelka-Munk correction for self-absorption of fluorescence emission in carmine lake paint layers Vibrational and electronic properties of painting lakes Photoluminescence properties of zinc oxide in paints: a study of the effect of self-absorption and passivation Light-induced colour changes in red and yellow lake pigments Identification of pigments by multispectral imaging; a flowchart method Nondestructive varnish identification by ultraviolet fluorescence spectroscopy Download references We thank the National Theatre of Costa Rica for all the logistic and making possible to carried out this study We also would like to thank Centro de Electroquímica y Energía Química for the access to Origin® software We give special thanks to Karen Wang-Qiu and Tatiana Zúñiga-Salas from the School of Arts at the University of Costa Rica for their effort in creating the graphical abstract as an unique piece of artwork from our research We are grateful for the support given by the Vicerrectoría de Investigación at the Universidad de Costa Rica to carry out this research work Funding were support with the projects 726-B8-142 and 816-B7-809 of Vicerrectoría de Investigación of Universidad de Costa Rica Geraldine Conejo-Barboza & Eduardo Libby Centro de Investigación en Ciencia e Ingeniería de Materiales (CICIMA) Instituto de Investigaciones en Arte (IIARTE) Centro de Investigación en Ciencias Atómicas Nucleares y Moleculares (CICANUM) GCB: Performed the experimental work for the technical photographs and UV–Vis spectroscopy measurements EL: Contributed with the experimental set up for technical photography and images processing CM: Helped with the experimental set up in the National Theatre of Costa Rica and developed the historical context of Vespasiano Bignami GCB: Wrote the first draft manuscript and all co-authors discussed the results All authors read and approved the final manuscript The authors declares that they have no competing interests Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations Experimental data showing the UV lamp emission spectra (red circles) along with the fluorescent pigment (black circles) unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data Download citation DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-020-00470-4 Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: a shareable link is not currently available for this article Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker The dates displayed for an article provide information on when various publication milestones were reached at the journal that has published the article activities on preceding journals at which the article was previously under consideration are not shown (for instance submission All content on this site: Copyright © 2025 Elsevier B.V., its licensors, and contributors. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies. For all open access content, the relevant licensing terms apply. NONFICTION: Ross King's delightful, immersive history of books and bookselling in the heart of the Renaissance. Americans bought more than 750 million physical books in 2020, most of which, due to the pandemic, likely shipped direct to buyers. Hundreds of millions of e-books and audiobooks were also bought or borrowed and delivered instantly. And online preservation efforts mean millions more titles are already on the internet. While the publishing industry faces undeniable challenges, it's never been easier for book lovers to acquire books. But 'twas not ever thus. One such person was Vespasiano da Bisticci, the titular character in Ross King's engrossing and meticulously researched new history "The Bookseller of Florence." In 1433, Vespasiano got his first job at a cartolaio selling stationery and books about halfway between the apse of the Duomo and the banks of the Arno, on what was then Via dei Librai. He was 11 years old. In 1480, when he retired from that same shop, he had likely been personally responsible for the creation of at least 1,000 manuscripts, making him possibly "the king of the world's booksellers." Because Vespasiano lived in Florence, "so long tempest-tossed," as Dante memorably characterized the city, Ross' story includes endless factionalism and infighting, between the Medici and Pazzi; between the Greek and Latin parts of the church; between Italy's different regions; between Italy and foreign adversaries; even between fans of Plato, Socrates and other big brains. Vespasiano was touched by all these conflicts at some point, acquiring manuscripts for a pope or other personality seeking to bolster their legacy or library, or simply negotiating between artisans and archrivals he'd befriended philosophizing in front of his bookshop or around the city. And as this is a book about books, Ross wrangles myriad details about their creation, including producing parchment, inks, illuminations, bindings, movable type and paper (sometimes from the wardrobes of Black Death victims!), as well as innovations in typography and layout. And for bibliophiles who are also word nerds, there's lots of juicy etymology. Though Florence resisted the siren song of the printing press longer than any major Italian city, the machine's arrival in 1471 spelled the slow death of men like Vespasiano who simply couldn't compete with technology that made more copies faster and sold them for less. And since churning out large print runs required money up front, the model of publishing changed forever, turning "a reclusive scholarly activity [into] a business like any other." Books, and therefore knowledge, may have flowed more freely, but booksellers suffered. And that, sadly, is a chapter that has continued long after Vespasiano's story ended. Cory Oldweiler is a freelance writer and editor. The Bookseller of FlorenceBy: Ross King.Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 496 pages, $30. No Section Peek inside homes for sale in the Twin Cities area After falling behind 17-0 at halftime and being dominated most of the game the Bulldogs may have locked up a spot in the College Football Playoff Producing new manuscripts of Cicero’s writings in the middle of the 15th century was clearly a more laborious and involved enterprise than combing the sleepy shelves of Franciscan libraries for neglected codices The word “manuscript” comes from the Latin manu scriptus “written by hand,” but any manuscript was the product of much more work than simply the writing of a single hand multistep process calling for the expertise of a series of tradesmen and specialist craftsmen The essential first step was finding the exemplar: the text It is no coincidence that on his excursion to Lucca in 1445 Vespasiano da Bisticci—known at the height of the Renaissance in Florence as “the king of the world’s booksellers”—purchased two copies of Cicero from Michele Guinigi His sharp eyes no doubt spotted that these manuscripts would be excellent texts to compare with those volumes he was preparing for Grey Vespasiano occasionally produced works on paper which was made from the skin of sheep or goats The most beautiful and expensive material on which to write was calfskin the word “vellum” coming (like the word “veal”) from vitulus the finer and whiter the skin; uterine vellum was the finest and whitest of all—but also The supply of hides for parchment was always dependent on the dietary preferences of the local population The appetite in Italy for goats (one recipe book offered advice on how to spit-roast and how to make pies from their heads) meant that manuscripts in Italy were often made from goatskin This reliance of the book industry on the palate of the locals is reflected in the lament by a 13th-century Patriarch of Cyprus would he be able to get the hides required for a manuscript of Demosthenes the transmission of knowledge had depended on carnivorous appetites and good animal husbandry Large volumes with hundreds of pages required the skins of many animals One goat was often needed for each page of parchment in a large liturgical book such as an antiphonary while a Bible might take the skins of more than two hundred animals—an entire herd of goats or flock of sheep clustered around the Badia in the Street of Booksellers To purchase their hides they needed to visit the butchers on the Ponte Vecchio the government ordered the city’s butchers to move their operations into the shops on the bridge From here the butchers could happily pour blood and other slops straight into the Arno would try to get the best hides from the butchers and the least number of bites from ticks and flies The process of making parchment was scarcely less foul-smelling than the work of the tanners who used both urine and dung to cure their hides The parchment makers would cart their heap of skins back to their premises and then attached with pegs to wooden frames and stretched tight as the remaining hair and flesh was scraped away with a crescent-shaped knife they would be rubbed with chalk or bone dust and scrubbed with a pumice stone Then they were rubbed and scrubbed again and again until the surface of both sides was smooth and pale though sheepskin always yielded a yellowish cast and goatskin a slightly gray one The skin was then cut from the frame in a neat rectangle The rectangular shape of books (through the Middle Ages codices generally had a width-to-height ratio of 2:3) was in many respects determined by the shape of the animal skins once they had been trimmed of their extremities with their coarser grain and more awkward shape might be used as cheap parchment for children’s books such as the Santacroce The next operation involved paring away the skin with another sharp tool reducing it to roughly half of its original thickness The parchment maker had to be careful neither to tear the skin nor to create an uneven thickness luxurious manuscripts was scraped less so it remained robust enough to carry the decorations these pages were reduced to a thickness of 0.1 millimeter from the bites of insects or the gashes of old wounds could leave the surface with small oval perforations around which the scribe would have to work The defective quality of the parchment—if it was too rough or brittle—was one of the many things about which scribes complained in their manuscripts “The parchment is hairy,” griped one medieval scribe The large rectangle of parchment was then cut into four or eight pieces Parchment was sold in various sizes according to the type of book for which it was destined One of the largest sizes was used for antiphonaries which needed to be read simultaneously from a distance by many pairs of eyes—those of choir members Their pages were often two feet high by more than a foot wide with the staves (the horizontal lines on which the musical notes appear) drawn almost two inches high The pages of parchment used by Vespasiano for his edition of Cicero for William Grey were fourteen inches high by ten inches wide Parchment in Florence was usually sold in quires made up of five sheets folded in half to make ten leaves One of these quires of foglio commune could cost as much as ten soldi Given that his manuscript of Cicero’s rhetorical writings required 125 leaves the parchment for this volume alone must have cost Vespasiano roughly one and a half florins This sum was a significant outlay—roughly a month’s rent on the shop in the Street of Booksellers And the most expensive labor and materials were yet to come So too did the Franciscan nuns at the convent of Santa Brigida del Paradiso the Benedictine nuns in Santissima Annunziata della Murate and indeed the nuns at some five other convents scattered in and around Florence the manuscripts they produced were liturgical in nature—breviaries the scribes who copied secular works such as the Latin classics were not found in the scriptoria of abbeys and convents but rather in the shops of notaries and the studies of assorted scholars who might otherwise work as secretaries to wealthy men or tutors to their sons Notaries made ideal scribes because their profession called on them to prepare contracts and other documents in Latin because notaries were the most numerous profession in Florence in the first half of the 15th century—and many of their shops lined the Street of Booksellers and Via del Palagio Most of the scribes employed over the years by Vespasiano were indeed notaries (all of whom used the honorific “ser,” rather as “Esq.” is added after a lawyer’s name) Many notaries topped up their incomes by copying manuscripts part-time in their shops or homes abandoned the notarial profession altogether and worked full-time as scribes the scribe represented a bookseller’s greatest expense taking up as much as two-thirds of a manuscript’s production cost earning a fixed sum for every ten leaves of parchment The average fee was around thirty or forty soldi per quire at which rate Ser Antonio would have been paid more than five florins for his work on the Cicero manuscript for William Grey Copying ten or twelve such manuscripts per year would allow a scribe to bask in more than tolerable comfort Scribes often needed to work quickly and prolifically due to the demands of the patron the time limit imposed by whoever lent the exemplar One of the most impressive scribal feats in Florence was that of a copyist in the middle of the 1300s who produced—over the course of some twenty years—what became known to legend as the gruppo del Cento or “the Group of One Hundred”: one hundred manuscripts of Dante’s Divine Comedy the proceeds of which provided dowries for the scribe’s numerous daughters The offspring of his daughters’ marriages called themselves dei Centi “of the Hundred,” proudly taking their surname from the pen-pushing efforts of their grandfather Many other remarkable scribal feats are on record One copyist working in Florence managed to complete a quire (that is twenty pages front and back) every two days Poggio worked at double that speed when he produced his complete Quintilian in thirty-two days He once copied out 152 pages of a work in twelve days and in 1425 he promised to provide Niccolò Niccoli with a new manuscript of Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things in only two weeks One of the quickest quills belonged to a scribe named Giovanmarco Cinico who once copied 1,270 pages of Pliny’s Natural History in 120 days We have no record of how long Ser Antonio took to copy the 250 pages of the manuscript for William Grey But he generally worked both swiftly and prolifically He completed a manuscript of Virgil in April 1445 only seven months before signing the Cicero for Vespasiano In the previous twelve months he had copied out two manuscripts of Leonardo Bruni’s History of Florence a massive tome that stretched to 300 leaves of parchment or 600 pages.* In one year he managed to copy at least seven manuscripts including one of Bruni’s translations of a Platonic dialogue Vespasiano had wisely chosen for this important early commission a talented and capable veteran with almost thirty years of experience His beautiful handwriting graced the manuscripts of many important and cherished works: Gellius’s Attic Nights Bruni’s translations of both Plato and Aristotle He copied manuscripts for the finest collections in Florence including at the end of his transcriptions affectionate salutations such as “Happy reading Such comments Ser Antonio always placed at the end in what has come to be known as the colophon The word “colophon” derives from the Greek κορυφή but at some point it took on a metaphorical sense of a finishing touch or crowing stroke: ancient Greek philosophers spoke of “putting a colophon” on an argument having copied hundreds of pages of a manuscript and slogans often added by scribes to the ends of their manuscripts The scribe who copied part of Aquinas’s massive Summa Theologica ended with a cry of exhausted triumph: “Here ends the second part of the work of Brother Thomas Aquinas of the Dominican Order At other times scribes addressed future readers cautioning them to be careful with the manuscript: “I beseech you for fear you should do mischief to the text by some sudden movement.” Scribes often asked readers to pray for their souls A humorous variation on this convention appeared in a manuscript copied by a Florentine nun named Sara “Let whoever reads this devout life pray God for me “And if you don’t I’ll strangle you when I’m dead.” Ser Antonio used a compass to draw a circle around whose 360 degrees he would put his name and the date He began his long career in the summer of 1417 when he ended a manuscript with the observation that he had been “laboring during the plague in Tuscany.” One of his other manuscripts states that Florence was bravely fighting the “tyranny of the duke of Milan who was waging an unlawful and unjust war.” Vespasiano prepared the parchment for Ser Antonio by ruling it with lines This task would have been among the first he learned from Michele Guarducci Cartolai pricked the margins with a needle or a pinwheel often pushing the point through as much as a quire at a time The operation required a certain amount of physical strength (and no doubt sometimes resulted in minor injuries) The small perforations indicated where exactly the horizontal lines should be drawn or The point of pricking a quire at a time was to make sure the spacing was uniform on all of the pages Ser Antonio’s Cicero manuscript features 36 lines of text on each page with the guidelines in pale ink still faintly visible The job of ruling the parchment was a tediously repetitive one but it had the obvious importance of ensuring evenly spaced lines and a text that ran undeviatingly across the pages sloped at an angle of around thirty degrees the latter made (as one manual advised) by incinerating the leg or shoulder of a sheep and then grinding the ashes on a porphyry slab Next comes the preparation of the vital instrument of his labors: his quill made from one of the flight feathers of a goose (the word pen derives from the Latin penna He has already carefully trimmed the barbs from the shaft to make the nib more pliable and help the flow of ink These procedures he will repeat numerous times a day his quill slowly growing shorter as he pares it away Next Ser Antonio dips the quill into one of the two inkhorns The main ingredients for the former are wine and the barks and saps from various trees tannin-rich lumps that grow on the twigs of oak trees where gallflies lay their eggs One Italian recipe for black ink advised taking four ounces of crushed galls and mixing them with a bottle of strong white wine and gum arabic—the sap from an acacia tree These ingredients were left in the sun and stirred every few hours a few ounces of “Roman vitriol,” or copper sulphate The mixture then sat a few days longer and was regularly stirred Then it was placed over the fire and boiled “for the space of one miserere ”—as long as it took to recite the nineteen verses of Psalm 51 and left to sit in the sun for two more days “If you then put in it a little rock alum it will make it much brighter,” the recipe claimed “and it will be good and perfect writing ink.” Ser Antonio bought his supply of black ink from either a cartolaio (who also sold goosequill pens) or one of Florence’s monasteries He can make red ink himself by mixing egg white and gum arabic with cinnabar a reddish stone found in Tuscany and purchased Another dip in the inkhorn and he hovers over the blank page its buoyant surface pressed down with the knife he holds in his left hand His middle finger is farther down the shaft than his index: the better to control the nib He holds his quill at a right angle to the surface of the parchment: the better for the ink to flow from nib to page Ser Antonio brings the nib down to the surface—he is writing on the smoother Without lifting the pen he makes a swift feint to the right then a slight release of pressure and another feathery horizontal feint before the nib is lifted clear: the letter I its downstroke topped and tailed by tiny serifs .” He is pronouncing the words aloud as he writes the better to remember them as his eyes move back and forth from the copy text to his parchment “Three fingers hold the pen,” wrote one scribe providing the table of contents in red ink It is a roll call of some of Cicero’s most famous and influential works rediscovered by Petrarch in Verona in 1345 Vespasiano probably acquired the exemplars for Ser Antonio from Cosimo de’ Medici who had copies made for himself in the 1420s He may also have found them in the library of San Marco for in 1423 Niccoli copied out both the Orator and Brutus in his distinctive script Ser Antonio completes the contents page and moves on to the next The quire has been arranged by Vespasiano such that this facing page Flesh sides always face flesh; hair sides always face hair (these are slightly rougher often lightly stippled from the follicles) The first text is the Rhetorica ad Herennium in which Cicero gives his friend Gaius Herennius lessons on how to make a speech It was a treatise much loved by the humanists in Florence where a successful speech depended on the ability to use logic and reason to persuade others to “bend your auditor to go wherever you might want.” Ser Antonio begins copying out Cicero’s words not in block capitals but in a smaller hand legible script of which he is one of the earliest and most talented pioneers This so-called humanist script is a gift that the scribes of Florence bequeathed to the world one no less important than the rediscovery of the works of Cicero or Quintilian or the perspective grids of Brunelleschi and paintings of Masaccio—a gift that the manuscript expert Albert Derolez has called “one of the great creations of the human mind.” Bruni was interred in the basilica of Santa Croce with an elegant funerary monument showing him reclining with a manuscript on his chest—a copy of his History of Florence _______________________________________________________ Excerpt adapted from The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature Masthead About Sign Up For Our Newsletters How to Pitch Lit Hub Privacy Policy Support Lit Hub - Become A Member Lit Hub has always brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall you'll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page All content on this site: Copyright © 2025 Elsevier B.V. Science of the Total EnvironmentCitation Excerpt :Instead and potential risk of the aquifer being affected by SI Increasing water demand and intensive anthropogenic activities due to dense populations exacerbate the vulnerability of SI in coastal regions (Kramer et al. SI has led to the degradation of groundwater quality intensifying conflicts between freshwater demand and supply Marine and Petroleum GeologyCitation Excerpt :These chemical characteristics are probably acquired through short or relatively short water-rock interaction between meteoric waters and Ca-rich phases calcite is the most likely candidate involved in this process because it occurs in both crystalline and sedimentary rocks and has very high dissolution rates (Appelo and Postma probably due to the interaction with the serpentinites and ultramafic rocks outcropping in the Spezzano Albanese area Diálogo Américas and Brazilian air force academies has students experience life abroad Devemos apoiar muito estas oportunidades para aprender sobre nossas forças aéreas respetivas Obrigada ao Tenente Coronel brasileiro que fez muito para criar este programa de intercâmbio Adorei saber que estamos progredindo e melhorando nossa formação! Pois o caminho do sucesso sempre passa pela educação e nada melhor do que aprender com quem tem sucesso! Fez-nos conhecer muito bem os aspectos positivos desse programa Air Force Academy (USAFA) attend the Brazilian Air Force Academy (AFA) since early August 2017 and Aleigh Morgan Maclean are pioneers of an exchange between the two countries meant to improve foreign language skills and increase interoperability among air forces the American students joined AFA daily routine in Pirassununga as well as activities related to military doctrine The students were selected among cadets who studied Portuguese and you have to have good grades and be in good physical condition,” Cadet Vespasiano said The American students chose Brazil for the opportunity to learn how another air force operates I wanted to have a different kind of military experience learning the doctrine and routine of Brazilian cadets,” Cadet Heefner explained per its Portuguese acronym) Lieutenant Colonel Saint-Clair Lima da Silva—an instructor at the academy’s departments of Foreign Languages and Political Sciences—prepared cadets from early January to early July 2017 “We had a one-hour class several times a week to talk about AFA and Brazil’s lifestyle,” Cadet Heefner said and films served as sources of information for the students “I would watch children’s movies dubbed in Portuguese it was easier to understand,” Cadet Mclean said The first weeks at AFA were an adjustment period for the U.S They attended classes in Brazilian culture and the grading method for subjects taught at the academy “Although they were juniors in the United States They stayed in separate quarters with Brazilian roommates to facilitate adjustment to the language,” said FAB Captain Marcelo da Silva dos Santos instructor at the Fenrir Squadron that received the cadets I didn’t understand anything anyone was saying The accent here is very different from my Brazilian professor’s back at USAFA,” Cadet Vespasiano said and we didn’t understand Portuguese very well,” Cadet Maclean said this initial difficulty with the language was expected “No matter how much someone might study a language there’s a colloquial vocabulary they have to adapt to But their roommates helped them through the process,” he said cadets’ personal qualities and their willingness to be involved in school activities they demonstrated satisfactory performance The cadets quickly adapted to AFA’s military doctrine The cadets felt the differences between the two academies in the early days and the military aspect is very demanding,” Cadet Heefner said the classes at USAFA are more participatory We also have more laboratory sessions and research projects,” he said we do exercises such as camping and survival at sea or in the jungle those training events are woven into the academics,” Cadet Vespasiano said geared toward the engineering field,” he explained AFA currently offers courses in Aviator Officer Training Aviators begin pilot training in their sophomore year and learn to fly the T-25 Universal with 34 graded missions logging close to 36 flight hours in a year Aviation cadets return to flying in their senior year logging 75 hours over 64 missions aboard the T-27 Tucano they must complete three standard and emergency procedures missions in a flight simulator Saint-Clair explained that USAFA strongly emphasizes prior reading air exercises are mainly meant to motivate cadets to fly The course consists of about 20 hours of classroom instruction and nearly 13 flight hours selected officers who chose aviation must undergo an “initial flight screening” for 40 days in Pueblo “It’s an opportunity to better understand the training of the most important air force in the world which is at the forefront of doctrinal and technological development,” he said the chance to be exposed to different perspectives on military and academic officer training is a big advantage cadets also noted the benefits of their experience I can understand how the Brazilian chain of command functions and what its training objectives are,” Cadet Heefner said adding that he will miss the food and excursions Cadet Vespasiano was surprised by the people’s graciousness and the country’s natural beauty lessons learned during survival training at sea stood out “It was hard being in the waves for 48 hours But I found it interesting to see how officers served right alongside cadets and their subordinates during the exercise,” she said The Brazilian cadets took the opportunity to practice their English and gain new knowledge from their foreign colleagues “They have a very different view with regard to warfare They need to be ready for real-world situations as they’re from a country involved in some conflicts,” said FAB Cadet Mariana Dutra Brazilian cadets studying at USAFA strictly follow the routine of the cadets at the academy and are subject to the same restrictions and privileges They study five subjects chosen according to their training programs—Aviation or Infantry—that contribute to their training as Air Force officers such as asymmetric warfare and leadership development the Brazilian cadets adjusted quite well to the routine at USAFA our cadets are among the best students in their subject of study Aviation Cadet Christian Eloysio Silva scored the highest grade average of the more than 1,000 cadets at USAFA who take the Air Power and Military Profession course,” he said Logistics Cadet Michelle de Mattos also scored well earning the third highest grade in the Production Aviation Cadet Diego Bertolo and Infantry Cadet Felipe Cazuza came in first place in sports competitions held within USAFA For more on security and defense issues around the globe Section III boys volleyball stat leaders through Feb .st1{fill-rule:evenodd;clip-rule:evenodd;fill:#2a2a2a}By Pat Spadafore | pspadafore@syracuse.comSection III boys volleyball top 20 stats from stats reported to syracuse.com by Section III coaches Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, (updated 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The season was an amazing one up until May when the Catalans threw away a 3-0 lead against Liverpool in the Champions League semi-finals and were blown away by Valencia in the Copa del Rey Finals leaving them to win only one trophy instead of the proposed three 2018/19 for Barcelona did not go according to plan despite the La Liga win Lionel Messi, the club’s captain believes that signing players who could be good regulars, backups or even competitors would be a good idea to get the best out of the entire squad. Hence, he has asked the club to sign as many as five players during the summer’s transfer window including a goalkeeper, according to Diario GOL Barcelona will need a second fiddle to Marc Andre Ter-Stegen Yann Sommer and Luis Neto are the two names that have been linked with a move to the Camp Nou of late but their captain has said that Wolfsburg stopper Koen Casteels could be the ideal fit in between the sticks for the Copa del Rey matches Messi has asked for Matthijs de Ligt’s signatures at all costs The Argentinian believes that signing the Ajax star would be a massive statement and that Barcelona’s heart of the defence would be sorted for years to come he wants Junior Firpo of Real Betis to come in as Jordi Alba’s backup instead of Raphael Guerreiro Messi wants reinforcements in the attack as well He is not a big fan of Barcelona’s decision of signing Antoine Griezmann from Atletico Madrid after the player’s behaviour earlier towards the club but he is of the opinion that a striker needs to be signed with Philippe Coutinho set to depart Catalonia How much money do you think Barcelona would spend on signing the five desired players © 2025 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved The content on this site is for entertainment and educational purposes only Betting and gambling content is intended for individuals 21+ and is based on individual commentators' opinions and not that of Minute Media or its affiliates and related brands All picks and predictions are suggestions only and not a guarantee of success or profit If you or someone you know has a gambling problem crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER ","https://fansided.com/",{"alt":"5w","src":"5x","url":"5y"},{"type":"5v","value":"5z"},"link","Minute Media","https://www.minutemedia.com/",{"text":"62","url":"63"},{"type":"61","value":"64"},"All Rights Reserved Betting and gambling content is intended for individuals 21+ and is based on individual commentators' opinions and not that of Minute Media or its affiliates and related brands with a general interest and religious following in European football Lionel Messi, the club’s captain believes that signing players who could be good regulars, backups or even competitors would be a good idea to get the best out of the entire squad. Hence, he has asked the club to sign as many as five players during the summer’s transfer window including a goalkeeper, according to Diario GOL Messi set to lure Premier League bound midfielder to Barca How much money do you think Barcelona would spend on signing the five desired players?