Florence during the Renaissance. These words bring to mind images of beautiful creations by skilled artists and architects. But equally significant were the achievements of creators in another field: Florentine manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers who wiped the dust of centuries off ancient knowledge, and in uncovering and spreading it, they created a new enlightened world.
It was in this sphere that Vespasiano da Bisticci achieved grand success — the “king of booksellers,” to whom a new captivating book by Ross King, author of the bestsellers “Leonardo da Vinci and The Last Supper,” “Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel,” and many others, is dedicated.
Manuscripts created under Vespasiano's guidance were sought after by enlightened monarchs and Roman pontiffs to adorn their libraries… But the collapse of the grand enterprise of the “king of booksellers” was predetermined: the invention of printing made books accessible to many.
The dramatic political and religious upheavals of the era, the history of philosophical thought, and the European world during a period of monumental and fateful changes are presented by Ross King through the lens of the biography of an extraordinary man, unjustly forgotten by history, Vespasiano da Bisticci — a true titan of the Renaissance.
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