The Euclidean tradition at the Renaissance courts: the case of Federico Commandino

In the first decades of the Sixteenth century the editions of the Elements available to the scholars were essentially the editio princeps, printed in Venice in 1482 by Erhard Ratdolt and based on the medieval version of Campanus from Novara, and the Venetian edition of 1505, based instead on the translation of a Greek code, made by the humanist Bartolomeo Zamberti. Numerous editions were to follow all along the century, but none of them had the features to become the reference edition for the European scholars. This situation completely changed in 1572, when Federico Commandino printed his translation, which combined philological rigour and mathematical exactness and the aim of the paper is to illustrate some peculiar features of this edition. The Euclidean text, based on Greek sources, was enriched of comments and addictions (in italic type, clearly distinct from the critical text) based on both classical and contemporary sources: the edition, actually, represented perfectly Commandino’s idea of restoration of Classics in the light of an integrated scientific knowledge.