‘Un canzoniere storiato e messo a oro’: vicende quattrocentesche del manoscritto Banco Rari 217

This article discloses several unknown details about the fifteenth-century history of MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco Rari 217 (ex Palatino 418), one of the most important anthologies of early Italian poetry. First, the complete reading of the earliest note of ownership surviving in the codex uncovers the name and social standing of the citizen of Florence who in the second half of the fifteenth century kept the manuscript in his family library. Second, it discusses how a manuscript of this nature, a late thirteenth-century de luxe court-book, beautifully illuminated, but containing poetic texts that by then had become irremediably outmoded, was considered and used well before philologists and writers, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, started showing a new appreciation of codices of the ‘antiche rime’. Finally, from a methodological perspective, it offers a clear example of the way a strictly historical approach can contribute to our better understanding of such a celebrated witness of early Italian literature.