Liber Physiognomiae

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his is a miscellany of medieval astrological treatises, reviewed in the humanistic age by an anonymous scholar. The purchaser and the artist who decorated the manuscript with delicate watercolours also remain unknown. The text, written in rounded Gothic calligraphy, starts with astrological considerations about days and seasons, then displays horoscopes for the twelve zodiacal signs, outlining characters and events occurring to men and women and anticipating their life expectancy. The codex turns out to be a real encyclopedia of the coeval astrological knowledge, so much cross-disciplinary and tightly linked to nearly all other fields of science, culture and life: this is why the text includes charts for medical applications of astrological calculations, interpretations of the biblical dreams of prophet Daniel, and other medical astrology essays that can be ascribed to Pietro d'Abano, teaching at the Padua University in the early 14th century. This paternity, the style of the illustrations recalling both Pisanello and Paduan astrological-type frescoes, and moreover other historical and cultural clues, enable to assume that this codex was manufactured between Padua and Ferrara, perhaps on behalf of marquis Leonello d'Este. Our facsimile edition also reproduces in accordance with the original its two "astrolabes", rotating dials provided with moving pointers that enable to stage the same calculations made at the time of the "Liber" by practitioners of zodiacal and medical-psychological medicine.

North-eastern Italy, 1440 ca., in Latin, II+35+II folios = 70 pages, cm 21x29, bound in leather; boxed; printrun: 999 copies. Commentary volume in Italian, with unabridged transcription and translation, and essays by P. Di Pietro, L. Ventu

A Documentation Kit containing 2 sample pages, in the original size, from the Liber Physiognomiae Fine Art Facsimile Volume, plus an illustrated, 12 page information brochure, is available for $US75.

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