The Seventeenth International Conference on Books, Publishing & Libraries

Abstract

Maestro Martino’s “Libro de Arte coquinaria” - composed in the second half of the fifteenth century - is considered pivotal in the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in terms of culinary and gustatory taste and will lead to the sixteenth century monumental culinary treatises of the Italian tradition: Messisbugo’s Banchetti (1549) and Scappi’s Opera (1570). This presentation focuses on the appropriations in print of Maestro Martino’s work: Platina’s “De Honesta Voluptade et Valedutine”(1474), the “Opera Nova Chiamata Epulario” (1516), and the “Opera Dignissima” (1530). Platina’s work is situated within a humanistic perspective in which order and misura should govern and organize human life: his De Honesta Voluptade et Valetudine, the first printed book with instructions for food preparations, was an extraordinary editorial success translated in French, vernacular Italian, and German. On the other hand, The “Opera Nova Chiamata Epulario” and the “Opera Dignissima” represent a new attitude towards recipe collections. In their introductions, both works define the goal of the publication: for the first time, a cookbook has a specific declared function. A detailed bibliographical analysis of the editorial history of these printed works reveals how printers and editors helped define the cookbook as a literary and editorial genre.