Albertino Da Lessona

Albertino da Lessona, also known as Albertino Viani, Albertino Rosso, and in Latin imprints as Albertinus Rubeus Vercellensis or Albertinus de Lisona Vercellensis, was a Piedmontese printer active in Venice from at least 1499 until his death in 1505. His publications encompass scholastic philosophy, classical literature, contemporary humanism, vernacular poetry, commercial reference works, and early accounts of the Spanish voyages across the Atlantic. Although the surviving evidence reveals considerably more about his books and business relationships than about his personal life, recent archival research has established that he belonged to a family of printers rather than operating as an isolated newcomer to the Venetian trade. His career must consequently be reconstructed through the conjunction of signed editions, family partnerships, publishing commissions, and the documents concerning the settlement of his estate.

Albertino originated from Lessona, in the Biellese territory historically associated with Vercelli, and belonged to the Viani family. His brothers were Giovanni Rosso, the printer generally identified in Latin as Johannes Rubeus Vercellensis, and Bernardino, likewise active in the book trade. Giovanni had been printing long before Albertino’s first securely documented appearances and was established in Venice by 1486. The association therefore provided Albertino with a close familial connection to an experienced producer of books, although it does not establish where he learned his craft or when he entered his brother’s workshop. His birth date, education, and apprenticeship remain undocumented. The varying forms Viani, Rosso, Rubeus, Vercellensis, and de Lisona have sometimes obscured this family relationship; they should not be treated as evidence for several unrelated printers.

Among Albertino’s earliest securely dated publications is Paulus Soncinas’s Expositio in artem veterem Aristotelis, printed jointly with Giovanni Rosso on 13 April 1499. This compact quarto belonged to the teaching literature of Aristotelian logic, demonstrating that the brothers’ collaboration addressed an established scholarly market rather than beginning exclusively with literary humanism. On 6 June 1499, their names appeared together in an edition of Guillaume Durand’s Rationale divinorum officiorum, edited by Johannes Aloisius Tuscanus. Durand’s extensive interpretation of ecclesiastical ceremonies, furnishings, vestments, and the liturgical calendar served a different readership, principally clerical. These publications establish both the early partnership and the range of learned and professional subjects represented in its production.

By the autumn of 1499 Albertino was also signing substantial books without Giovanni’s name. His Latin edition of Flavius Josephus, combining the Antiquitates Judaicae and De bello Judaico, was completed on 23 October 1499. A folio of 276 leaves, printed in roman type, it explicitly distinguished the work of the printer from the financing of the publication through the formula impensis Octaviani Scoti. The following day is the date assigned to his edition of Paulus Venetus’s Logica magna, likewise produced for the Scotto publishing concern and associated with the editorial work of Franciscus de Macerata and Jacobus de Fossano. These commissions place Albertino within a larger organization of Venetian production, in which the press named in a colophon did not necessarily bear sole responsibility for selecting, financing, or distributing the book.

Logic remained a recurrent subject. On 10 January 1500, Albertino printed Johannes de Monte’s Expositio super Logicam Petri Hispani, edited by Petrus de Cruce; on 10 March followed Nicolaus de Orbellis’s exposition of the same foundational logical tradition. Alongside these teaching books, he developed a sustained interest in Valerius Maximus, whose Facta et dicta memorabilia circulated with the commentary of Oliviero da Arzignano. Editions bearing Albertino’s name are recorded on 5 July 1500, 14 December 1503, and 22 May 1505. The sequence is more informative than a miscellaneous list of classical authors: it identifies a title repeatedly returned to during his short career, combining the ancient collection of historical examples with an established explanatory apparatus.

His edition of Pliny the Younger, issued in 1501, similarly participated in an existing humanist editorial tradition. It reproduced the text associated with Filippo Beroaldo, following the enlarged edition of 1498 rather than constituting an independent recovery of Pliny’s correspondence. Its advertised contents included the Epistolae, the Panegyricus, and the De viris illustribus traditionally transmitted under Pliny’s name. The title’s claim to include an additional book of letters must therefore be understood in relation to the preceding editions: Albertino was transmitting an expanded textual corpus already introduced into print, not himself discovering the supplementary material. This relationship exemplifies the importance of distinguishing the historical value of a reprint from an unsupported claim to editorial priority.

A further publication of 1501 assembled the Problemata circulating under the names of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Aristotle, and Plutarch. The respective Latin translations were attributed to Giorgio Valla, Theodore Gaza, and Giovanni Pietro da Lucca. Printed in folio, with roman type and woodcut initials, the collection offered Latin readers access to several bodies of Greek question-and-answer literature within a single volume. Its intellectual organization depended upon the translations and textual groupings inherited from earlier humanist scholarship. Albertino’s contribution was that of the printer who brought these materials together in a usable edition; neither the translations nor the ancient attributions should be confused with work undertaken personally by him.

A more direct engagement with a living humanist’s literary production came with the 1502 collected edition of Marcantonio Sabellico, completed on 24 December. This was a collection of selected writings rather than a complete edition of everything Sabellico had composed. It united the Epistolarum familiarium libri XII, orations, works on Venice and its government, discussions of administrative duties and Latin learning, antiquarian writing on Aquileia, and a substantial body of poetry. Particularly important was the first publication of the twelve books of familiar letters, included in a collection supervised by Sabellico himself. Albertino’s press thus participated in the author’s organization of his own scholarly and public identity, assembling writings previously dispersed by genre, occasion, and subject.

The civic writings gave the collection a specifically Venetian relevance. The De situ Venetae urbis described the city, while the De Venetis magistratibus examined its governing offices; the accompanying works on the duties of a praetor and a scribe extended the discussion into the conduct of administration. These were not all new texts. The De Venetis magistratibus, for example, had already appeared separately from the press of Antonio de Strata in 1488 or 1489. The significance of Albertino’s edition lay partly in its regrouping of such writings, allowing the description of the city, its institutions, and the responsibilities of officeholders to be read within a larger presentation of Sabellico’s humanism.

The material construction of the Sabellico volume also deserves attention. Its prose and poetry form two separately organized parts, the latter beginning with its own title and lacking foliation. The final register and colophon nevertheless describe the combined publication. The Bibliothèque nationale de France notes that the poetry may not have been printed simultaneously with the first part, and that errors in the prose section’s foliation disguise an actual extent of 138 leaves behind a final printed number of 136. Authorial supervision did not eliminate textual problems: modern research by Maria Teresa Laneri has identified errors in the letters, particularly in the naming of correspondents, that passed from the 1502 printing into subsequent editions. The volume is consequently important both as an authorially organized collection and as the source of a printed tradition requiring critical correction.

On 4 May 1503, Albertino completed Giacomo Filippo Foresti’s enlarged universal chronicle, presented as the Novissime hystoriarum omnium repercussiones and also designated the Supplementum supplementi chronicarum. Foresti’s chronicle had first appeared in Venice in 1483; Albertino’s edition was therefore a substantial stage in an established publishing history, not its beginning. The revised narrative extended to 1502 and, under the year 1493, introduced an account of Christopher Columbus’s first Atlantic voyage and the lands encountered, occupying leaves 441v–442v. The incorporation of this material into a history beginning with the creation of the world gave the Spanish discoveries a place within an inherited chronological account of universal history.

Foresti’s book also provides concrete evidence of the relationship between new publishing projects and inherited illustrative material. Its large biblical compositions and numerous city views belonged to a visual tradition developed through earlier editions of the chronicle. As Ruth Mortimer’s bibliographical description establishes, many of the smaller blocks, the Tower of Babel, and the larger city views other than Milan had already appeared in the 1490 edition; the large Milan view was new to Albertino’s printing. The edition’s visual character therefore resulted from a combination of reuse and addition, rather than from a wholly newly commissioned series. This continuity of images accompanied a meaningful change in the historical text, illustrating how a familiar illustrated book could be updated without abandoning the material resources through which readers already recognized it.

The same year brought an important departure from literary and historical publishing. On 26 July 1503, Albertino issued the first edition of Bartolomeo Pasi’s, or Paxi’s, Tariffa de pexi e mesure. Designed for merchants, the work organized information about commodities, weights, measures, and commercial equivalences across the trading connections linking Venice with markets from London to the Levant. Its practical purpose was to make local systems intelligible in relation to one another, addressing the difficulties created by differences between places of purchase, shipment, and sale. The title explicitly announced con gratia et privilegio, providing specific evidence of claimed protection for this publication without requiring conjecture about Albertino’s general use of privileges. The work remained in circulation through later Venetian editions, including Alessandro Bindoni’s edition of 1521 and Pietro Nicolini da Sabbio’s of 1540.

Albertino’s most substantial contribution to the printing of Italian poetry was the undated Petrarcha con doi commenti, conventionally assigned to 1503. This illustrated folio brought together Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta and Trionfi with several layers of commentary. For the lyric poems, Francesco Filelfo’s exposition was accompanied by that attributed to Antonio da Tempo, now conventionally identified as Pseudo-Antonio; from poem 136 onwards, Girolamo Squarciafico’s commentary replaced Filelfo’s. Nicolò Peranzone, also called Riccio Marchesiano, was responsible for editorial correction. The roman-type page could place the poem within commentary on three sides or distribute separate textual blocks above their explanations. A portrait of Petrarch and six full-page illustrations of the triumphs complemented this presentation of the poet through text, interpretation, biography, and image.

The title-page of the Petrarcha nevertheless misrepresented one important responsibility: it advertised the commentary on the Trionfi as Peranzone’s, although the exposition was that of Bernardo Ilicino, whose dedication to Borso d’Este remained within the volume. Peranzone’s editorial intervention had thus been promoted into apparent authorship of the commentary. The edition’s subsequent history makes the distinction consequential. Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler’s Milan printing of 20 August 1507 is considered a probable reprint of Albertino’s edition, whereas Bartolomeo Zani’s edition of 1508 corrected the misleading attribution by identifying Ilicino. Albertino’s volume belongs to a continuing genealogy of composite Petrarch editions in which textual inheritance, editorial revision, and the claims made on title-pages did not always coincide.

On 10 April 1504, Albertino printed the small volume that most directly connected his workshop with the early dissemination of information about the Americas: the Libretto de tutta la navigatione de re de Spagna de le isole et terreni novamente trovati. Its appearance depended on Angelo, or Anzolo, Trevisan, secretary to the Venetian embassy in Spain, and on the writings of Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, better known as Peter Martyr. In a letter sent from Granada to Domenico Malipiero on 21 August 1501, Trevisan described obtaining and translating an account of the discoveries associated with Martyr. The resulting Italian text reached print in Venice several years before the first Latin edition of Martyr’s First Decade, published at Seville in 1511.

The Libretto should not, however, be described simply as a translation of the completed Latin text subsequently printed in 1511. It represents a much shorter Italian form of the material, and the precise relationship between Trevisan’s abridgment and an earlier, less developed authorial text remains a bibliographical question. Its importance includes the early printed circulation of accounts extending beyond Columbus’s first voyage. Its subsequent transmission was equally significant: the text was incorporated into Book IV of the Paesi novamente retrovati, published at Vicenza in 1507, and thereby entered the wider circulation of that collection’s editions and translations. Albertino’s modest publication thus became a component of a much larger European publishing enterprise, even though the circumstances of its original authorization and any arrangements for its reuse are not securely established.

The press continued to serve more established markets alongside these publications. Albertino issued a vernacular Valerius Maximus in 1504, broadening the linguistic reach of an author already represented in his Latin production. A collection of Antonio da Vercelli’s Sermones quadragesimales, with associated material on the virtues, bears his imprint in 1505. These books prevent the geographical publications from being mistaken for evidence that he had become a specialist in voyages or discoveries. His surviving output instead shows concurrent engagement with different kinds of reading: the study of authoritative texts, clerical preparation, vernacular literary interpretation, and the practical or informational needs addressed by commercial manuals and accounts of navigation.

The end of Albertino’s life can be dated more closely than the conventional terminal dates assigned to his press might suggest. He made his will on 26 July 1505, naming his brothers Giovanni and Bernardino as commissioners, and was already dead when a transaction concerning his estate was drawn up on 16 October 1505. His death therefore falls between those dates. The documents, preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia, replace speculation about a disappearance caused by later political upheaval with a definite personal event and an identifiable process of estate administration. Their importance extends beyond chronology, since they expose commercial relationships largely invisible in the printed books themselves.

One outstanding liability was owed to Gioachino Donadeis, recorded as a creditor for ninety-two ducats and sixteen grossi. In arranging its settlement, the commissioners transferred books and claims against other debtors. These included copies of a Valerius Maximus deposited with the physician Giovanni Dominici, and a bale and a half of other books already in Donadeis’s possession. Such details reveal stock held outside a straightforward printer-to-bookseller transaction and the conversion of both physical books and outstanding payments into assets available to the estate. They establish financial obligations, but do not by themselves justify describing Albertino’s enterprise as bankrupt.

The same documentation reconstructs a network extending beyond Venice. Outstanding accounts connected the business with Girolamo Carnerio in Ferrara, Damiano da Gorgonzola and Francesco Baldassarri, or Cartolari, in Perugia, a bookseller named Simone in Padua, and Simone Bonasolo in Bergamo, as well as Venetian intermediaries. Particularly revealing is the debt of Bartolomeo Cantoni, described as a schoolmaster, whose involvement suggests a channel of distribution associated directly with teaching rather than exclusively with retail bookshops. These records provide firmer evidence for the geographical reach of Albertino’s business than general assertions about international fame: they identify particular people, places, and unpaid transactions through which books moved.

Books dated after Albertino’s death require correspondingly careful attribution. An anonymous edition of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria with the commentary of Raffaele Regio, completed on 12 May 1506, has been assigned by different bibliographers either to Giorgio Rusconi or to Albertino da Lessona and brothers. The latter attribution cannot establish that Albertino was personally alive and printing in 1506; it concerns the identification of a workshop or its materials. His brothers continued in the trade: Giovanni and Bernardino signed editions together from 1506 and explicitly described themselves as fratres de Lisona in 1510. The end of Albertino’s personal activity must therefore be distinguished from the continuation of his family’s production and from modern assignments of unsigned books.

The reconstruction of his surviving output also remains open to correction at the level of individual copies. In 2022, Giacomo Comiati demonstrated that twelve folio leaves preserved at the Senate House Library in London, previously catalogued as fragments of Bartolomeo Zani’s Petrarch edition of 1497, actually belonged to Albertino’s edition of 1503. The correction removed a supposed incunable from the fifteenth-century record while recovering another witness to Albertino’s illustrated Petrarch. Together with the archival identification of the Viani brothers, this finding shows how substantially his historical profile depends on the close examination of material evidence: family names concealed by changing imprint forms, texts transmitted under misleading attributions, and fragments whose typography can restore them to the edition from which they came.