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De honesta voluptate et valetudine, by Platina

Authors: Bartolomeo Platina, Bartolomeo Sacchi

 

The Italian humanist Bartolomeo Sacchi is remembered and known more as Bartolomeo Platina (il Platina). He was a notable man in his time: preceptor of the Medicis, of the son of King Luis III Gonzaga, secretary of the popes Pius II and Paul II, and, finally, director of the Biblioteca Vaticana Vatican Library in the late 1470s by pope thanks Sixtus IV.

Nevertheless today he is especially remembered for his famous book De honesta voluptate et valetudine, which was originally published in romance in the early 1470s. This first version compiled the famous Liber de arte coquinaria by the Chef Martino da Como. But the Platinum treaty has more merit than the fact of gathering the work of Martino Rossi, known as the Maestro da Como, a celebrity in the main European courts. Platina, already in the 1480s, increases his work with a series of comments on health, good customs, the use of pasta and, in addition, translates everything into Latin. Thanks to this version his work spread quickly among the academics and like this he disseminated the uses gathered by his tradition.

In addition to the 1517 edition that we share here (preserved in the Universidad Complutense), we leave the link of the Parisian edition of 1530.