The Squarcialupi Codex is among the most refined Italian music manuscripts, copied in Florence in the early fifteenth century. The over 300 compositions it contains – almost half of which do not appear in any other codex – are the work of the most renowned composers of the fourteenth century.

Illuminated Florentine Music

The manuscript is richly illuminated with gold and precious colors, placing it among the most magnificent works in the history of Italian illumination. Recent iconographic research confirms that the miniatures and splendid illuminations had their origins in the Florentine scriptorium of Santa Maria degli Angeli between 1410 and 1415.

The codex was once a possession of the celebrated Florentine organist Antonio Squarcialupi (1417-1480), as is stated by the inscription on the first sheet: "This book belongs to Antonio di Bartolomeo Squarcialupi, organist in Santa Maria del Fiore".

Later it was owned by Giuliano de' Medici and subsequently passed to the Palatine Library; at the end of the eighteenth century, it was transferred together with other volumes to the Laurentian Library where it has been kept to this day, marked Palatino 87, and still preserves its same elegant binding.

Binding description

Brown leather binding on wooden boards, dating from the end of the fifteenth century.

We have 1 facsimile edition of the manuscript "Squarcialupi Codex": Codice Squarcialupi facsimile edition, published by Giunti Editore, 1992

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Manuscript book description compiled by the publisher.
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Codice Squarcialupi

Florence: Giunti Editore, 1992

  • Commentary (English, Italian) by Gallo, Alberto F.; Nádas, John; Von Fischer, Kurt; Bellosi, Luciano; Ferro Luraghi, Margherita; Pirrotta, Nino; Tavani, Giuseppe; Cattin, Giulio; Ziino, Agostino
  • Limited Edition: 998 copies
  • Full-size color reproduction of the entire original document, Squarcialupi Codex: the facsimile attempts to replicate the look-and-feel and physical features of the original document; pages are trimmed according to the original format; the binding might not be consistent with the current document binding.

A box (size 320 x 460 mm), with leather-covered spine with gold stamping, contains the codex and a text volume of 290 pages printed on handmade paper and bound in Fabriano paper.

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