Inscriptions on Paper: Contemporary Annotations in Jacopo Mazzocchi’s Epigrammata antiquae urbis (1521)

• In Event: Annotated Books I: New Work in Deciphering Early Modern Reading Practices

Abstract

Humanists were interested in all genres of ancient writing, but inscriptions were unique because they were not subject to the introduction of errors in manuscript copying. Fascination with inscriptions reflected a larger interest in the origins of writing, hieroglyphs, and other ancient languages. This paper will explore materiality and genre in humanist criticism about writing and its origins through the early printed documentation of inscriptions. Their antiquity and materiality granted inscriptions an almost unassailable historical authority, which Annius of Viterbo exploited in his forged inscriptions regarding “Etruscan” Viterbo. When inscriptions began to be compiled and published in Jacopo Mazzocchi’s Epigrammata antiquae Urbis (1521), or in Antonio Lafrery’s Speculum Romanae magnificentiae, their transference from stone to paper transformed the way humanists interacted with these texts. This paper will consider one annotated copy of the 1521 Epigrammata as an example of that transformative interaction.

Author

• Hilary Dawn Barker, University of Chicago