There was one work that connected artistic minds around 1700 and this was Orlando furioso, a Renaissance collection of fantasy tales that had readers for many centuries to come and was – I am convinced – enjoyed by young Margherita and her later colleagues when they were in their teenage years. The female knights must have had a special fascination for girls…
Hippogriffs in flight, with St Andrews, home of Ginevra and the Scottish court, beneath. Detail from woodcut for canto 4 (Sp Coll q2)
Titlepage of the 1558 Furioso, with early (17th century?) autograph “T.(?) Coke”. (Sp Coll q2)
This year marks the 500th anniversary of the first publication of Ariosto’s epic chivalric fantasy poem, Orlando Furioso. In this guest blogpost Simona Nisticò, a Language and Literature Master’s student from the University of Perugia on Erasmus placement at the University of Glasgow Library, discusses a particularly interesting sixteenth-century copy of the work held by Special Collections.
“The Furioso is a unique book, and can be – or should I say, must be? – read without reference to any other book either before it or after. It is a universe of its own that one can travel the length and breadth of, going in, coming out again, and losing oneself in.” Italo Calvino
View original post 1,562 more words
Margherita Durastanti and her era 