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wo names are linked to the "most beautiful book in the world", the illuminated Bible, a property of the Este and University Library of Modena. The first name is that of the Duke Borso d’Este, who, in a manner of speaking, “invented the masterpiece" and entrusted its execution to the calligrapher and illuminators who carried out the work between 1455 and 1461. They completed it with marvellous, painted scenes and figures enriching it with gold, colours, and one might say, with light. As this epoch in history drew to its end, it aimed at the rare and precious, the unique. The printed book was about to be born, and the manuscript was preparing to take its leave in the most sumptuous and beautiful form it had ever assumed.

The other name linked with the Este Bible is that of a contemporary, Giovanni Treccani, a Lombard industrialist and financier. Having heard that the Bible was for sale in Paris, he purchased it in 1923 for a very high price, brought it to Italy and donated it to the Italian people. Two years later, Treccani was to establish in Rome an institute for the preparation and publication of a national Encyclopaedia. He was convinced that in our age there is a fundamental relationship between economics and culture. His purchase of the Bible and the promotion of the Encyclopaedia both arose from the same intention of strengthening this relationship.

The Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, founded by Giovanni Treccani, is now presenting and distributing the beautiful, almost miraculous, reproduction of the Borso d’Este Bible. This work, which is absolutely true to the original, was issued by the publisher Franco Cosimo Panini, in co-operation with the Este Library and the University Library of Modena. This initiative is an occasion for the Institute to celebrate the memory of its origins and to intensify its commitment to Italian culture and society.

For richness of figurative images and refined decorative solutions the Bible of Borso d’Este represents without a doubt the highest exemplar of quality and splendour achieved in the art of book illustration in Ferrara in the middle of the fifteenth century. The manuscript offers an exhaustive compendium of the Este figurative tradition, which has become even more precious now because of the loss of so many frescoes and panels painted in Ferrara during the same period.

The ample archival documentation which has survived, represented by the registers of the Camera ducale estense and the Comto di dibituri e crededuri, a daily accounts record kept by the illuminator Taddeo Crivelli in the years from 1452 to 1457, gives us precise dates for the various phases in the creation of the work and the names of those who realised it. Between 1455 and 1461, in six years of intense labour, the Lombard calligrapher Pietro Paolo Marone and the illuminators Taddeo Crivelli from Ferrara and Franco dei Russi from Mantua, with a team of artists under their direction, copied and illustrated for Duke Borso dEste the complete books of the Old and New Testament. Between 1461 and 1462 payment was made to the Ferrarese cartolaro [one who prepares and sells parchment] Gregorio Gasparino for the binding of the codex and its sumptuous cover in panno d'oro cum cornixe et azuli de argento dorato et altri lavori de argento [cloth of gold with frame and lapis lazuli, of gilded silver and other works in silver], unfortunately now lost.

If the fact in itself that Borso decided to have the Bible copied by hand at a time when Gutenberg had already produced the first printed copies of the same text could seem unusual, the real reason for the exceptional nature of the manuscript lies in the richness of its decorations. Each of the six-hundred leaves making up the Bible, bound in groups of five sheets and gathered into two volumes, is elaborately decorated on both front and back. Outstanding for their sumptuousness are the first pages of each book of the Bible, called principi in the documents, for which the artists were paid more because of the increased work involved. All four margins of these pages and the spaces between the columns are decorated with broad filigree borders of flowers, multicoloured leaves, and golden balls, motifs typical of the Ferrarese school, or with geometrical and naturalistic forms. Coats of arms, heraldic devices, cherubs and animals adorn the margins, numerous vignettes appear throughout the text and at the bottom of the pages, where there often appear also elaborate frames or illusionistic architectural structures. The pages inside the text are more soberly decorated, nonetheless they contain smaller but still extremely refined and imaginative borders and one or sometimes two narrative vignettes. The decoration of these pages continues as in a mirror image on the opposite page, so that the reader opening the book is immediately aware of the harmonic rhythm of the ornamentation, imparted also by the artist’s extreme sensitivity to the relationship between the blank spaces left on the parchment, the text written in black ink, and the coloured miniatures illuminated by frequent flashes of gold.

The two volumes of the Bible of Borso d’Este are currently shown open in a display case in the Biblioteca Estense. Thus only four pages are visible, and in effect all the richness of their decoration remains hidden to the eye. Yet this has to be the case, because of the risks inherent in any form of consultation of the manuscript. Antique manuscripts are extremely fragile objects, on which atmospheric agents - dampness, light, air pollution - have a decidedly negative effect.

However, the enormous progress made in recent years in the techniques of colour separation and printing makes it possible today to obtain a reproduction of a manuscript that is virtually identical with the original.

In publishing terms, facsimile means in fact the reproduction of a test - usually an antique manuscript - which can be definited as identical with the original, as it currently appears, with the sole exception of the support: the original parchment is substituted by an especially prepared paper, which has not been bleached by acids, that approaches as closely as possible the consistency and characteristics of parchment but at the same time is much longer lasting than the paper normally used for the books.

The facsimile therefore provides scholars and book-lovers a perfect copy of the original, which can be consulted without exposing the original to risks. The advantages are immediately evident. The availability of a number of copies permits an unprecedented increase in opportunities for study, since a trip to Modena to consult the original is no longer necessary. And too, the fidelity of the copies to the original means that the codex can be conserved under optimal conditions and saved from the inevitable traumas involved in exhibition and consultation.

The two tomes which make up the codex are reproduced to their exact size and impagination:

• the first tome contains 642 pages, of which 621 are completely illuminated, subdivided into one group of four and 31 groups of five pages;
• the second tome contains 588 pages, of which 580 are completely illuminated, subdivided into one group of two and 29 groups of five pages.

A specially prepared paper has been used, which has not been chemically bleached, in order to preserve the brilliancy of the colours and the consistency of the support from the damage brought by the passage of time.

The colour separation was done using a variable dot screen, which renders the pattern of printed dots practically invisible, giving an effect equal to the continuous tone of photographic printing.

Each tome has a medallion and two fixed clasps on the front plate, as well as two mobile clasps on the straps, all made of 925 silver plated in pure gold. The decorations were reproduced exactly from the original using special silicone molds, with the final punching being done by hand.

Each tome is wrapped in a silk cloth and boxed in a case that can he opened completely.

The facsimile is accompanied by two volumes of Commentary, 24.5 x 31.5 cm. in size, presenting a series of essays, hitherto unpublished, on the history of the codex and its miniatures , with a detailed description of each page. The Facsimile edition is limited to 750 copies world-wide.

A documentation kit containing 1 sample page, in the original size, from the The Bible of Borso d’Este Facsimile Volume, plus an illustrated, 16 page information brochure, is available for $US80.