De honesta voluptate & valitudine vulgare

SAMMELBAND WITH PLATINA AND CRESCENZI IN EARLY ITALIAN EDITIONS
4to. [4], XCV, [1] leaves. Collation: A4 a-m8. The title page consists of two lines only. Colophon at l. m7v. The last leaf is a blank. Large historiated initial on l. a1r and several decorative initials on black ground. Roman and gothic type. A few manuscript marginal notes on the first three leaves after the title page (index).
Fourth edition in Italian, the first printed in the sixteenth century, of the first book on gastronomy ever published. The De honesta voluptate et valetudine (‘On Right Pleasure and Good Health'), a manual on how to live serenely, wisely and healthily, is the result of the collaboration between Platina and Mastro Martino de' Rossi, cook to the Chamberlain and Patriarch of Aquileia Ludovico Trevisan in Rome and author of the Libro de arte coquinaria. First appeared in Rome around 1474 in an undated edition, the De honesta voluptate et valetudine was immediately reprinted in Venice the following year. The first vernacular edition dates from 1487. In addition to translating parts of Martino's book into classical Latin, Platina placed the recipes in a medical-philosophical context, considering the role that each vivanda could play in the culinary system from a dietary and convivial point of view. His main focus was on the products with numerous references to local practices.
“Platina deserves praise for several reasons, one of which was that he set a good example for all subsequent cookery writers (and one which some of them have followed) in stating clearly the source of most of the recipes which constituted the latter part of his book. This source was ‘Maestro Martino, former cook of the Most Reverend Monsignor Chamberlain Patriarch of Aquileia', as his 15th-century manuscript, only discovered in the 1930s, describes him” (A. Davidson, The Oxford Companion to food, Oxford, 1999, p. 408).
Divided into ten chapters according to the classical tradition, the De honesta voluptate et valetudine is an invaluable source of information about Italian life and cuisine in the fifteenth century: from tips on sport activities to the importance of choosing a cook, from how to set the table to the ideal time to eat and the best way to cook each food (cf. M.E. Milham, ed., De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine/On Right Pleasure and Good Health, Tempe AR, 1998; see also B. Laurioux, Gastronomie, humanisme et société à Rome au milieu du XVe siècle. Autor du De honesta voluptate de Platina, Florence, 2006, s.v.; C. Benporat, Cucina e convivialità italiana del Cinquecento, Florence, 2007, p. 10; and E. Faccioli, Introduzione, in: “Il piacere onesto e la buona salute di Bartolomeo Platina”, Turin, 1985, pp. I-XXXIII).
Bartolomeo Sacchi, born in Piadena (in Latin Platina) near Cremona, was in the service of the Gonzaga family from 1453, then in 1457 he went to Florence to take classes from Argiropulo. In 1461 he moved to Rome, where he was appointed as chancellor and stenographer at the papal court during the reign of Pius II. Linked to the circle of Pius II's closest collaborators (Francesco Gonzaga, who had been his pupil in Mantua, Jacopo Ammannati Piccolomini, and Cardinal Bessarione), Platina found himself directly involved in the conflict that, after Pius II's death in 1464, pitted the group of Pius' cardinals against the new pontiff Paul II Barbo. Platina lost the office of abbot and, for his fierce protest, was imprisoned first in 1464, then again in 1468, this time for having participated, together with the group of Roman academics gathered around Pomponius Leto, in a conspiracy probably plotted against Paul II; and on this occasion Platina and the other humanists were also accused of heresies of an epicurean nature.
A leading figure of Roman humanism in the second half of the fifteenth century, Platina embarked on an intense literary production in which he used autobiographical material as a means to confront the values of the society he faced and to asser