Conclusion
Returning to our point of departure, the folio Cortegiano
of 1528, it is now
clear that in April 1527, when Castiglione wrote to his
factor Cristoforo Ti-
rabosco with details of the edition he wished the
Aldine press to publish, there
were already many Aldine editions with
royal-paper copies, a fact of which he
was doubtless aware. However, as far
as our present knowledge goes, with a
single exception they were all
octavos. This exception was the monumental folio
edition in five volumes of
the works of Galen, a classic of ancient culture which
was still fundamental
in the practice of Renaissance medicine. Castiglione's pro-
posal concerned
something completely different, the first edition of a new work in
the
vernacular, which in the rich history of the Aldine press had few precedents,
the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of 1499, Bembo's Asolani (1505) and Le vulgari elo-
quentie of Niccolò Liburnio (1521). Nevertheless, in the
counter-proposal of the
Aldine press, reported to the author in November
1527 in a letter from Tirabosco
which has only recently come to light, the
possibility of including in the print run
copies on royal paper is not
specifically excluded, and Castiglione was certainly
expecting them when he
wrote to his factor again in April 1528, after the edition
had been
published.[39]
The strongest evidence that the eleven copies in our survey
printed
on different paper are indeed heavily trimmed royal-paper copies comes
from the paper
itself, which exhibits the features which we can now recognize as
characteristic of Venetian royal paper of this period. It has a large anchor
water-
mark (74 × 51 mm in one twin; 73 × 48 mm in the other)
and intervals of 35 mm
or more between chains, except on either side of the
mark, where the intervals
are c.30 mm. The implications are evident: while
it would be an exaggeration to
describe the information set forth in this
article as the tip of an iceberg, it seems
likely that other instances of
Aldine editions with royal-paper copies lie hidden,
awaiting the
bibliographer aware of the importance of a thorough bibliographi-
cal
analysis of multiple copies.
