Florence, 1441. A goldsmith decides to embark on a journey to the Holy Places. Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici is a skilled and well-known craftsman, little educated in Latin but devoted and endowed with his own intellectual heritage, a passionate lover of anthologies, anthologies and vernacularisations of the Holy Scriptures. He draws up a very detailed account in the vernacular of his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in a precious manuscript which remains intact to this day, kept since 1812 in the Library of the Archbishop's Seminary in Florence.
Rome, 17 May 2016. A prestigious stop on another journey. That of a dream, born eighteen years ago and pursued with tenacity and passion by Elena Gurrieri, today in charge of that Library. The creation of a facsimile edition that would replace the manuscript both to preserve the original from the inevitable wear and tear caused by consultation and to make the precious manuscript available to a wider audience. The dream has come true and the facsimile, after the solemn events of recent months, in the Florentine institutional offices, is donated to the Vatican Apostolic Library and presented in Rome in the extraordinary setting of the Vatican Museums.
"The demonstration of the outward journey or journey to the Holy Sepulcher and Mount Sinai" is the title of the manuscript known as the Rustici Code. Written in a troubled way from 1447 to 1457, the year of Marco di Bartolomeo's death, it is the account of a journey, but it is the journey par excellence, the journey beyond the sea, to the Holy Places, a journey that oscillates on several levels, the symbolic one and the existential and spiritual one. Partly real and partly only imagined, it is an itinerary that unwinds in a circular direction: from Florence to Jerusalem, through Porto Pisano, Genoa, Cyprus, Cairo, Mount Sinai and therefore the return to Florence. The spiritual level of the path leads towards God and towards that place which for Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici is a true and proper city of God: Florence. Therefore "The manuscript is a formidable intertwining of text and image... an astonishing album of visual representations of 400th century Florence, city of wonders, perpetual construction site of works and prodigious works, signs of man addressed to God."
The work thus constitutes a unicum which also has an encyclopaedic, cartographic and descriptive character, revealing the training and readings of its author who certainly knew Petrarch of the Itinerarium Syriacum, albeit in a reduced form, in addition to the exempla and itineraria mentis in Deum. All the love for his city can be recognized in the detailed and precise representations, in the 80 maps that illustrate its geography, the details of the churches, the streets and the walls, while the illustrations appear as an extension of the word in a representative frenzy , a narration on which Marco returns to rewrite and insert texts that come to mind, episodes, narratives related to his intense readings.
The work is divided into three books which respectively narrate three phases. The first illustrates the Creation of the universe, fifteenth-century Florence, its churches, the spiritual value of architecture, the stories and legends of the Saints, hymns, sermons, prayers. The second book deals with the journey to the heart of Christianity, under the influence of Petrarch but also of other itinerary models. The third book reports the arrival in Jerusalem through the desert, the visions and allegories, the exotic places that do not distract the pilgrim and his traveling companions from the devotion and purpose of the expedition, finally the return. With a precious invention, however: the epiphany of Ptolemy's palace in the Holy City, an extraordinary invention that fits well with the desire for knowledge, of which Ptolemy is the emblem, of the Florentine goldsmith.
If the drafting of the manuscript was adventurous and troubled, certainly no less fascinating is the story of the facsimile, the prodigious fruit of the intuition of Elena Gurrieri, head of the Library of the Archiepiscopal Seminary of Florence, of the intervention by the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Florence which supported the project and the commitment of the Leo S. Olschki publishing house, independent and bibliophile for 130 years, the only one able to combine great technical expertise and critical spirit.
This dream got back on its way towards its realization and so interlocutors and scholars intervened capable of giving substance to an ambitious project to open up a new path towards space and time for the precious manuscript.
The project was divided into the publication of the facsimile and the critical edition, the two volumes. The first contains the facsimile of the Rustici Codex and consists of 568 pages printed in color, where the figures by the author's hand are reproduced, which follow one another along the margins with a mainly vertical trend, with the spatial freedom typical of the subjects depicted in a 'notebook' of artist's notes. Special paper and inks were used to enhance the quality of the work and to restore maximum fidelity of the colors and the sharpness of the details. The second contains the studies, the critical edition and the transcription of the Code. The other great novelty of this work is that for the first time the text of the manuscript is published which - unlike the illustrations - had never been studied. Two Australian scholars of Romance philology - Nerida Newbigin and Kathleen Olive - have worked for seven years to finally bring the precious text within reach of a wider audience. The artistic part was curated by Cristina Acidini, a prestigious art historian and the editorial part is certainly worthy of the scientific undertaking, who took care not only of the papers and special inks to enhance the quality of the work and to return the maximum fidelity of colors and sharpness of details, but he gave particular importance to photography and technological innovations capable of allowing the highest level of reproduction of the manuscript. With attention, however, not to fall into the “fetishism” – as Daniele Olschki defined it – of the facsimile and to respect the idea that it must be free from any affected and pedantic exaggeration and guarantee usability and legibility.
An immersion in beauty was the presentation of this precious creation on Tuesday 17 May in Rome, in the exceptional setting of the Vatican Museums, with the participation of two Australian scholars Newbigin and Olive, by Cristina Acidini, Elena Gurrieri, Daniele Olschki and Carlo Sisi representing the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze and with the introduction of the Director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci. Listening to Paolucci is like listening to music. His speech has the flow of a Bach sonata and his words of a sober preciousness evoke clear images that give consistency to the works, characters and situations evoked. He would hardly have aroused surprise, therefore, to come across the Florentine goldsmith passing through Rome on his way out of the Vatican Museums to embark on his prodigious journey.
