While in Paris, Anselmo kept a lavish court in the Hôtel de Sens.4 Among his expenses were gifts to his patrons in the Roman Curia: ruby and emerald rings, hats and leather gloves, eyeglasses, clocks and astrolabes, but especially books. Some details of these gifts are in letters addressed by Anselmo to his agent in Rome, Giovanni Battista Schiani. In February 1579, Anselmo sent a newly-published breviary (Antwerp 1579) to Cristoforo Turretttini, Segretario delle cifre to Pope Gregory XIII. A month later, he despatched twelve liturgical and devotional books bound in blue leather, three volumes of them destined for the pope himself, and three each for officials of the papal household: Lodovico Bianchetti (Maestro di camera pontificio), Paolo Ghislieri (nephew of Pius V), and Aurelio Savignani (Scutifero); plus twelve volumes of the same, these bound in red leather, for Cardinals Tolomeo Gallio (Segretario di Stato), Filippo Boncompagni, and Filippo Guastavillani; two of the same, bound in brown leather, for a Monsignor San Vitali; four of the same in unspecified bindings for Francesco Valdevieso and Schiani himself; and a Bible in sextodecimo format, bound in five volumes, for Scipione Cittadini, canon of Faenza, and Anselmo’s Maestro di casa. These books, together with three pairs of gloves (two for Schiani, one for a certain Annibale Lioni) were conveyed to Rome by the bankers Bandini. The books evidently were well-received, as in February 1580 Anselmo despatched a similar shipment to Rome: five breviaries (two bound in blue leather, for Guastavillani and Boncompagni; three in brown leather, for Bianchetti, Savignani, and Turretttini), plus five diurnals (unbound) and a missal for Turretttini.5
Left Dandini insignia [link] – Right No. 2 Tacitus
Only two books bound in Paris for Dandini himself are recorded, one in the Bibliotheca Brookeriana, the other now untraced. Both were decorated “à la fanfare” in an unidentified shop.
1. Vittorio Spreti, Enciclopedia storico-nobiliare italiana (Milan 1928-1936), II, pp.600-601.
2. Maria Teresa Guerrini, ‘Qui voluerit in iure promoveri’: i dottori in diritto nello Studio di Bologna (1501-1796) (Bologna 2005), no. 2114.
3. Bruno Katterbach, Referendarii utriusque signaturae a Martino V ad Clementem IX et praelati signaturae supplicationum a Martino V ad Leonem XIII (Vatican City 1931), p.145 no. 42.
4. Correspondance du nonce en France Anselmo Dandino 1578-1581, edited by Ivan Cloulas (Rome & Paris 1970), pp.9-11.
5. Correspondance du nonce en France Anselmo Dandino, op. cit., pp.13-14 (citing Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscits, Italien, 1676, ff. 97, 109-110, 195) [manuscript digitised, link].
(1) Horatius Flaccus, Opera (Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1566)