On Famous Women

This was supported by a study I had conducted a short while before regarding two Turin manuscripts of that vernacular translation vernacular translation (volgarizzamento): a medieval translation of a Latin or Greek text into the common Italian speech (the vernacular), from which I derived a new text that seemed to me much better than the Neapolitan one cited by the aforementioned Academy. From this arose the first efforts dedicated to that prose from the "Golden Age" of the language original: "buon secolo della lingua"; referring to the 14th century, the era of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, considered the pinnacle of Italian linguistic purity, which is of great importance for its linguistic quality, its abundance of unusual expressions, and its beautiful vocabulary. It departs from those common subjects in which the art of that time—whether written with the pen, painted with the brush, expressed through music, or otherwise—was particularly engaged. The manuscripts that served as my guide for that first draft are the following; since I did not describe them while I was in Turin, nor am I currently able to see them, I will describe them using the words of Baron Giuseppe Vernazza, in a letter to his learned and courteous friend Abbot Giambattista Scioppalalba, given to me in autograph form by Abbot Costanzo Gazzera. I have, however, cross-referenced this description with the Manuscript Codices of the Royal Turin University Library original: "Codices Mss. bibliothecae regii Taurinensis Athenaei" by Pasini, Rivautella, and Berta.

"The parchment manuscript I. IV. 44 consists of 398 leaves and contains two volumes. The first has 140 pages. The second begins at leaf 73 and has 250 pages (1). The first. Preface by Gian-

(1) In this, as in most descriptions of manuscripts—and the same may be said of books—one does not strictly adhere to the rigors...