«With a little help from my friends». More on the printing of the editio princeps of the Monte Oliveto Breviary (1486–1487)

Abstract

Printing the editio princeps of the Breviary of Monteoliveto in Pisa around 1486/1487 turned out to be more complicated than believed and the work was completed not by Gregorio di Nanni di Gente who had originally signed the contract, but instead of two printers from Bologna, Giovanbattista di Francesco della Cisa and Ercole di Bartolomeo Nani, with the help of the German typesetter Giorgio di Stefano da Monterosso. These three could have arrived from close-by Pescia, where they presumably worked for ser Iacopo Orlandi and his sons Sebastiano e Raffaele. Work transfers of printers from Bologna to Tuscany were not that rare, as the later arrival of Ugo Ruggeri in Pisa shows.