Single copy, partly revised for a subsequent edition.


Original edition and the only one truly complete, since many passages were suppressed in subsequent editions due to some negative judgments on the Milanese Dukes, who ordered the destruction of the impressed specimens, and this explains their particular rarity. The work, in seven parts, is the most important story of Milan, from its origins to the flight of the Moor to Germany and the main story of Corio, who began it in 1485 by publishing it at his own expense with the types of Minuziano. In this edition the text is preceded by a letter from Giuseppe Cusano to the readers, the preface, which is addressed to card. Ascanio Sforza, the De laudibus historiae, to the same, and the Defensio historiae. Testimonies in favor of the work follow. These woodcuts are considered ("Book illustration in Lombardy in the 15th century and '500" curated by SAMEK LUDOVICI, 1960) the work of an artist from Leonardo's circle, although showing Ferrarese-Mantegna influences; some said it was the work of Bernardino de' Conti, a painter from Pavia, who was also the author of a portrait (Paris, Jacquemart-André) which has been assumed to be that of Corio; KRISTELLER, on the other hand, attributes them to the Master of Melchiorre da Parma (cf. Lombardische Graphic, pp. 54-6 and 100-101).
"(...)  The Historia, in fact, even if it has a title in Latin, is written in the vernacular.vernacular neither clear nor fluent, which presents latin-like constructions, reminiscences of Petrarch and Lombardisms: a language with the defects and forcings typical of non-Tuscan vernaculars before del Bembo. The style of C., "monotonous and rough" for De Magri and "pictorial and very lively" for Curto, can be considered the obligatory result of his effort to give life to a prose that had the solemnity of Latin, the naturalness of the Tuscan, the immediacy of the spoken language and which could only oscillate between these poles.C.'s choice to write in the vernacular had perhaps been prepared by the vernacular translations that had been favored in the Milanese court, such as those that Decembrio produced for Filippo Maria Visconti and Cristoforo Landìno for il Moro (...)" (Treccani, sub vocis). The peculiarity of this copy is the dense linguistic, lexical, morphological and interpunctual revision that the first 34 pp. undergo, a revision of such extension and depth as to suggest a direct intervention by the same author, if not by his own hand perhaps through the help of one of his secretary. Corio died just one year after the publication of the volume and it cannot be excluded that he decided to revise his text. The abrupt termination of the review could attest to the sudden death of the author. If, on the other hand, a subsequent, later hand is hypothesized, then the field of hypotheses widens considerably. Whoever amends the text is well aware of the trends that the Italian vernacular was taking in early sixteenth-century Italy, and tries to cleanse Corio's text of the more strongly Lombard forms. In the two subsequent editions, of 1554 and 1565, a linguistic and syntactic revision of the text was made, but it differs from the present lesson, which is therefore ATTESTED ONLY BY THE PRESENT WITNESS. Everything to study.