Il lucchese Francesco Diodati, i suoi pronostici a stampa e il ritrovamento di una nuova edizione di Pesaro

The recent discovery in the Archivio Storico Diocesano in Lucca of a 16th-century prognostication printed in Pesaro raises a series of historical and bibliographical questions. After a systematic survey of the biographical information we have on the author, Francesco Diodati, a physician and astrologer from Lucca who lived in Bologna and Roma, the article then looks at several of his unpublished documents and updates the bibliography of his publications. The history of this specific volume is then examined. It belonged most recently to the internationally well-known antiquarian bookseller Giuseppe Martini, who may have acquired it after recognising an unusual Dante woodcut illustration on the title-page, which had been used in Venice by Pietro Piase for the edition of the Commedia published in November 1491. The typographical features of the volume are then analysed, although no certain attribution of its printer can be made. It could have been the celebrated printer of Jewish origins Gershom Soncino or, more probably, Pietro Cafa, a type founder from Capodistria, who collaborated with Aldo Manuzio and subsequently became a printer working in partnership with Soncino.