Thesis title: Miniatura e illustrazione libraria nelle edizioni del Quattrocento. Contributo allo studio di un linguaggio iconografico condiviso a partire da un’indagine sistematica sulle collezioni di Torino
The research investigates the hand decoration of incunabula preserved in Turin’s libraries, with the aim of examining a partly unpublished heritage and analysing it from an art-historical perspective. The study is situated within the broader field of book studies and adopts a copy-specific approach, which considers each surviving exemplar as a unique artefact endowed with its own material history.
Through a systematic survey of incunabula held in the city’s main institutions, the research identified a variety of decorative practices, ranging from simple rubrication to illuminated initials and more elaborate figurative miniatures. Beyond providing a comprehensive basis for the cataloguing of this heritage, the survey enabled new attributions and the identification of the activity of prominent fifteenth-century workshops, including the Master of the Putti, Gioacchino de Gigantibus, and Bartolomeo di Benincà. In parallel, the dissertation explores book decoration as both evidence of provenance and a testimony to the processes of circulation, appropriation, and use of early printed books within the Duchy of Savoy. The incunabula collections preserved in Turin offered a privileged corpus for investigating the presence of illuminators active in the region, the typologies of patrons who commissioned decorated printed books, local ornamental practices, and the ways in which these engaged with models and styles originating from the major European printing centres.
A further level of inquiry concerns the use of digital resources, in particular the Material Evidence in Incunabula (MEI) and IVS Commune online (ICo) databases, which were employed both to document and disseminate the results of the research and as research environments capable of generating new questions and fostering connections between data. The integration of the Turin data into these platforms has made it possible to situate the local heritage within an international network of studies and to experiment with new models for describing legal iconography through the ICONCLASS classification system.