With Archimede Latino, classical philologist Paolo d’Alessandro and historian of mathematics Pier Daniele Napolitani have produced a highly valuable study that has as much to offer to historians of mathematics and science as it does to scholars interested in Renaissance humanism, the arts, and court culture. The study builds on the foundational work done by Heiberg (who first established three branches of Archimedes codices: A, ß, and C), Clagett (who traced Archimedes’s reception through the Middle Ages), and more recently by Netz, Noel, Tchernetska, and Wilson on the newly imaged tenth-century Byzantine Archimedes Palimpsest (codex C). It also signals vibrant, renewed interest in Archimedes and his reception, as evidenced by the current exhibit at the Musei Capitolini in Rome, and recent publications by scholars such as Lucore, Brentjes, Buttner, Renn, Giusti, Galluzzi, and Pagliaroli. D’Alessandro and Napolitani’s volume tracks the transmission of Archimedes through the late 1400s, demonstrating the importance of the fifteenth-century Cremonese humanist Iacopo da San Cassiano’s translations to the new turns the study of mathematics, the arts, science, and technology would soon be taking.

The first part of Archimede Latino includes an in-depth biography of Iacopo’s time as a student at Vittorino da Feltre’s La Giocosa and Pavia’s studium, a tutor in the Gonzaga court, Vittorino’s successor, and translator invited to Nicholas V’s court to work on Diodorus Siculus’s Bibliotheca. The authors also discuss Iacopo’s reception by scholars such as Bessarion and Regiomontanus, the latter of whom chose Iacopo’s translation as the basis for his edition, which was later used for the famed 1544 Basel editio princeps of Archimedes published by Thomas Gechauff. Fascinating to read are excerpts from letters Iacopo exchanged with fellow humanists (particularly Filefo and Aurispa), his bitter dispute with Trapezunzio, recent data showing that Piero della Francesca copied Iacopo’s Archimedes (Florence’s Biblioteca Riccardiana MS 106 reveals geometric diagrams drawn by Piero supplemental to the ones in Iacopo’s edition), and hypotheses that Cusa and Leonardo utilized Iacopo’s translation.

The volume’s following three parts consist of an analysis of the nine known codices containing Latin translations of Archimedes’s writing and Eutocius’s commentaries, individuating Iacopo’s primum exemplar as Nouv. Acq. Lat. 1538 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France; a discussion of the relationship between the family of codices under consideration and Greek manuscripts through which Archimedes’s work was transmitted through the fifteenth century; and a facing-page Latin-Italian translation and critical edition of Circuli dimensio and Quadratura parabolae, accompanied by Iacopo’s corrections, corrections by an anonymous hand, and Regiomontanus’s corrections, as well as redrawn geometric figures and two appendixes, the first cataloging and describing the contents of the codices consulted, and the second detailing principal scribal or mathematical errors in four of the codices containing the two treatises. The volume concludes with twenty-eight reproductions from the various manuscripts consulted, the majority from Iacopo’s autograph version and the one believed to have been copied by Piero.

The combined expertise of d’Alessandro and Napolitani in their meticulous and superb study opens up new avenues for thinking about Archimedes in the Renaissance. By proposing that Iacopo based his translation on a now-unknown Greek version of Archimedes that was related — but not identical — to the ninth-century codex A (and not on codex A itself, as previously believed; nor on Moerbeke’s Latin version, which was based on A and ß and not in wide circulation in fifteenth-century Italy; nor on codex C, which is also not believed to have been circulating at the time), the authors indicate not only that there was at least one other Greek codex of Archimedes available in the Renaissance, but that Iacopo’s translation — notwithstanding the possibility that he may not have had the mathematical prowess attributed to him by Heiberg and others — contributed significantly to the advancement of mathematical and technical knowledge during a period in which humanist scholars, artists, architects, and scientists alike shared great enthusiasm for the insights and tools ancient mathematics offered.