Poet and bookseller: Saba and Petrarca

The complex relationship that the poet Saba held with the work of Petrarca was simplified in the action of the antiquarian bookseller Saba who was among the main suppliers of the Petrarch Section of the Civic Library of Trieste, today part of the heritage of the Museo petrarchesco piccolomineo. Giacomo Braun, the director of the Civic Library from 1922 to 1941, purchased illuminated manuscripts and incunabula from Saba, such as the poetic medley with the Trionfi (“Triumphs”), transcribed and illuminated by Felice Feliciano (ca. 1460), acquired together with the codex of Petrarca’s De Africa for 1.500 lire. In 1937 Saba sold the 15th century codex of the Trionfi, the illuminated incunabulum of the Psalms by Ludolph von Saxen which contains Petrarch Penitential Psalms, and the 15th century edition of the Rerum memorandarum libri (“The Books of Stories to Remember”). Saba confessed to his friend Aldo Fortuna that at the beginning of his trade as a bookseller he knew very little about the history of books and publishing and that he had almost never heard the name of the famous Venetian printer Aldo Manuzio, one of the fathers of the typographical art. But he soon learned and sent his Florentine friend to look for ancient books in the studios and workshops of Tammaro De Marinis, Ferrante Gonnelli and Oreste Gozzini. On 2nd June 1920 he confessed that his heart was pounding as a result of the beautiful books he was expecting from Florence: “I’m now very close to becoming a bibliophile myself”.