Bisticci, Vespasiano da (1421-1498)

Florentine bookseller, scholar, and biographer. Responding to the huge demand for books in the 15th century, he became the largest employer of copyists in Europe, and the agent for the three greatest collectors of manuscripts of the early Renaissance: Cosimo de' Medici, Pope Nicholas V, and Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino.

Manuscripts were exported from his factory all over Europe, even to England and Hungary. On one occasion he and a team of 45 copyists produced 200 volumes in 22-two months for Cosimo de' Medici's library in the Badia, Fiesole.

The quality of his texts was so high that the demand for them was maintained for some time after the invention of printing. This scholarly interest in the accuracy of the texts helped him to make contact with a wide range of scholars and humanists across Europe. He put this knowledge to use in his Vite d'uomini illustri del secolo XV/Lives of Illustrious Men of the 15th Century (written after 1480), which gives a wealth of biographical details not available elsewhere.