FAITHFUL REPRODUCTION OF Marco Polo - Il Milione


 1370-1410 

 SINGLE VOLUME - 130 pages   Language: Italian   

    Previous Owners:      Pierre de Celano. Former owner: Aragonese kings of Naples. Charles VIII (King of France; 1470-1498).: Librairie royale de Blois   
   Current location:       Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. italien 434   
   Dimensions: A4 , 210 x 297cm , 8.3" x 11.7"  

      Limited to just 10           Deluxe           leather-bound copies           , bound by a master bookbinder/old medieval manuscript expert with 40 years of expertise in book restoration           .     


   Polo’s book is not, as many would have it, a neat little collection of myths, anecdotes, and fairy tales. It is the report of a merchant who documents anything that might be of use for future travellers. And what could be more important for a merchant than the currencies of the individual cities? Marco Polo describes them in detail. In 2012 a Sinologist used this exactitude to prove Marco Polo’s presence in China.   
   This fact has not always been uncontested. Already in the Middle Ages individual authors doubted the authenticity of Polo’s tales. The wonders seemed too wondrous, the numbers too big, and the accounts incredible. Perhaps some of these doubts are related to the transmission history of Il Milione.  

   It is said that an Italian romancer, who was incarcerated with Marco Polo in a Genoese prison around 1298, wrote the book after Polo’s accounts. If that is true? We don’t know. It is not difficult to imagine that Polo collaborated with a writer to make the dry subject matter he’d collected in China more accessible for a broader public. Be that as it may, the original manuscript went missing. The oldest preserved copy we have of it today is written in Old French and kept at the Bibliothèque National in Paris.   

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