Giovanni di Castiglione The Arrivabene Family The Gregori Brothers

Giovanni di Castiglione (or Castellione) is an enigmatic figure in the history of the printing industry in sixteenth-century Italy. Little is known about his birth except for the name of his father (Leonardo), or how he came to the industry. He was active in the city of Milan, where his name first appeared on books of sermons and religious doctrine that were published in 1505. Many of his works are undated, and were published with a consortium of other printers such as Andrea Calvo and the De Legnano brothers.

Milanese editions bearing his name appear consistently from 1505 until 1523, with the exception of 1506, when he travelled to Turin and published a handful of texts there. A lack of archival evidence makes it impossible to know whether di Castiglione inherited a workshop from his father, but he did go on to forge an impressive network of his own within the printing industry. Personal ties among artisans in the same or related trades served to strengthen professional ones, as Giovanni seems to have been particularly aware. After collaborating on several editions with Antonio Zarotto (1450–1510), one of the pioneering and most successful members of the Milanese printing industry, di Castiglione cemented their professional ties even further with the marriage of his son Giovanni Antonio to Zarotto’s daughter Clara in 1524. The second generation of the di Castiglione press under Giovanni Antonio continued to be active in Milan until 1556, specializing in the printing of music.

The workshop under the elder Giovanni focused almost exclusively on the publication of religious books and devotional guides in both Latin and the Italian vernacular (including the Liberatio pereginationis of Giovanni Moncetto (1513) and Girolamo Claricio’s poem about St. Thomas Aquinas and martyrdom (1515). The publication of the Fasciculus Medicinae was, therefore, somewhat out of character for the di Castiglione workshop. Given the similarities between the Milanese edition of 1509 and an early Venetian version published by the Gregori brothers for the first time in 1493, it seems that the printer had acquired a copy of the illustrated volume and thought he would reproduce it. It is perhaps unsurprising that this was carried out with a lesser degree of success, as unlike the Venetian workshops, di Castiglione lacked the necessary familiarity with this type of work to produce accurate and intricate anatomical illustrations.

Written by Dr. Natalie Lussey Seale

Recommended Reading:

“Giovanni di Castiglione,” “Giovanni Antonio di Castiglione,” and “Antonio Zarotto” in M. Menato, E. Sandal & G. Zappella (eds.) Dizionario dei tipografi e degli editori italiani. Il Cinquecento (Milan, 1997)
Dona Mariangela, La stampa musicale a Milano fino all’anno 1700 (Florence, 1961)
“Giovanni Antonio di Castiglione” in E. Sandal, Editori e tipografi a Milano nel Cinquecento (Volume I, 1977).