Selling books in the Italian Renaissance : the correspondence of Giovanni Bartolomeo Gabiano (1522)

The series of letters sent to the book publisher and book dealer Giovanni Bartolomeo Gabiano in the year 1522, today in the Venetian state archives, reveal the commercial network of one of the leading figures of the book trade in Venice. After a general presentation of the source, the paper offers some examples of a number of different correspondents writing from the Italian States and from Lyon, allowing an explanation in detail of the mechanisms of the commercial book trade during that period. The letters of Cristoforo Parona, a customer of Gabiano and student in Padua, are published with commentary.