A Humanist Autograph Lost and Found: Mattia Lupi’s "Annales Geminianenses"

Mattia Lupi (1380‑1468), an early humanist of San Gimignano, was locally famous as the author of a Neo‑Latin epic in ten books, "Annales Geminianenses", on the history and lore of his native city. This study examines an early witness to this text, shelfmarked ms. 8 in the Wilson Special Collections Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This witness predates the three known manuscript copies of the poem, and has not been recognized by previous scholarship on Lupi and his work. Moreover, comparison of Chapel Hill ms. 8 with known examples of Mattia Lupi’s hand reveals this unstudied manuscript to be an autograph text of the "Annales Geminianenses", drafted by the author himself between 1463 and 1468.