ABSTRACT
In the 1440s, Ciriaco de Pizzicolli also known as Ciriaco d’Ancona, composed a letter to the archbishop of Ragusa, Giacomo Veneri de Racaneto. Ciriaco recounted his exploration of the small Northern Italian town of Vercelli, examining the ruins of the Roman amphitheater, aqueduct, and tombs and documenting its ancient inscriptions. From 1424–1434, Ciriaco laid the groundwork for the combination of interests that would characterize the rest of his life. Over the course of the decade, he studied Latin and Greek at the same time he continued his commercial career, consolidated his political position in Ancona, and undertook his first major antiquarian investigations. In late 1443, Ciriaco began a five-year trip to the Eastern Mediterranean that combined his diplomatic work on behalf of an anti-Ottoman Crusade with his search for Greek and Roman ruins and inscriptions. Ciriaco’s correspondence intersects with three overlapping networks of communication in the fifteenth-century Mediterranean: commercial, diplomatic, and humanist or antiquarian travel.
