Printing for the Convent of Santo Spirito, ca. 1476–1477

In his publishing company with Niccolò di Lorenzo (“in arte et exercitio imprimendi et formando libros et volumina”), Cappone di Bartolomeo Capponi was the legal and, above all, commercial head of the enterprise. Niccolò was only responsible for the book production. This distribution of tasks was, of course, very much as in the earliest “division(s) of responsibility between craftsmanship and business operation”-for example, in the company of Johannes Gutenberg and Johannes Fust.¹ The obligation of bookkeeping lay presumably in the hands of both men, each for his own part; from a later court case we know that Niccolò di Lorenzo’s