There are various references of the time showing that manuscripts which bore the stamp of Vespasiano were not only beautiful in their form, but possessed probably a higher authority than the work of any other manuscript-dealer of the age for completeness and for accuracy. He took contracts for the production of great libraries, and it is recorded that, in preparing for Cosimo de’ Medici a collection of two hundred works, he employed forty-five scribes for a term of twenty-two months.[351] Vespasiano died in 1496, one year later than the establishment in Venice of the Aldine Press. Agnolo da Sandro is described as a _bidellus_, a manuscript-dealer, in Florence as late as 1498, at which time the trade in manuscripts must already have begun very seriously to diminish. Niccolo di Giunta, who was active in the manuscript trade in Florence towards the end of the fifteenth century, is famous as having been the founder of the family of Giunta or Junta, which later took such an important part in printing and publishing undertakings in Italy. In Perugia, the first record of a manuscript-publisher bears date as late as 1430. The name is Bontempo, and his inscription appears on a parchment copy of an _Infortiatum_. While there are various references to manuscript-dealers in Milan of an early date, the first inscription bears date as late as 1452. The name is Melchoir, who is described as a “dealer of note.” Filelfo speaks of Melchoir as having copies of Cicero’s _Letters_ for sale at ten ducats each.[352] Paolo Soardo, who was in business between 1470 and 1480, is described as an apothecary and also as a dealer in _delicatessen_, but he seems to have added to his employment that of a manifolder and seller of manuscripts. Jacobus Antiquarius speaks of having purchased from Paolo in 1480 a Roman history for the sum of one _aureus_. In Padua, Jacob, a Jew, succeeded, notwithstanding the university regulations against dealing in manuscripts by Jews, in carrying on between 1455 and 1460 a business in the sale of manuscripts. His inscription appears on a number of classical codices of the time, and in a manuscript of Horace, dating from the twelfth century, the owner makes reference that he purchased the same in 1458 from Jacob, the Hebrew _librarius_.[353] The records of Ferrara give the names of Carnerio, _bibliopola_, and of several others as doing business in manuscripts between 1440 and 1490. In Rome the records of 1454 speak of Giovanni and Francisco as _cartolaji_ and _librarii_, that is to say, dealers in paper and also in manuscripts. In that year these dealers had for sale among their things, _Letters of Cicero_ (without which work no well regulated manuscript-dealer’s collection appears to have been complete) and the works of Celsus. A copy of the latter was bought for Vespasiano for the sum of twenty ducats. There is record during the same year of a certain Spannocchia who also had Cicero’s _Letters_ for sale.