(2022) A Library for the Crown: Charles Albert of Savoy and the Foundation of the Biblioteca Reale of Turin (original) (raw)
Related papers
Private Libraries in Sixteenth-century Italy
Early Printed Books as Material Objects. Proceedings of the Conference organized by the IFLA Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, Munich, 19-21 August 2009, ed. by Bettina Wagner and Marcia Reed, Berlin/New York, De Gruyter Saur, 2010, pp. 229-240
A New Inventory of the Royal Aragonese Library of Naples
Este artículo incluye la edición anotada y el correspondiente estudio de un importantísmo inventario de la biblioteca real de Nápoles, hasta ahora desconocido. En concreto, se trata de una lista de más de cien libros, casi todos manuscritos, que la reina Isabella del Balzo vendió, en 1523, en Ferrara al humanista Celio Calcagnini. El documento, conservado en el Archivo Histórico Nacional (Madrid) había pasado inadvertido a todos los estudiosos de la biblioteca aragonesa de Nápoles. En este trabajo, mi objetivo es, en primer término, comparar el inventario con otros inventarios conocidos de la biblioteca aragonesa. En segundo lugar, contextualizo históricamente el documento dentro del exilio de la última reina aragonesa de Nápoles, Isabella del Balzo, en Ferrara. Así, por ejemplo, se explica por qué se produce esta venta y se reflexiona sobre la fecha en la que tiene lugar o el precio que se da a los volúmenes. Por último, analizo la figura del comprador (Celio Calcagnini) y los avatares de estos libros después de salir de la biblioteca aragonesa hasta hoy. Las afirmaciones se apoyan en fuentes documentales de archivos españoles e italianos. El estudio se completa con una edición anotada del inventario, en donde identifico cada obra, dejo constancia de si aparece mencionada en otros inventarios de la real biblioteca napolitana, y cuando es posible, aporto la localización actual del códice. El artículo incluye también seis láminas de los manuscritos estudiados.
This article uses various documents in Bologna’s Biblioteca Universitaria to explore the strategies that Ulisse Aldrovandi used in relation to acquiring books and keeping them in order. The first section is devoted to the physical arrangement of the Bolognese scholar’s library in his home, where it sat in contiguous spaces to his natural museum. This study then examines how Aldrovandi’s collection of books grew, how he managed to keep control over its contents through four different catalogues, and how it fared after his death. The third section outlines his interest in the libraries of other scholars, both in Bologna and elsewhere. Finally, we discuss how Aldrovandi was concerned to grow his library throughout his lifetime, through networks of printers, friends, and former students. Aldrovandi seems to have been particularly interested in the potential of collaborative research to help find books and manage the information they contained.
2018
This thesis treats a book-bound miniature library presented (probably in 1619) as a luxury gift to the English politician and courtier Sir Julius Caesar. Though it contains fortyfour tiny books, the collection was not meant as a working reference library as much as it was intended as a marvel and a piece of social currency. The sections of the thesis trace the aesthetic and intellectual interests that shape the form and content of the miniature library, and then examine the object in its various contexts. Knowledge of the social and political worlds of the giver and recipient enables an understanding of the object as an expression of alliance, mutual obligation and selffashioning. Perhaps the most important of these circles was the London-based Society of Antiquaries, the bibliophilic members of which shared interests in history, erudition, the baroque culture of wonder and the nascent field of antiquarian librarianship.
2016
The paper exhibits the analysis of the private library of Federico Cesi (1585-1630), an important scientist in the XVIIth century, in particular involved in Botany, founder of the Accademia dei Lincei in 1603, to which also Galileo Galilei was enrolled in 1611. The library, containing about 3.000 items, which served also as library of the Accademia dei Lincei until 1630, has been dispersed. After Cesi's death, the library was sold to Cassiano Dal Pozzo almost completely, and his heirs in 1714 sold it to Pope Clemente XI Albani. Then, the collection was partly confiscated by French revolutionaries in 1798, and partly disappeared during the wreck of the ship which was conveying a large number of books, bought by the Imperial Library of Berlin, in the mid-nineteenth century. The bibliographic reconstruction of the library, containing works of Medicine, Alchemy, Astronomy, Natural Sciences, and Secreta, was based on the transcription of two manuscript inventories owned by the Accademia dei Lincei, containing rough descriptions of works and authors, and also using documents of Cesi Family's archive, kept in the Rome Archivio di Stato. The complete reconstruction in: Maria Teresa Biagetti. La biblioteca di Federico Cesi. Roma, Bulzoni Editore, 2008.
Princely Pieties: the 1598-1617 accessions of the Royal Library in Brussels
Quaerendo, 2000
This article is concerned with one particular phase of the history of the ancient Royal Library in Brussels. It investigates how the Library developed during the first two decades of the reign of the Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella; an investigation permitted by the existence of an inventory compiled between 1614 and 1617. A substantial part of the article thus consists of an annotated transcript of the relevant parts of this inventory. On this basis, the article demonstrates that the accessions policy of the Royal Library in Brussels went through a significant transformation during the period in question: the Library changed from being a wide-ranging academic resource towards a more narrowly religious and recreational scope. However, as the article argues, this change was probably not caused by the Brussels Court of Albert and Isabella. Rather, it was due to the suppliers of the Library, the chief printing-houses and authors of the Southern Netherlands. Thus, whilst the 16...