Search

The essay studies the different manifestations of the concept of antiquity in relation to the edition of Osservazioni di Ennio Quirino Visconti su due musaici, sponsored by the Spanish diplomat José Nicolás de Azara and produced at the Stamperia Reale run by the printer Giambattista Bodoni in Parma in 1788. The artistic and cultural context of the work and the agents involved in the material production process of the volume are examined, dwelling on the content and values conveyed. Starting from the interpretations of two ancient mosaics, the Osservazioni redefine the concept of antiquarian object, which is embodied in the volume itself as an object of bibliophilia, with its symbolic value (artistic, historical-antiquarian and identity) and its relation to contemporary and future consumers. The methodology adopted is critical-documentary, using the Azara-Bodoni correspondence as primary source, and theoretical-critical for the interpretive approach.

The article aims to introduce Traniello's paper "L'eclissi delle biblioteche nel dibattito politico italiano," which serves as an effective synthesis of the development of the organization of Italian public libraries and an analysis of the political debate that has arisen over the years. Furthermore, the paper is a testimony to the author's original approach to these themes and contains much food for thought that testifies to his civic passion. Emphasizing the importance of improving and expanding a network of efficient and accessible library services, the paper underscores the significance of this endeavor in nation-building efforts.

The essay provides the first results derived from the study of the biblical lexicon of the Laudi attributed to Saint Catherine of Bologna, born Caterina Vigri. The perspective of the research extends to the entire collection, which is of considerable interest being the poetic production of a learned religious woman of the Fifteenth century. Particular attention is paid to the religious lexicon of Lauda IV, which is transmitted in three codices now in the General Archiepiscopal Archive of Bologna. The Lauda is attributed to the Bolognese saint by Illuminata Bembo, Catherine’s sister at the Corpus Domini Monastery in Bologna and her first biographer, who reports it in the Specchio di illuminazione. The conclusions of the analysis will be exemplary of the richer and more systematic ones that will arise from the analysis of the other lauds, with the aim of contributing to the possible preparation of a glossary of the lexicon of biblical origin in Caterina Vigri’s poetic work.

The paper examines the manuscripts and printed editions of Medieval and Humanistic works preserved in the library of Castiglione del Terziere, highlighting Bononi’s preference for writings in the historiographic genre, with specific regard to the history of Florence. Among the volumes examined – all ancient editions, incunabula and cinquecentine, extremely valuable and rare – we dwell above all on the exemplars (by Leonardo Bruni, Biondo Flavio, Iacopo Foresti) that bear Bononi’s autograph annotations, because they testify to his interest in the geographical area of Lunigiana and Dante’s biography.

The paper examines the Leopardian materials acquired and preserved by Loris Bononi at the library of the Centro Studi Umanistici Niccolò V in Castiglione del Terziere. The discourse opens by investigating the relationship between Bononi and Leopardi and the possible influences of the latter on the former's writing (both published and unpublished). The analysis of the Leopardi's sections begins with the ‘self-description’ the poet made of himself in a letter to Carlo Pepoli, which is part of this collection. The second part of the essay is devoted to the unpublished manuscripts of Giacomo’s sister, Paolina, and Carlo Leopardi’s wife, Teresa Teja: three letters allowing the reconstruction of the biographical context of two figures who contributed to keeping alive the first hand memory of Leopardi.

After the emergency caused by the flood in Romagna in May 2023, the Manfrediana Library decided to dedicate an exhibition to the manuscript heritage, with an evocative journey through more than six centuries of history: from 12th-century fragments, recovered from the bindings of notarial registers, through famous medieval codices, such as Bonadies' collection of music and Felice Feliciano's epigraphic sylloge, to the testimonies of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the unpublished novel by the American journalist Edward Prime-Stevenson.

This paper presents the Aristotelian volume (comprising two Venetian editions bound together) that originally belonged to Ulisse Aldrovandi, was later owned by Loris Jacopo Bononi, and is now housed at the library of the Terziere castle. Following an essential introduction to Aldrovandi's library and its organization, the author describes the volume and focuses on Aldrovandi's marginal notes on the Sixteenth-century edition of the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata (translated by Theodoro Gaza) with the commentary by Pietro da Abano. Three of these annotations are particularly significant as Aldrovandi explicitly refers to the Problemata and the commentary in this copy in at least two of his printed works (Monstrorum historia and Quadrupedum historia).

The essay provides news and publishes the text of a short handwritten letter (unknown until today) by Marcel Proust addressed to a «chère Madame». The letter, purchased by Bononi and hung under glass on one of the walls of his library, forms a sort of diptych with a pencil portrait of the great French writer very similar to the famous one painted in 1892 by Jacques-Émile Blanche.

The invention of movable type printing was followed by a fundamental technical development, which influenced the way in which a text was produced: the replacement of the original one-pull press with the two-pull press, which made it possible to print two pages at a time with a single pull of the press. Lotte Hellinga, following a survey of quarto format editions printed in printing shops in various locations, suggests that the first occurrence of the new technology is to be attributed to the beginning of 1472 and to Georg Lauer's printing shop in Rome. Following some reflections that take Hellinga's study as a point of departure, other parameters are described that allow to establish which printing press was used in the production of a certain edition. Once the methodology applied in the analysis of incunabula printed in Rome has been described, four cases are illustrated, which highlight the complexity of the topic.

The paper focuses on Andrea Caronti, an almost unknown librarian who worked at the University Library of Bologna from 1830 to 1882, author of numerous catalogues of great relevance. The paper traces his biography, based on both published and unpublished sources, and describes the most important works he carried out at the Library (above all, the author catalogue). The modernity and usefulness of Caronti’s catalogue is evident, proved by the fact that it is still used by the librarians. It should also be used to plan new (and necessary) cataloging projects for the incunabula owned by the University Library of Bologna.

Cataloguing ancient book collections in a library paying attention to the material evidences of each copy means a better knowledge of both the old provenances and the history of the institution. It also makes a wealth of valuable information accessible to scholars and a wider audience. The example of INC 4 128, a protagonist in a book exhibition held in Bergamo in 2023, shows how worth the MEI database cataloguing of Sixteenth-century printed books in the Biblioteca Civica «A. Mai» has been.

The paper briefly describes the book exhibition All’alba della stampa. Itinerari tra gli incunaboli della Biblioteca Universitaria di Pavia, set on display at the Salone Teresiano of the University Library of Pavia between March 4 and May 24, 2024. The aim of the event is to promote the Pavia University Library’s incunabula collection, of which the PRIN 2017 project - The Dawn of Italian Publishing. Technology, Texts and Books in Central and Northern Italy in the XVth and XVIth centuries helped to complete the identification of each material evidence within the Material Evidence in Incunabula database (MEI). Three itineraries are foreseen: the first is expressly dedicated to the first printing production in Pavia, followed by a selection of illuminated incunabula and finally a group of books printed in Bologna, chosen to pay homage to the partnership between the Alma Mater Studiorum and the Pavia University Library.

The essay focuses on the library of the castle of Castiglione del Terziere, in the Apennines, established by the physician and bibliophile Loris Jacopo Bononi (1929-2012). It belongs to the still little-studied typology of private libraries located outside the cities, but open to public use. With authentic bibliophile passion, Bononi created a collection of books closely linked to the history of the Lunigiana area, to the authors of the Italian Humanism and Renaissance, and to Italian literature, from its origins to the Nineteenth century. The library has always been open to scholars and visitors, and in the near future the analytical cataloging of the entire book heritage would be necessary, as well as the valorisation through digital technologies.

This paper presents the editions of Sixteenth-century poems preserved in the library of the castle of Castiglione del Terziere. Within this corpus it is possible to identify three focuses: the editions of Orlando furioso and other works by Ariosto; the editions of other chivalric poems, showing the articulation of the genre between the end of the Fifteenth-century and the second half of the Sixteenth-century; and finally, the numerous editions of Gerusalemme liberata and other works by Tasso. Indeed, it is precisely the collection of works by Tasso – which includes in particular the first editions, illustrated editions and vernacular translations of the Liberata – that constitutes one of the most important aspects of Loris Jacopo Bononi’s book collection.

The essay aims to examine the impact of the first Italian Book Exhibition, held in Buenos Aires in 1927, on the Argentinian cultural environment of the time. Through the analysis of several archival documents and a variety of articles published in the local press and Italian journals and newspapers, the research reconstructs the stages of the events’ organization and realization, highlighting the context in which the different actors involved worked for its success. The documentary materials give the opportunity to outline, in an accurate manner, the press assessments of the initiative. The study makes use of primary sources, secondary sources, archival materials and scholarly bibliography.

The article describes the project for the survey of incunabula belonging to the Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi. The Fifteenth-century printed editions, currently scattered within the collections of the BUB, have been identified through shelf checks and historical catalogs. The analysis and cataloging work of the incunabula started by inserting descriptions into the online catalog of SBN. All specimen data have also been recorded: marginalia, attention marks, owners, provenance, ownership notes, stamps, and binding. Noteworthy is the recent discovery of an incunabulum by Ulisse Aldrovandi, considered lost for many decades. The volume has finally returned to the massive heritage of the BUB and will undergo some conservation intervention in the coming months.

This work delves into the papers of the most significant and rare Petrarchian editions - including incunabula and cinquecentine - contained in the precious book collection of Jacopo Loris Bononi preserved in Castiglione del Terziere. It investigates the peculiar characteristics and cultural contexts that gave rise to the individual prints, the possession notes and the heterogeneous typology of annotations and marginal notes found in the volumes, opening up unprecedented scenarios of responsive readers interacting in various ways with the text.

Following a few considerations on the role of catalogues as primary sources for the history of book trade in the early modern period, the article focuses on the series of indices librorum published by Aldus Manutius and his heirs over a century (1497-1597). The article will then present a selection of issues and topics that will be developed in the course of some wider research, devoted to exploring the use of catalogues as advertising ploys by the Aldine press.

A short history of paperback editions, with a focus on the main publishers who created a great number of new readers thanks to their collections.

The article takes inspiration from the organization of a temporary exhibition as part of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie project held between Venice (Ca’ Foscari) and Providence (Brown University) to address certain problematic issues related to Third Mission initiatives. After a brief description of the project and event, along with some details regarding the broad spectrum of activities and products falling within the scope of the Third Mission, the focus of the article shifts to the development and valorization of a research product aimed at Public Engagement: the prototype of a board game.

Among the letters written and received by Aldus Manutius, the ones held in the Archivio di Stato in Mantua are very interesting and rich in rare Aldus’s autographs. These letters testify both the commercial relationship between a book printer and seller and a very prestigious costumer, Isabella d’Este, and the curious episode of Aldus’s detention during his return to Venice in 1506. This contribution aims to present these precious texts and to analyse their edition by Armand Baschet in 1867, in view of a future critical edition of the whole known Aldus’s correspondence.

The essay focuses on a white felt envelope which contains three rare bibliographic works which entered the library of Loris Jacopo Bononi in different periods (Confessione utile e breve di Bernardino da Feltre, s.d.t; Luigi Pulci, La Giostra di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Firenze, Francesco di Iacopo cartolaio, 1518; Opera vecchia nella quale intenderai uno insonio con la sua tramutatione et altre napo[li]tane, s.d.t. [1590]) and, on the basis of Bononi's poetics, tries to offer an explanation of why their owner had placed them together, almost as if he could see in them three symbols of peculiar aspects of the Italian Renaissance.

This article traces the history of the copy of Niccolò Machiavelli’s ‘Florentine Histories’ housed in the Bononi book collection. It focuses on its owners, particularly Benedetto Varchi (co-owner of the volume along with his student Carlo Strozzi), who is responsible for the numerous marginal notes added along the pages. These annotations, in turn, are a valuable document for the study of the different phases of the composition of Varchi’s Storia fiorentina [‘Florentine History’], and reveal how he initially considered Machiavelli’s Histories as a model to follow, which he later abandoned. For this reason, the article examines marginalia on the Bononi copy, establishing a typology and identifying their use in the writing process of Varchi’s Storia.

The essay aims to illustrate some pieces from the Bononi collection housed at the Terziere Castle in the province of Massa Carrara, focusing particularly on the Boccaccio volumes: much of the Certaldo author's production is present, in volumes of high value mostly from the Renaissance period, but especially The Decameron, attested by numerous copies spanning from the dawn of printing to the twentieth century. It is evident in Bononi's intentions not only the desire to indulge a collector's impulse, but also the willingness to trace the publishing history of one of the major works of our literature, combining precious antiquarian intuition with a healthy historicist spirit.

The contribution traces an overview, necessarily partial and selective, of some valuable examples that testify to the presence of the Divine Comedy in the library of the castle of Castiglione del Terziere. From a Fourteenth-century bifolio containing passages from Purgatory to the first Foligno edition of 1472, from the first annotated and illustrated editions to some Sixteenth-century ones made unique by the presence of annotations and ex-libris, the article focuses on the peculiarities of each example, attempting where possible to reconstruct their 'movements' over time and paying particular attention also to the handwritten notes made by their last owner, Loris Jacopo Bononi.

Within the PRIN 2017 project, a reconnaissance work has been carried out from October 2020 at the Corpus Domini monastery in Bologna in order to identify how many manuscripts were still preserved by the nuns. The first results obtained confirmed the importance of the work conducted on this still unknown collection. To date, seventy manuscripts have been recollected as well as archival materials and ancient prints, including incunabula and sixteenth-century editions, which were barely known or even thought to be lost. This article aims to present the results of this first survey, with a particular focus on the manuscripts and printed books of greatest bibliological and historical interest.

The article examines the Manzoni section of Loris Bononi's library in Castiglione del Terziere, and highlights his multiple interests as a collector, bibliophile, but also as a scholar attentive to the diachrony of texts, as shown by some rare editions of the 'Promessi sposi', as well as documents of the work of text correction, both manuscript and printed.

This essay presents an initial survey of some unpublished medieval fragments and manuscripts preserved at the Biblioteca Comunale Manfrediana in Faenza. Alongside essential information about the collections that house them, a detailed preliminary description of some of these pieces is provided. Additionally, an edition of an inedited fragment of Petrarch’s Bucolicum carmen is presented, initiating a study aimed to enhance the value of the Faenza library’s literary heritage through future publications, in-depth research, and editions.

Gino Roncaglia's book L'architetto e l'oracolo: forme digitali del sapere da Wikipedia a ChatGPT offers numerous insights into the relationship between ‘cathedrals of knowledge’ and generative artificial intelligence tools. Starting from the theme of fragmentation and complexity, the author delves into the terrain of online encyclopaedias, generative AIs and neural networks, dwelling on the issue of personal memories, and then moves on to the dimension of science fiction and the virtual librarian. Among the topics of interest for those dealing with book and document disciplines in a digital context, the semantic web and its possible developments in the light of the rapidly evolving framework are mentioned.

The Adelphi publishing house was founded in Milan in 1962, but its origins can be traced back to the late 1930s. This is what emerges from Anna Ferrando's book, Adelphi. Le origini di una casa editrice (1938-1994), (Carocci, 2023), in which the author analyses a project that matured over time and cannot be traced back to a single founder, but to different souls linked by a fruitful dialogue, initiated in anti-fascist circles, in which Luciano Foà, Roberto Bazlen, known as Bobi, Alberto Zevi and, from the early 1960s, Roberto Calasso participated. The catalogue produced by Adelphi since 1962 shows, right from the first decade of activity, a strong focus on the Central European world, the search for works in which the importance of individual experience was exalted, the discovery of psychoanalysis thanks to the contribution of the Jungian psychoanalyst Ernst Bernhard, and again the publication of Nietzsche's opera omnia, as well as the many ‘unique’ books, as Bobi Bazlen defined them. But many of those shrewd and innovative choices had to do with years before 1962, and their humus of origin emerges precisely from the archives of Foà, Zevi and other Adelphi collaborators, calling into question the mythical narrative of an enterprise that Roberto Calasso, over the years, had made coincide with his own person, as emerges from his autobiographical works, starting with Impronta dell'editore (2013).

The paper, chronologically limited to the years 1822-1842, aims to outline the relationships that Vieusseux had with the owners of reading rooms and circulating libraries in Granducato di Toscana, Stato Pontificio, Regno Lombardo-Veneto, Regno delle Due Sicilie, Ducato di Lucca, Regno di Sardegna, Ducato di Parma, Piacenza e Guastalla.The paper, starting from the terminological definitions, examines the modus operandi with which Vieusseux drew up the projects for the creation of new reading rooms and circulating libraries based on the nature of its interlocutors, the geopolitical contexts in which the new institutes should have been created, and their concrete and potential users.The map of the institutions examined highlights the widespread diffusion of the phenomenon but also the precariousness of its affirmation. Many reading rooms and circulating libraries, indeed, have an ephemeral life due to the lack of a concrete and vast demand for reading, due to the constant censorial surveillance to which they were subject and, in some cases, due to the lack of professionalism of their promoters.

The contribution illustrates the interventions, suggestions and experiences gained at the study seminar ‘Books, projects and new horizons. Conversazioni sulle biblioteche e i fondi di persona’ - held on 12 April 2024 at the Biblioteca Centrale di Ateneo E. Caianiello of the University of Salerno - putting the spotlight on the complex issue of funds of person in cultural places.

The article explores the role of private archives through the case study of the Tasca d’Almerita papers. It focuses, specifically, on how these archives can be used for mythopoetic and identity-building purposes, both familial and entrepreneurial. At the center, there is Giuseppe Mastrogiovanni Tasca’s operation of remodeling and organizing the Tasca d’Almerita archives, an aristocratic Sicilian family dedicated to wine production for generations, emphasizing how his work at the same time responds to needs of management and self-representation. The contribution, therefore, aims to highlight the importance of archives also as narrative devices, considering the implications of the ex post selection and organization of archives by the producers themselves, archivists of themselves.

Starting from the publication of the volume Leggere in Europa: testi, forme, pratiche (secoli XVIII-XXI), a cura di Lodovica Braida e Brigitte Ouvry-Vial, Roma, Carocci, 2023, the paper discusses the main methodological and historiographical issues related to theme of reading, in recent years a particularly vital field of study and rich in interdisciplinary perspectives.

After an introduction on the recent scientific and professional reflections on personal and author archives, the contribution briefly traces the biographical and professional path of Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996) and outlines the history and articulation of the recent ordering of the writer's archival fonds. On the occasion of the centenary of Sapienza's birth, through the events and structure of the archive assembled after her sudden death by her husband and heir Angelo Pellegrino and ordered many years later, an overview of the fund is outlined that broadens previous knowledge by providing further research perspectives.

In the essays collected in Eretiche ed eretici medievali, La “disobbedienza” religiosa nei secoli XII-XV, a cura di Marina Benedetti (Roma, Carocci, 2023), manuscripts are studied or mentioned, observed in terms of their content and evaluated in terms of the circumstances and the people who commissioned, prepared and disseminated them. This essay, on the other hand, emphasises the materiality of the word: the paleographic and codicological characteristics of these manuscripts are analysed, also thanks to the digitised images available on the Internet, and are relevant to understanding the meanings attributed to these objects, independently of the religious and existential choices of those who held them in their hands.

In this article I explain the manifold aspects of the work begun last year (2023) and still ongoing with the collection of Avvisi e Gazzette, which is being catalogued in the Public Library Planettiana di Jesi. Since this collection is without any doubts one of the most interesting among the Planettina library, it was chosen for the project of digitization of the PNRR - Mission 1 Cultural Heritage for the next generation - coordinated by the Marche Region. In this contribution I deal with the steps which led to the making of Pianetti family’s library, focusing in peculiar on the role of Bishop Giuseppe Pianetti. After a short presentation on the historical side of Avvisi e Gazzette, I aim to focus on the methodology used in setting up an experimental template to be published on MANUS platform,including in just one tab-mother all the elements in according to the rules of the two specific Italian platforms: in SBN for printed works and in MANUS for manuscripts.

Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems offer a new paradigm for querying and retrieving information, making the resource recovery processes more efficient and accurate due to their ability to learn and generate responses based on vast knowledge databases. This paper aims to demonstrate these systems in a simplified form to initiate a scientific discussion on the possibility of integrating these technologies into archival and bibliographic resource retrieval systems, and more broadly, into cultural heritage management.