 Entrance to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana | |
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| Established | 1609 |
|---|---|
| Location | Piazza Pio XI 2, 20123,Milan,Italy |
| Coordinates | 45°27′47″N9°11′07″E / 45.4631°N 9.1854°E /45.4631; 9.1854 |
| Director | Alberto Rocca |
| Website | www |
TheBiblioteca Ambrosiana is a historiclibrary inMilan,Italy, also housing thePinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named afterAmbrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded in 1609 by CardinalFederico Borromeo, whose agents scoured Western Europe and evenGreece andSyria for books and manuscripts. Some major acquisitions of complete libraries were the manuscripts of the Benedictinemonastery of Bobbio (1606) and the library of the PaduanVincenzo Pinelli, whose more than 800 manuscripts filled 70 cases when they were sent to Milan and included the famousIliad, theIlias Picta.
During his sojourns in Rome, 1585–95 and 1597–1601, Cardinal Borromeo envisioned developing a library in Milan as one open to scholars and that would serve as a bulwark of Catholic scholarship in the service of theCounter-Reformation against the treatises issuing from Protestant presses.
The library's contents were assembled in the six preceding years by a team of purchasing agents, members of the Cardinal's establishment or ecclesiasticalhommes de confiance. These emissaries, who travelled over much of the Mediterranean, were kept under strict financial control from Milan and worked to a master plan devised by the Cardinal. In this scheme, Greek manuscripts, of which there were more than a thousand, held the position of honour that had become normal since theRenaissance, butOriental languages were given greater prominence than in earlier public collections. There was only one large block purchase; attempts to buy the library of CardinalAscanio Colonna in Rome and those of Giacomo Barocci andPietro Bembo in Venice were unsuccessful, thoughLucrezia Borgia's love letters presumably came from the last. Otherwise, the books were acquired singly or in small groups.
An important source of supply was the churches and monasteries of northern Italy to whom the Cardinal-Archbishop was clearly well placed to appeal. The most valuable codex obtained in this way was perhaps the sixth-century papyrusJosephus fromSant'Ambrogio in Milan, and the greatest coup, the acquisition of part ofBobbio's ancient library in exchange for 'more useful' modern books. Bobbio had been founded in the early seventh century by a party of Irish monks under StColumban, and still owned the only substantial group of Italian pre-Caroline manuscripts outsideVerona Cathedral.
Cardinal Federigo chose a suitable envoy, Gian Giacomo Valeri, of an old Milanese family, Canon of Santa Maria della Scala and an antiquarian collector on his own account. Negotiations were opened in 1605 and had immediate success. The following year, about seventy-four manuscripts reached the Ambrosiana, among them at least two written inIreland (one atBangor inCounty Down), and several palimpsests, one of the submerged texts being of three lost orations ofCicero.
Antonio Olgiati, the Cardinal's librarian and first Prefect of the Ambrosiana, was sent on a buying mission to south Germany, the southern Netherlands and France.Francesco Bernardino Ferrari, later Olgiati's successor as Prefect, made a similar journey to Spain. An Ambrosian Doctor, Antonio Salmazia, spent a year from 1607 to 1608 inCorfu hunting for Greek manuscripts. Harassed by delays in the transfer of funds and by the Corfiotes' hostility, tantalised by travellers' tales from the mainland of 'a very numerous and good library which once belonged to an Emperor in Constantinople' or of a Gospels with the words of Christ written in gold and those of 'the Jewish hordes' in black, he nevertheless succeeded in buying 113 manuscripts by weight (one Corfiote pound weight of manuscript cost five Milaneselire). A group of Greek manuscripts was purchased inVenice from the titulararchbishop of Philadelphia, and others were received in a consignment fromChios, and discovered in the monasteries ofAbruzzo. Hebrew manuscripts and some rare printed books were obtained from the Jewish communities of Bologna and other Italian towns by Domenico Gerosolimitano, a converted rabbi in the Cardinal's service.
Works in Oriental languages have been a feature of the Ambrosiana's holdings since its foundation, but little is known of how or where the 340Arabic,Persian andTurkish manuscripts of the vecchio fondo were acquired. A Lebanese Christian was dispatched to the Levant from 1610 to 1617, but with what result, other than a gift of 'Chaldean books' from theMaronitepatriarch, is not recorded. Probably the advice ofDiego de Urrea Conca, a SpanishArabist living in Naples, was followed; he recommended asking theGrand Duke of Tuscany and theGrand Master of the Knights Hospitaller to instruct their ships to buy Arabic manuscripts in quantity when they visitedCairo and ‘those parts’. Even so, the founder's appetite for the exotic was not satisfied. He owned works inGlagolitic (the medieval alphabet ofCroatia) and aJapaneseContemptus mundi printed inAmakusa in 1596, and begged CardinalOttavio Bandini’s secretary to find himhieroglyphic books.
In 1601, Cardinal Federigo's correspondent and friend,Gian Vincenzo Pinelli, died in Padua. Two hundred volumes of transcripts of state papers were impounded by theRepublic of Venice, and more books were lost whenBarbary pirates attacked the galleys carrying the consignment down theAdriatic to the collector's Neapolitan heirs. The remainder of the library was offered at auction in Naples in 1608 (the earliest recorded bookauction sale in Italy) and bought for the Ambrosiana for 3,050 scudi. There were further delays - the printed books would not have paid the cost of shipping and had to be left behind, for safe transport, it was necessary to wait for theGenoese fleet returning from escorting a new archbishop toSicily. Eventually, in the middle of 160,9 five hundred and fifty manuscripts, nearly half of which were Greek, arrived in Milan.
To house the cardinal's 15,000 manuscripts and twice that many printed books, construction began in 1603 under the designs and direction of Lelio Buzzi andFrancesco Maria Richini.
The library was shelved behind brass grilles around the walls of a single room with a high, coved ceiling, designed by Richini and Buzzi and completed by 1609. Two friezes of authors' and artists' portraits, inspired byPaolo Giovio's famousseries atComo, ran along the gallery and above the bookcases. The light entered by two enormous semicircular windows at each end of the room.[1] Rooms to hold collections of pictures and casts of antique statues, to which was later added accommodation for schools of painting and sculpture, occupied the remainder of a long, narrow building adjoining the churches ofSan Sepolcro and Santa Maria della Rosa in the centre of Milan.
When its first reading room, theSala Fredericiana, opened to the public on 8 December 1609, it became one of the earliestpublic libraries. One innovation was that its books were housed in cases ranged along the walls, rather than chained to reading tables, the latter a medieval practice seen still today in theLaurentian Library ofFlorence. Aprinting press was attached to the library, and a school for instruction in the classical languages.
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Constant acquisitions, soon augmented by bequests, required enlargement of the space. Borromeo intended anacademy (which opened in 1625) and a collection of pictures, for which a new building was initiated in 1611–18 to house the Cardinal's paintings and drawings, the nucleus of the Pinacoteca. Artwork at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana includes Leonardo da Vinci'sPortrait of a Musician, Caravaggio'sBasket of Fruit,Bramantino'sAdoration of the Christ Child and Raphael's cartoon of "The School of Athens". The library now contains some 12,000 drawings by European artists, from the 14th through the 19th centuries, which have come from the collections of a wide range of patrons and artists, academicians, collectors, art dealers, and architects.
The Ambrosiana contains several important manuscript works fromclassical antiquity and theRenaissance. In 1637, six years after the cardinal's death, the library acquired twelve manuscripts ofLeonardo da Vinci, including theCodex Atlanticus, from the Marquis Galeazzo Arconati, who had refused a tempting offer fromThomas Howard, Earl of Arundel.[2] TheCodex Atlanticus is the largest single set of drawings by Leonardo. Formed by the sculptorPompeo Leoni, it incorporates three dismembered notebooks and many single sheets.
Among the 30,000 manuscripts, which range from Greek and Latin toHebrew,Syriac, Arabic,[3] Ethiopian, Turkish and Persian, is theMuratorian fragment, ofca 170 A.D., the earliest example of aBiblical canon and an original copy ofDe divina proportione byLuca Pacioli.Gian Vincenzo Pinelli's library, purchased by Cardinal Borromeo in 1608, comprises five hundred and fifty manuscripts, including a fourth- or fifth-century illustrated Homer known as 'the Ambrosian Iliad', a tenth- or eleventh-centuryHorace, a copy ofDante'sDivine Comedy written in Padua about 1355,Boccaccio'sLa Fiammetta annotated byPietro Bembo, and many antiquarian, humanistic and topical miscellanies.[2] Among Christian and Islamic Arabic manuscripts are treatises on medicine, a unique 11th-centurydiwan of poets, and the oldest copy of theKitab Sibawahaihi.
Among the treasures of the library are also a GreekPentateuch of the fifth century; severalpalimpsest texts, including an earlyPlautus, fragments ofUlfilas'sGothic Bible, and a copy ofVirgil, with marginal notes byPetrarch.
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The most original feature of the library's constitutions was to separate responsibility for administration from that for the scholarly use of the collections. The former was entrusted to seven conservatori, to include the senior member of theBorromeo family. For the latter purpose, a College of Doctors was instituted. They were encouraged to specialise in different subjects and released from all routine duties, but required to publish a learned work within three years of appointment. The librarian was given onerous responsibilities, among them the purchase of new books and advice to the Doctors on subjects for research.
Among the most prominent doctors of the Ambrosiana have beenGiuseppe Ripamonti,Ludovico Antonio Muratori,Giuseppe Antonio Sassi, CardinalAngelo Mai and, at the beginning of the 20th century,Antonio Maria Ceriani,Achille Ratti (on 8 November 1888),[4][5] the future PopePius XI, andGiovanni Mercati. Ratti wrote a new edition of theActa Ecclesiae Mediolanensis ("Acts of the Church of Milan"), a Latin work first published by the cardinalFederico Borromeo in 1582.[5][4]
A handful of clauses in the constitutions reflect the Ambrosiana's ecclesiastical origin: at least four of the Doctors should professtheology, communication with foreigners 'of depraved religion' was forbidden, each Doctor within ten years of his appointment must publish a work on theVirgin Mary to whom the college and library were dedicated.
Several prized manuscripts, including the Leonardo codices, were requisitioned by theFrench during theNapoleonic occupation, and only partly returned after 1815. In particular,Leonardo's aerial screw was taken and is still in theInstitut de France inParis.
In 1943, the building was damaged by anAllied air raid. Manuscripts andincunables had been removed and escaped intact, and the damage to the fabric was made good after the war (the paintings are now particularly well displayed), but several volumes perished, including the archives ofopera libretti ofLa Scala.[6] The building was restored in 1952 and underwent major restorations in 1990–97.
The Ambrosiana library was from the beginning open to the public (for four hours a day, now increased to five). The great seventeenth century scholarGabriel Naudé judged that there were at his time only three libraries in all Europe open to the public, namely theBodleian, the Ambrosiana and theAngelica.[7] This unique feature was well known to early modern travellers. 'The Bibliotheca Ambrosiana is one of the best Libraries in Italy, because it is not so coy as the others, which scarce let themselves be seen; whereas this opens its dores publikly to all comers and goers, and suffers Them to read what book they please' (Richard Lassels,The Voyage of Italy, 1670).
On 15 October 1816, the Romantic poetLord Byron visited the library. He was delighted by the letters betweenLucrezia Borgia andPietro Bembo ("The prettiest love letters in the world"[8][9]) and claimed to have managed to steal a lock of her hair ("the prettiest and fairest imaginable."[9]) held on display.[10][11][12]
The novelistMary Shelley visited the library on 14 September 1840 but was disappointed by the tight security occasioned by the recent attempted theft of "some of the relics of Petrarch" housed there.[13]
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