Inaugurated on the occasion of the National Made in Italy Day, the exhibition hosted by the Biblioteca Angelica, one of the oldest public libraries in the world, aims to highlight a bibliographic heritage rich in works that are the fruit of the genius of great artists and scientists, rare and precious books illuminated with mastery or created by the first Italian typographies.
In the showcases located between the high wooden shelves of the library hall, visitors can admire, for example, one of the oldest and most precious specimens of the Divine Comedy, decorated with miniatures that were probably made in Bologna in the second half of the 14th century, a codex with Petrarch’s Canzoniere and Trionfi and an edition of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron edited by the humanist Lionardo Salviati and printed in Florence in 1587, as well as some of Galileo Galilei’s works.
The earliest products of typography include the first printed edition in Italy of Cicero’s De oratore by Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz, the two German typographers who were pupils of Johannes Gutenberg and introduced the art of printing to Italy, and the editio princeps of De re militari by Roberto Valturio, the first book illustrated by an Italian engraver. For the section dedicated to Italian excellence, the exhibition also includes De naturali vinorum historia de vinis Italie by the physician, naturalist and writer Andrea Bacci, dated 1596, and the largest and most complete treatise on cooking in 16th-century Italy, written by Bartolomeo Scappi, personal chef to Popes Pius IV and Pius V.
The exhibition can be visited free of charge during the library’s public opening hours (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 1.30 p.m.).
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