edited by R. Cardini
\nin collaboration with L. Bertolini and M. Regoliosi<\/p>\n
Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 8 October 2005-7 Jenuary 2006<\/p>\n
Of the books that once belonged to Leon Battista Alberti only few have survived; but the works we know he read and used, together with his own writings, are on display at the Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 8 October 2005-7 January 2006). This attempt at reconstruction is based on a close scrutiny of Alberti\u2019s own \u201cideology of the book\u201d, particularly of what he wrote on the subjects of books and libraries, the latter described as places which define a community, buildings that \u201cgive lustre\u201d to the city, intellectual and moral shrines.<\/p>\n
Preliminary to this investigation was \u2013 in the words of curator Roberto Cardini \u2013 \u201ca systematic and thorough deconstruction\u201d of the humanist\u2019s texts in search of his sources: an approach justified by a famous passage of the Profugiorum ab erumna libri where Alberti compares literary works to mosaics. The result is not, however, a dry list of sources, for every \u2018unit\u2019 that was borrowed from other authors must be explained in the light of its new context. It is interesting to observe this procedure at work, for instance, in Alberti\u2019s treatment of a classic topic such as the respective merits of the active and contemplative lives, where he draws extensively from Petrarch\u2019s De vita solitaria but eventually endorses the view that human conversation should not be given up, and that literary and scientific (even architectural) work are not so distant as they might seem.<\/p>\n
Lenders include the Marcian Library, the Vatican Library, the British Library, the Biblioth\u00e8que Nationale de France and virtually all major Florentine libraries; amongst the latter, the Laurentian Library stands out for contributing a selection of its beautiful illuminated manuscripts. The first part of the catalogue comprises essays by Paola Benigni, Lucia Bertolini, Andrea Cantile, Roberto Cardini, Stefano G. Casu, Donatella Coppini, Sandro De Maria, Ida Mastrorosa, Michel Paoli, Mariangela Regoliosi, Giovanni Rossi and Caterina Tristano and numerous illustrations of autograph writings by Alberti and manuscripts on display in the exhibition. The second part is divided into three sections: the first deals with documents, the second with Alberti\u2019s own writings, the third with the classical and medieval authors whose works Alberti read and studied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1792,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[103],"product_tag":[824,1606],"class_list":["post-1799","product","type-product","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","product_cat-studies-and-classical","product_tag-biblioteca-medicea-laurenziana-en","product_tag-humanism","first","outofstock","shipping-taxable","purchasable","product-type-simple"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n