The Library... In the Beginning

Organizing this section for my blog involved a lot of online research & I found it frustrating that all the journal sources found were either not relevant to this blog (such as “The Laurentian Library & Michaelangelo’s Architectural Method” by David Hemsoll & found in the Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes; 2003, Vol. 66, p28-62, 34p. Although the Abstract sounded promising - Analyzes the architectural methods, techniques, and designs of Michelangelo and Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy, it was too heavy going for this blog. Or “The Hidden Pavements of Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library” by Jay Kappraff & found in Mathematical Intelligencer, Summer 99, Vol. 21 Issue 3, p24, 6p. The abstract reveals that the article discusses the mathematical significance of the hidden pavements of artist Michelangelo Buonarroti's Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy. Other finds may have been more promising such as “Stairway to Paradise “ found in Town & Country, 01/03/1995, Vol. 149 Issue 5178, p145, 2/9p, 1 Color Photograph. However, only the abstract was available.  Abstracts were only available too for - “Glory catalogued'. The libraries of Florence, by W. Robbins, in Wilson Library Bulletin; Apr 1983, Vol. 57, Issue 8, p662-666, 5p, and “The Legacy of the Medici” by Karen E. Hong, in Calliope, Apr. 2001, Vol. 11, Issue 8. However, many useful websites were found & are included in the reference section. I have also  spent considerable time finding images. 

One of the leading figures in Florentine humanist circles at the turn of the fifteenth century was Niccolò de' Niccoli (1364–1437), who would become a friend of the young Cosimo Medici.  Niccoli, who was twenty five years older than Cosimo, was the son of one of the new wealthy wool merchants who had made their fortune in the Florentine recovery following the Black Death.  Niccoli’s obsession was his dedication to the discovery of ancient texts. He paid agents to search out ancient manuscripts for him all over Europe - a costly business that eventually threatened him bankruptcy.  This was averted when Cosimo came to his rescue - ordering Niccoli’s bank drafts to be honoured without question at any branch of the Medici Bank. Niccoli was in the habit of making copies of the many rare manuscripts in his library.  Those manuscripts that he was unable to acquire would frequently be loaned to him so that he could transcribe their contents - Printing was still in the future - & this was the only way to disseminate the contents of rare manuscripts.  Ironically, it is this unoriginal activity that would leave Niccoli’s most original & lasting mark; the clear, distinctive forward-leaning script that he developed to copy manuscripts would eventually be adopted by the first Italian printers after his death - it would become known as italic. (See below) When Niccoli died in 1437, he bequeathed his library of 800 manuscripts to Cosimo Medici.  Niccoli had always regarded his collection as something of a public service, open to scrutiny by any scholar or artist willing to brave its owner’s forthright questioning, & he knew that Cosimo would continue this tradition of open access. 400 (some sources suggest 600 manuscripts) of Niccoli’s manuscripts would become the core of the Medici library, which Cosimo founded in 1444; at the same time Cosimo added manuscripts from his own collection, & this became the first extensive public library in Europe.  Cosimo split the rest of Niccoli’s manuscripts between his own private collection & the library that he had founded at the great island monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, in gratitude for hospitality during his exile in 1433. A novelty of Cosimo’s library was that it provided knowledge from a source other than the Church - here  was the initial public manifestation of a new lay learning.  He continued to add to it &, also using the nucleus of Niccoli’s books which he had retained, he built up a new collection of his own.  He engaged forty five scribes & produced 200 volumes in less than two years.  Purchases for the libraries followed a plan drawn up for him, at his request, by his friend Tommaso Parentucelli (1397-1455), who as Pope Nicholas V, was to found the Vatican Library. Moreover, Cosimo underwrote some of the key manuscript searches of the age, helping to finance the European travels of Poggio & the expeditions made to Constantinople, Syria & Egypt as well as to Greece. Cosimo continued to add to his library, which at its height was said to have more than 19,000 manuscripts of Ancient Greek, Latin & Hebrew texts. 

However, the library followed the ups and downs of the Medici family. In 1494, following the sentence of exile imposed on Piero the Unfortunate and the banishment from Florence of the whole of the Medici family, the library was confiscated by the republican government and absorbed into the library of the San Marco monastery. In 1508 it was recovered by Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici (the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, & later Pope Leo X) who transferred it to Rome. His successor Clement VII (Giulio de' Medici, son of Giuliano di Piero) brought the collection back to Florence in 1523 and immediately commissioned Michelangelo to design a library to house it. This was despite the fact that Lorenzo Medici had already had stonemasons working on marbles & blocks of stone in the garden of San Marco for a building where he could place a magnificent library.  The foundation of the Library represented a strong sign of continuity for both the Medici & Michelangelo but the original project underwent several refinements & alterations due to Giulio’s changing whims.  It was only after 1523 that Giulio, now Pope Clement VII, established its location on the first floor of the San Lorenzo complex, & the construction of the long rectangular reading room began in April 1525.  From 1526 construction began on the ricetto, the high entrance vestibule destined to accommodate the staircase that leads from the first floor of the cloister to the reading room. 

Script of Niccolo de'Niccoli

Vestible with stairs
c1998, Michelangelo - Masters of Italian Art

The vestibule, (see photos above)  also known as the ricetto, is 19.50 m. long, 20.30 m. wide, and 14.6 m. tall (31 by 34 by 44 feet). It was built above existing monastic quarters on the east range of the cloister, with an entrance from the upper level of the cloisters.  It takes the form of a square whose walls soar high above the observer: the walls are divided into three sections decorated by double columns, scroll-shaped corbels, gabled niches framed by pilasters which taper downward in an unusual fashion. The staircase, originally conceived by Michelangelo in walnut, was realised by Bartolomeo Ammannati in 1559 in 'pietra serena', a type of grey sandstone, following a wax model by Michelangelo himself. Its tripartite structure, including a central flight with elliptically shaped stairs, is quite unique. Michelangelo intended the Vestibule to be a dark prelude to the brightness of the Reading Room. It remained incomplete until the beginning of the 20th century when finally the facade was accomplished with its series of blind windows. On the same occasion the ceiling was covered by a cloth painted by the Bolognese artist Giacomo Lolli (1857-1931), depicting motifs imitating the carved wooden ceiling of the Reading Room. 

   

When he left Florence in 1534, Michelangelo had completed the building of the reading room, its walls punctuated by pilaster strips & hollowed out by wide tabernacle windows.  He had also defined the scheme for the ceiling & the design of the reading desks.  The vestibule was under construction, & the walls , excluding those of the upper floor, were complete, with pairs of mighty columns embedded within them & floating consoles on the lower level combining a number of heterodoxical architectural orders. As far as the staircase was concerned, there were only “signs on the floor” & some sketches, together with stones prepared but not installed.  The final reading room & vestibule, with its staircase completed by other architects, represents a variety of personal interpretations that only occasionally follow the vague instructions given by Michelangelo. 

In 1548 construction of the ceiling in carved linden wood was begun.  Santi Buglioni (1494 -1576) completed the floor, in red & white terracotta. The installation in 1568 of magnificent panes of glass decorated with grotesques by Flemish Artists concluded the project.  The vestibule remained unfinished.  The task of building the staircase on the basis of Michelangelo’s vague reminiscences proved to be too difficult for many. Giorgio Vasari (1511 – 1574) later extracted from the aging artist the memory of a beautiful plan for a tripartite staircase with rectilinear steps on each side & a central flight resembling thin “oval boxes” of decreasing size. Bartolomeo Ammannati (1511 – 1592), finally obtained from the exasperated Michelangelo, a small model that he received in Florence in January 1559, & thanks to this he was able to complete the staircase in gray sandstone. The staircase leads up to the reading room and takes up half of the floor of the vestibule. The treads of the center flights are convex and vary in width, while the outer flights are straight. The three lowest steps of the central flight are wider and higher than the others, almost like concentric oval slabs. As the stairway descends, it divides into three flights. The Library was at last inaugurated in 1571. 

Reading Room - Laurentian Library
c1998, Michelangelo - Masters of Italian Art

The reading room (see photo above) is 46.20m long, 10.50m wide, and 8.4m high (152 by 35 by 28 feet), that is a long narrow rectangle, thus mirroring the medieval tradition of monastic libraries. It seemed highly appropriate to follow this tradition in view of the fact that the Biblioteca Laurenziana is situated in the east wing of a cloister.  There are two blocks of wooden seats or benches which functioned as lecterns as well as bookshelves.  Inside the bolted down benches provided room for readers & books, because under the desks there was storage room for the chained volumes, which was also a medieval tradition. The outside of the reading seats had lists attached to them, showing the books to be found in that particular seat. The books themselves were chained to the reading seat. Each row had a specific topic. Need to use a different book? You had to change where you sat.  The benches are separated by a center aisle with the backs of each serving as desks for the benches behind them. The desks (or plutei) are lit by the evenly spaced windows along the wall. They were designed by Michelangelo and, reputably the work of Giovan Battista del Cinque and Ciapino. The windows are framed by pilasters, forming a system of bays which articulate the layout of the ceiling and floor. The collection once kept here is unique for its philological and artistic value. The manuscripts and printed books lied horizontally on the lecterns and on the shelves and were distributed by subject (Patristics, Astronomy, Rhetoric, Philosophy, History, Grammar, Poetry, Geography); the wooden panels placed on one side of each bench listed the titles of the items chained therein. This display was maintained until the beginning of the 20th century, when the manuscripts (the printed books were given to the Magliabechiana Library, now Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze in 1783) were transferred downstairs, in the vaults were they are still housed.  (NB. The chains still visible on the lower covers of many of these manuscripts bear testimony to the reading practices of the time and the librarians' concern for the safeguard of the collection.) The linden ceiling was carved in 1549-1550, following earlier drawings by Michelangelo.  The floor, in red and white terracotta was realised from 1548 by Santi Buglioni according to a design by Tribolo.  Its centre echoes the ornamental and symbolic designs found in the ceiling, and which allude to the Medici dynasty.  

Stained glass windows in the reading room

Copyright © Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana 2001–2011

The splendid stained-glass windows, (see above) which were the last part of the Library to be accomplished, display an ornamental array of Medici heraldry referring to Clement VII ( 1478-1534) and Cosimo I (1519-1574). Possibly realised by a Flemish workshop in keeping with Giorgio Vasari's drawings, the refined decorations combine grotesque motifs, arms and emblems. 

Tribuna D'Elci - The Rotunda

This Rotunda (pictured above) was added to the original library planned by Michelangelo in the first half of the 19th century in order to house the rich book collection, once belonging to the Florentine bibliophile and scholar Angelo Maria D'Elci (Florence 1754 - Vienna 1824), & given to the Laurenziana in 1818. D'Elci had collected first print editions of the Classics and his library comprised a good number of incunabula (books printed in the 2nd half of the 15th century) and editions printed by Aldo Manuzio and his successors. The books date back to the 15th-18th centuries and are bound in different colours: red leather for incunabula and green for all later books. Indeed D'Elci, at the turn of the 18th century, had had all his books rebound according to the fashions spread in England and France at the time. The project of the Rotunda was entrusted to the architect Pasquale Poccianti (1774-1858) who, in order to connect the new space to the already existing library, partially altered the latter's right side: two windows were walled up, two others blinded and one was substituted by the entrance to the Rotunda itself. The neoclassical style of the room echoes the predominant elements in the Library's architecture and decoration: viz. the columns, the two-toned walls and the terracotta floor.The Rotunda was inaugurated in 1841 and has been the Library's Reading Room until the 1970's. Nowadays the D'Elci collection is kept elsewhere - in conditions more suitable for conservation purposes - and the room is employed for seminars, meetings and inaugurations. 


Please see my completed research project for more current information about the Laurentian library in Florence, Italy. 

REFERENCES 


Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 2011, Tour of the Complex, viewed 28 September 2011, 
http://www.bml.firenze.sbn.it/ing/tour_of_the_complex.htm

Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 2011, Historical Notes, viewed 28 September 2011, http://www.bml.firenze.sbn.it/ing/historical_notes.htm  


Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, 2011, Logo, viewed 28 September 2011, 
http://www.bml.firenze.sbn.it/ing/logo_bml_ing.htm


Great Buildings.com, 2011, Laurentian Library, viewed 28 September 2011, 
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Laurentian_Library.html

Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, 2011, Laurentian Library, viewed 28 September 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentian_Library  


Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, 2011, Niccolo de' Niccoli, viewed 28 September 2011, 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccolò_de%27_Niccoli


Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia, 2011, Pope Nicholas V, viewed 28 September 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Nicholas_V


Polastron, Lucien X, c2007, Books on Fire - The Tumultuous Story of the World's Great Libraries, Thames & Hudson, London. 

Bartz, Gabriele & Konig, Eberhard, c1998, Michelangelo - Masters of Italian Art, Konemann, Cologne.