The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan, it was founded in 1609 by Cardinal

Federico Borromeo Federico Borromeo (18 August 1564 – 21 September 1631) was an Italian cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, a prominent figure of Counter-Reformation Italy. Early life Federico Borromeo was born in Milan as the second son of Giulio Cesare Borrom ...

, whose agents scoured Western Europe and even

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders ...

and Syria for books and manuscripts. Some major acquisitions of complete libraries were the manuscripts of the Benedictine monastery of Bobbio (1606) and the library of the Paduan Vincenzo Pinelli, whose more than 800 manuscripts filled 70 cases when they were sent to Milan and included the famous ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the '' Odys ...

'', the '' Ilias Picta''.

History

Vinci, Leonardo da - Crossbow sketch - 1500

During Cardinal Borromeo's sojourns in Rome, 1585–95 and 1597–1601, he envisioned developing this library in Milan as one open to scholars and that would serve as a bulwark of Catholic scholarship in the service of the Counter-Reformation against the treatises issuing from Protestant presses. To house the cardinal's 15,000 manuscripts and twice that many printed books, construction began in 1603 under designs and direction of Lelio Buzzi and

Francesco Maria Richini Francesco Maria Richini (also spelled Ricchini) (9 February 1584 – 24 April 1658) was an Italian Baroque architect. Biography He was born in Milan and trained under Lorenzo Binago. He was patronized by Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Archbishop ...

. When its first reading room, the ''Sala Fredericiana'', opened to the public on 8 December 1609 it was one of the earliest public 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 the Laurentian Library of

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

. A

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the ...

was attached to the library, and a school for instruction in the classical languages. Constant acquisitions, soon augmented by bequests, required enlargement of the space. Borromeo intended an

academy An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosop ...

(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. Cardinal Borromeo gave his collection of paintings and drawings to the library, too. Shortly after the cardinal's death, his library acquired twelve manuscripts of

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 14522 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, Drawing, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially res ...

, including the ''

Codex Atlanticus The Codex Atlanticus (Atlantic Codex) is a 12-volume, bound set of drawings and writings (in Italian) by Leonardo da Vinci, the largest single set. Its name indicates the large paper used to preserve original Leonardo notebook pages, which was us ...

''. 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. Prized manuscripts, including the Leonardo codices, were requisitioned by the French during the Napoleonic occupation, and only partly returned after 1815. Leonardo da Vinci - Portrait of a Musician - Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

Leonardo da Vinci - Portrait of a Musician - Pinacoteca Ambrosiana

On 15 October 1816 the Romantic poet

Lord Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...

visited the library. He was delighted by the letters between Lucrezia Borgia and Pietro Bembo ("The prettiest love letters in the world"''Ian Thompson, review''
''The Spectator'', 25 June 2005, of ''Viragos on the march'' by Gaia Servadio. I. B. Tauris, .
Pietro Bembo: A Renaissance Courtier Who Had His Cake and Ate It Too
', Ed Quattrocchi, ''Caxtonian: Journal of the Caxton Club of Chicago'', Volume XIII, Nº. 10, October 2005.) and claimed to have managed to steal a lock of her hair ("the prettiest and fairest imaginable.") held on display.

Byron
' by John Nichol.Letter to

Augusta Leigh Augusta Maria Leigh (''née'' Byron; 26 January 1783 – 12 October 1851) was the only daughter of John "Mad Jack" Byron, the poet Lord Byron's father, by his first wife, Amelia, née Darcy (Lady Conyers in her own right and the divorced wife ...

, Milan, 15 October 1816. ''Lord Byron's Letters and Journals''
Chapter 5: Separation and Exile
. The novelist

Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel '' Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also ...

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. Among the 30,000 manuscripts, which range from Greek and Latin to Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic,Oscar Löfgren and Renato Traini, ''Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana'', vol. I (1975), ii (1981) onwards. Ethiopian, Turkish and Persian, is the

Muratorian fragment The Muratorian fragment, also known as the Muratorian Canon (Latin: ), is a copy of perhaps the oldest known list of most of the books of the New Testament. The fragment, consisting of 85 lines, is a 7th-century Latin manuscript bound in a 7th- o ...

, of ''ca'' 170 A.D., the earliest example of a

Biblical canon A biblical canon is a set of texts (also called "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible. The English word ''canon'' comes from the Greek , meaning " rule" or " measuring stick". The us ...

and an original copy of ''

De divina proportione ''Divina proportione'' (15th century Italian for ''Divine proportion''), later also called ''De divina proportione'' (converting the Italian title into a Latin one) is a book on mathematics written by Luca Pacioli and illustrated by Leonardo da ...

'' by Luca Pacioli. Among Christian and Islamic Arabic manuscripts are treatises on medicine, a unique 11th-century diwan of poets, and the oldest copy of the '' Kitab Sibawahaihi''. The library has a college of Doctors, similar to the scriptors of the Vatican Library. Among prominent figures have been Giuseppe Ripamonti,

Ludovico Antonio Muratori Lodovico Antonio Muratori (21 October 1672 – 23 January 1750) was an Italian historian, notable as a leading scholar of his age, and for his discovery of the Muratorian fragment, the earliest known list of New Testament books. Biography Born ...

, Giuseppe Antonio Sassi, Cardinal

Angelo Mai Angelo Mai (''Latin'' Angelus Maius; 7 March 17828 September 1854) was an Italian Cardinal and philologist. He won a European reputation for publishing for the first time a series of previously unknown ancient texts. These he was able to discov ...

and, at the beginning of the 20th century, Antonio Maria Ceriani, Achille Ratti (on 8 November 1888,, with ''

imprimatur An ''imprimatur'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''impr.'', from Latin, "let it be printed") is a declaration authorizing publication of a book. The term is also applied loosely to any mark of approval or endorsement. The imprimatur rule in the R ...

'' of Milan Curia (in person of friar Castiglioni) on 9 August 1938, and of cardinal

Schuster Schuster ("shoemaker", "cobbler") is a common family name in German. It is also common among Ashkenazi-Jews, sometimes spelled as " Shuster". People * Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster (1880–1954), Italian cardinal and Archbishop of Milan ...

the future Pope

Pius XI Pope Pius XI ( it, Pio XI), born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti (; 31 May 1857 – 10 February 1939), was head of the Catholic Church from 6 February 1922 to his death in February 1939. He was the first sovereign of Vatican City f ...

, and Giovanni Mercati. Ratti wrote a new edition of the ''Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis'' ("Acts of the Church of Milan"), Latin work firstly published by the cardinal

1582 1582 ( MDLXXXII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) in the Julian calendar, and a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Proleptic Gregorian calendar. This year saw the be ...

. The building was damaged in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, with the loss of the archives of opera libretti of La Scala, but was restored in 1952 and underwent major restorations in 1990–97. Artwork at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana includes Leonardo da Vinci's "

Portrait of a Musician The ''Portrait of a Musician''). It is sometimes known as the ''Portrait of a Young Man'', the ''Portrait of a Man with a Sheet of Music'' or the ''Musician''., group=n is an unfinished painting widely attributed to the Italian Renaissance ar ...

", Caravaggio's " Basket of Fruit", Bramantino's '' Adoration of the Christ Child'' and Raphael's cartoon of "

The School of Athens ''The School of Athens'' ( it, Scuola di Atene) is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. The fresco was painted between 1509 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate the rooms now known as the , in the Apostolic Pa ...

Some manuscripts

* Uncial 0135 — fragments of the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke * Codex Ambrosianus 435, Ambrosianus 837 — treatise ''

On the Soul ''On the Soul'' (Greek: , ''Peri Psychēs''; Latin: ''De Anima'') is a major treatise written by Aristotle c. 350 BC. His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different op ...

'' of Aristotle * Minuscule manuscripts of New Testament:

343 __NOTOC__ Year 343 ( CCCXLIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Memmius and Romulus (or, less frequently, year 1096 ...

344 Year 344 ( CCCXLIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Leontius and Bonosus (or, less frequently, year 1097 '' Ab urbe cond ...

, 345, 346,

347 Year 347 ( CCCXLVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Rufinus and Eusebius (or, less frequently, year 1100 ''Ab urbe c ...

, 348,

349 __NOTOC__ Year 349 ( CCCXLIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Limenius and Catullinus (or, less frequently, year 1102 ...

350 __NOTOC__ Year 350 ( CCCL) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sergius and Nigrinianus (or, less frequently, year 1103 '' ...

351 __NOTOC__ Year 351 ( CCCLI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Magnentius and Gaiso (or, less frequently, year 1104 ''A ...

, 352, 353,

614 __NOTOC__ Year 614 ( DCXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 614 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era ...

615 __NOTOC__ Year 615 ( DCXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. The denomination 615 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era ...

* Lectionaries ℓ ''102'', ℓ ''103'', ℓ ''104'', ℓ ''105'', ℓ ''106'', ℓ ''284'', ℓ ''285'', ℓ ''286'', ℓ ''287'', ℓ ''288'', ℓ ''289'', ℓ ''290''. *

Codices Ambrosiani The Codices Ambrosiani A–E are five biblical manuscripts dating to the 6th–11th centuries CE now in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. They are written by different hands and in different alphabets. The codices contain scattered passages from ...

, containing the

Gothic language Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the ''Codex Argenteus'', a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text c ...

Gallery

References

External links

Virtual tour of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana
provided by Google Arts & Culture * {{Authority control 1609 establishments in Italy Archives in Italy Libraries in Milan Culture in Milan Tourist attractions in Milan Education in Milan Libraries established in 1609 Collections of museums in Italy Art museums and galleries in Milan

History

Some manuscripts

Gallery

References

Further reading

External links