‘Ad utilità pubblica’: Politique des bibliothèques et pratiques du livre à Florence au XVIIIe siècle (review)

Florence in the eighteenth century was a city of 75,000 inhabitants, the same size as Genoa or Bologna, but half that of Rome or Venice, and a third of Naples. The Medici line came to an end in 1737 with the death of the Grand Duke Gian Gastone and was succeeded by the House of Lorraine in the shape of Duke François Etienne, Maria Teresa’s consort and from 1740, Emperor as Franz Stephan. After one visit he was an absentee ruler, government being exercised by mostly non-Italian ministers. He was succeeded in 1765 by his second son, Peter Leopold.

Peter Leopold was a typical Enlightenment ruler. Church prerogatives were abolished, half the religious houses of the Grand Duchy dissolved, the Inquisition rendered powerless, the regular mercenary army dismissed and the civilian militia disbanded, a constitution drawn up, though never promulgated, and freedom of speech and press proclaimed. The amalgamation of the Accademia Fiorentina, the Accademia della Crusca, whose duty, like that of the Académie Française, was to protect the language, and the Accademia degli Apatisti caused grumbling among the intelligentsia, and the government’s free-trade policy and abolition of price control provoked a riot by impoverished silk-workers. The Grand Duke was hyperactive, interfering everywhere and not allowing, for instance, the Uffizi to exchange a duplicate Museum Florentinum for a copy of Buc’hoz, Histoire universelle du règne vegetal.

Before the middle of the century the Laurenziana and the library created by Cosimo ‘il vecchio’ in San Marco were open but contained only manuscripts. Readers however had access to libraries in some private palazzi or monastic houses. Anton Francesco Gori admitted friends to consult the 6000 books scattered throughout the rooms of his residence. Canon Anton Maria Biscioni, later librarian of the Laurenziana, was in charge of the collection in the Panciatichi palace; he was allowed ten scudi a year for accessions and was also tutor to the sons of the household. The Riccardi, previously Medici, Palace gave generous access — visitors included Anthony Askew; readers, then as now, might be entranced or distracted by the library ceiling painted by Luca Giordano, whereas in the Rinuccini Palace the ceiling painting was by Giuseppe Zocchi, the artist of a wonderful series of engraved views of Florence. Baron Philipp von Stosch, expelled from the Papal States, installed his library and collections of gems, medals, prints, and antiquities in Florence, and was ready to lend books even when he had urgent need of them himself. Among the religious houses the best library belonged to the Dominicans of Sta Maria Novella. By contrast the chained library of late medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in Sta Croce was so neglected that when an inventory was taken forty were found to have been abstracted. Two had been cut out of the bindings, which were left chained to the desks.

In 1714 in the infirmary of Sta Maria Novella Antonio Magliabechi, old and ill, after many changes of mind, made his final will a few days before his death, bequeathing his 30,000 books to the city of Florence as a public library. His friend Anton Francesco Marmi and his relation Lorenzo Comparini were appointed executors and librarians. They were to secure or erect a suitable building, to compile a catalogue, to supply each volume with a bookplate or arms, and not to sell a single book. Only the first of these instructions was obeyed. The books occupied every pos sible space in his house and were piled on the floors in an order that only Magliabechi understood. Some had been used as tables, some as a bed, and many were marked by his copious consumption of snuff. Although the Grand Duke allotted a disused theatre next to the...