Grand Tour

And it was the library, and its legendary librarian Magliabechi, that hogged the limelight in the picture of the city’s culture presented in the writings of travelers. The Grand Duchy’s hoard of books was considered a genuine treasure and many people drew attention to the efforts of the grand dukes to make it of benefit to the public. Impressed visitors spoke of thousands and thousands of volumes.

Inseparable from the visit to Florence’s main library was an expression of admiration and respect for its celebrated librarian. Gibbon (1764) had words of great appreciation for him: «Magliabechi was, let us say, the personification of memory, an intelligence that could not work all by itself but that would have been a talking index, and one of the most useful kind, for a man of genius occupied in some literary work. In this library I saw how the whole life of this man was devoted to the Sciences».

The description of Magliabechi’s library, «very large, very well stocked with good books, and fairly well with manuscripts too» (de Brosses, 1740), went hand in hand with that of the Medici at San Lorenzo, «a large gallery formed exclusively of manuscripts [nine thousand, according to Valéry, 1828] lined up on big lecterns to which each volume is attached with an iron chain; so that they cannot be taken away» (de Brosses). This detail was noted because it was certainly an unusual one. «The stern appearance of these large and chained volumes denotes,» in Valéry's view, «literary habits typical of another age». Among the works worthy of mention were the Histories of Tacitus, a very old Virgil in majuscule script, the Pandects and a famous copy of the Decameron, to cite just the best known. The Medicean-Laurentian Library’s reputation as the richest in Europe was recognized, but according to Dupaty (1785), holder of a highly unusual point of view, this was of no avail,: what did it matter, he argued, that these manuscripts were a thousand years old if they had become unnecessary, since they had already been printed? Respect for great age was, in his opinion, «a disorder of the human mind».

Other libraries deemed worthy of mention were the Biblioteca Marucelliana, founded in 1751 and the youngest of the public libraries in Florence, which opened on the days the Biblioteca Laurenziana was closed, given that it had the same librarian (de Sade, 1776), and was considered an appendix to it because of their common administration; and the Biblioteca Palatina which housed ancient manuscripts and more modern ones, among them the Viaggi (“Journeys”) of Cosimo III, with extremely detailed maps. De Sade’s comment is interesting: «seeing this fine work one is persuaded that the prince wanted to put his journeys to good use, and there are few rulers of which the same can be said». Mentions of the Biblioteca Riccardiana were less frequent, but Valéry (1828) refers to the letters of Poggio Bracciolini, which present «a picture of the customs […] e the men of the Renaissance».

The library of Palazzo Pitti was famous and Lalande (1765) went to visit it, recording that it housed two large globes and a splendid collection of manuscripts and rare and valuable printed works, comprising over thirty-five thousand volumes. A detailed list of this old and precious patrimony, covering pages and pages, is supplied by Valéry (1828), who waxed enthusiastic about it and claimed, among other things, that its collection of maps was unrivaled.

The Gabinetto Vieusseux is only mentioned in the most detailed descriptions, such as that of Valéry, who declared that it did not make a bad impression «alongside the old and learned literary deposits» of the other libraries. It housed journals, reviews and new publications that appeared in Europe and had an influence on the civilization and progress of the country. Valéry even cites the old library of the monastery of San Marco, which contained the collection of books assembled by Niccolò Niccoli.

Fleeting mention of the library in Pisa, the only other one of any significance in the region, was confined to the best-informed reports. Valéry counted over thirty thousand volumes in it, including the manuscripts of the mathematician Guido Grandi.