BIBLIOTECA MEDICEA LAURENZIANA

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Leon Battista Alberti. The library of a humanist
8 October 2005 - 7 January 2006

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The exhibition illustrates the figure of Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) and recreates his intellectual laboratory made up of a series of documents and books, memoirs, readings, technical and scientific instruments, focusing on Alberti as a humanist with reference to his artistic and architectural experience as well as wide literary works. From the exhibition emerges the complex and original figure of a sui generis humanist, an intellectual who was fascinated by the studia humanitatis, yet at the same time perfectly aware – and therefore highly modern – that alongside bonae artes and the priscae latinae litterae, science, technique, civil conversation, the company of friends, a close relationship with nature, love of animals and the skilled work of craftsmen were also of equal importance. 95 manuscripts are on display. In particular, all Alberti’s autographs have been grouped together here for the first time, granted on loan from the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Biblioteca Moreniana and Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale of Florence, from the Biblioteca Municipale of Imola, from the Biblioteca Marciana of Venice, from the Eton College Library of Windsor and from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, besides Alberti’s only drawing, treasured at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana itself. The exhibition has been organized on occasion of the VI centenary year of Leon Battista Alberti’s birth (18 February 1404) by the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, in collaboration with the Comitato nazionale VI centenario della nascita di Leon Battista Alberti, the Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, the Regione Toscana and the Centro di Studi sul Classicismo di Arezzo.

For a virtual visit of the exhibition

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