MILAN MILANO ITALY | VIA MONTENAPOLEONE PEOPLE & EVENTS | PEOPLE & EVENTS IN VIA MONTENAPOLEONE

Just as every year, for 18 editions now, Milan played host from the 16 to the 18 March to the Exhibition of the Antique Book in the rooms of the Palazzo della Permanente museum. A prestigious event of great international importance, organised by the Library Foundation of Via Senato, headed by Marcello Dell’Utri, and supported by Publitalia '80, which together with other companies, has recognised «the cultural value of the initiative».
The mayor Letizia Moratti has awarded the special patronage of the municipality of Milan, proving that the culture of the book is at the centre of the political policies of this city. The patronage of the Region of Lombardy and the European Community is also of great importance, proving that the antique book is an object of inestimable value, to be protected and promoted as a source of discovery and knowledge.
Moreover, this edition is not limited only to the exhibition, seeing as it does the startup of an important course of specialist study on the book. Indeed the exhibition marks the start of the «Master in Economics of the Antique Book, the first postgraduate course on the book and its history, realised in collaboration with the University of Oxford, and which will be open to twenty-five students selected at European level», as Marcello Dell’Utri notes with pride in the presentation of the beautiful exhibition catalogue.
There are sixty-seven exhibitors from various Italian regions, as well as from Holland, Belgium, Spain, the USA and France, to mention just a few, who have opened their treasure chests of wonderful examples, from the incunabulum up to the extraordinary and more recent production of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The miniatures, some rare and precious, are fascinating, illustrating the incunabulum, books printed using the technique of movable type. Among these, we cannot fail to mention the thirteen beautiful full-page miniatures exhibited by Sokol Books LTD from London, depicting various episodes of the life of Christ. Each image lies inside a rich and sumptuous decorative frame with leaves and flowers, as was customary at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries; the period to which the precious Libro d’Ore (Book of Hours), the text of the daily prayers containing these miniatures, dates back.
Moving on to the following century, we see the birth of movable type printing and the exhibition presents a series of books printed in the sixteenth century, where the miniatures by amanuensis and artists leaves room more often than not for engraving, and here the eleven engravings by Adrien Collaert (1560-1618), presented by the Libreria Antiquaria Sonia Natale of Rome, are superb. The collection consists of loose papers depicting the seven jubilee churches of Rome in the background «to exalt the spirituality of the patron saint in the foreground, depicted by way of the symbol of his path to sainthood (Saint Peter with the keys of Rome, the Baptist with the lamb and the book, Saint Paul with the sword, Saint Lawrence with the gridiron) ».
The printed books realised between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on display at the exhibition are many and of extraordinary manufacture. Of these we will mention the curious volume, entitled Cucina 700, by an anonymous author, a Piedmont jam-maker who teaches how to candy fruit in different ways, as well as making biscuits, marzipan, grappa, sorbets and many other things belonging to that art, presented by Lorenzo Pellielo’s firm Libri Antichi from Biella. Useful and amusing for housewives and cooks past and present.
The exhibition closes with nineteenth and twentieth century production, and as proof of the fact that art renews itself without ever losing its techniques and tradition, maintaining the styles and language of its time, we cannot forget the fascinating volume from 1908 by Alberto Sangorski and Alfred Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott, presented by the Libreria Antiquaria Gonnelli of Florence, painted entirely by hand on parchment, with a text in semi-Gothic lettering. The romantic and intricately painted pages of the book immerse he who reads it in an extraordinary and enchanted world of fairytales which however always have a moral. The moral of this important exhibition is that the book and its history are part of our DNA which no-one can ever take away; it is our task to defend them wholeheartedly!

MOSTRA DEL LIBRO ANTICO
Palazzo della Permanente
via Turati, 34
20121 Milano

organizzazione
BIBLIOTECA DI VIA SENATO
via Senato, 14
20121 Milano
Tel. +39 02 76215318
segreteria@bibliotecadiviasenato.it