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The Marciana National Library (or the library of San Marco) is one of
the largest Italian libraries and the most important in Venice.
Also known as the Marciana Library, San Marco Library, Marciana Library,
Sansoviniana Library, Old Library or San Marco Library, it is located on
the lower part of Piazza San Marco, between the bell tower of San Marco
and the Mint.
Origins and Founding
The concept of a public library in Venice
dates back to 1362, when the renowned poet and scholar Francesco
Petrarca (Petrarch) proposed donating his personal collection to the
Republic of Venice to establish a public institution for scholarly
access. However, this offer was declined, and Petrarch's books were
instead sent to Padua. The idea lay dormant until the mid-15th century,
amid the cultural fallout from the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, which
scattered Byzantine scholars and texts across Europe.
The library's
formal founding occurred in 1468, when Cardinal Bessarion (also known as
Basilio Bressarion), a Byzantine humanist, scholar, and bishop, donated
his extensive collection of approximately 750 codices—482 Greek and 264
Latin manuscripts—to the Republic of Venice. This act was formalized on
February 4, 1468, with a letter to Doge Cristoforo Moro and the Senate
on May 31, stipulating that the collection be housed in a public library
for the benefit of scholars. Bessarion, viewing Venice as "another
Byzantium" due to its Greek refugee community and trade ties with the
East, aimed to preserve classical Greek and Byzantine heritage
threatened by Ottoman expansion. The donation included rare works by
authors like Homer, Euclid, Ptolemy, and Plato, focusing on grammar,
poetry, history, rhetoric, medicine, law, philosophy, mathematics,
astronomy, theology, and Biblical texts. Legal possession was taken by
Pietro Morosini in Rome on June 26, 1468, with an additional shipment of
250 manuscripts and printed works arriving from Urbino in 1474,
facilitated by Federico da Montefeltro.
Initially, the collection was
stored in the Doge's Palace, with limited public access—books were
sometimes even sold in local shops due to neglect. Military conflicts,
such as the Ottoman-Venetian Wars (1463–1479) and the Italian Wars,
delayed proper housing. By 1515, the Senate expressed intent to build a
dedicated library, but progress stalled until the 1530s.
Key
Figures
Several prominent individuals shaped the library's
development:
Cardinal Bessarion: The foundational donor whose 1468
gift established the library's core collection and humanist ethos.
Francesco Petrarca: Early visionary whose 1362 proposal influenced the
public library concept.
Doge Andrea Gritti: Reigned 1523–1538;
championed the Renovatio Urbis (urban renewal) project, integrating the
library into Venice's classical revival to restore prestige after
conflicts like the Wars of Cambrai.
Jacopo Sansovino: Chief architect
appointed in 1529; designed and oversaw construction from 1537, creating
a Renaissance masterpiece despite setbacks like imprisonment after a
1545 vault collapse.
Pietro Bembo: As gubernator (custodian) from
1530, advocated for construction and temporarily relocated the
collection to St. Mark's Basilica in 1532.
Vincenzo Scamozzi:
Completed the building in 1582–1588 after Sansovino's death in 1570,
adding statues and obelisks.
Andrea Navagero: Gubernator from
1516–1524; improved access by authorizing manuscript reproductions for
patrons like Pope Leo X.
Antonio Maria Zanetti: Compiled catalogs of
Greek (1740) and Latin/Italian (1741) manuscripts, enhancing
organization.Other custodians like Marcantonio Sabellico, Silvestro
Valier (who reformed access in 1680), and scholars such as Marino Zorzi
(author of a 1987 history) contributed to its administration and
documentation.
Construction and Architecture
Construction
commenced in 1537 under Sansovino as part of the Renovatio Urbis,
transforming St. Mark's Square from a medieval market into a classical
forum. The site required demolishing hostels and stalls, with work
commissioned by the procurators of St. Mark on July 14, 1536. Delays
arose from the Ottoman-Venetian War (1537–1540) and a 1545 vault
collapse, attributed to workmanship and nearby cannon fire, leading to
Sansovino's brief imprisonment. Resuming in 1543 with lighter wooden
roofs, seven bays of the reading room were finished by 1552, and sixteen
by 1556, but paused for the meat market relocation until 1581.
The
two-story High Renaissance building, now called the Libreria
Sansoviniana, faces the Doge's Palace and features a facade inspired by
Roman triumphal arches (e.g., Arch of Constantine) and theaters (e.g.,
Theatre of Marcellus). The ground floor has Doric columns over arcades,
while the upper floor uses Ionic columns with Serlian (Palladian)
windows, egg-and-dart capitals, and a frieze of festoons and putti.
Decorations include high-relief spandrel figures (allegorical rivers),
keystone heads (divinities like Apollo and Minerva), and grotesques. The
balustrade, added 1588–1591, holds statues of pagan figures by sculptors
like Camillo Mariani.
Interiors boast Mannerist elements: a grand
staircase with domes symbolizing virtues and the soul's ascent to
wisdom; a vestibule (originally a statuary museum with Giovanni
Grimani's 1591 Greek marble donation, later moved); and a reading room
with chained desks (38 total, organized by subject from 1559–1565) and
paintings by Titian (Wisdom), Tintoretto, Veronese, and others on
Neoplatonic themes from Ovid and Apuleius. Renovations include a 1929
restoration reopening it as a museum.
Development of Collections
Bessarion's donation formed the nucleus, cataloged in 1545 with stricter
loan policies from 1558 (requiring 50-ducat deposits). Growth came
through bequests: Melchiorre Guilandino (1589, 2,200 scientific books);
Jacopo Contarini (1595, Venetian history manuscripts); Girolamo Fabrici
(1619, anatomy); Giacomo Gallicio (1624, Greek codices); Giambattista
Recanati (1734, illuminated manuscripts); Tommaso Giuseppe Farsetti
(1792, literature); Amedeo Schweyer (1794, including Marco Polo's will);
Jacopo Nani (1797, multilingual); Girolamo Ascanio Molin (1814,
books/prints); Girolamo Contarini (1843, music); Giovanni Rossi (1852,
Venetian history and operas).
A 1603 law mandated deposits of every
book printed in Venice, though enforcement was lax initially (only about
50 in the first 19 years). Transfers included 303 manuscripts from
religious libraries (1789); scientific/political works from Secret
Archives (1792–1795); and the Fra Mauro map (1811). The collection now
includes 13,117 manuscripts, 2,887 incunabula, 24,060 16th-century
books, and about 1,000,000 later works, plus notable items like the
Breviario Grimani, ancient maps, and Homer's Iliad copies. Modern legal
deposits (Law 106/2004) continue acquisitions based on publisher
location.
Significant Events and Evolutions
1528: Formation of
the riformatori committee for administration.
1558–1565: Collection
transferred to the new building; chained system implemented.
1591:
Grimani's statuary donation creates an early public museum in the
vestibule (disbanded in the late 1700s).
1680: Access reforms for
daily openings and unchained books.
1797: French occupation; briefly
renamed "Biblioteca nazionale"; 203 manuscripts seized (some returned
post-1815).
1811: Temporary move to Doge's Palace during Napoleonic
use.
1866–1918: Austrian occupations lead to seizures; volumes
returned as reparations.
1876: Designated national library upon
Venice's annexation to Italy (Royal Decree No. 3530).
1904: Main
collection relocated to the adjoining Zecca (former mint); original
building becomes a museum by 1929.
The library symbolized
Venice's shift toward public cultural access, serving as a Renaissance
hub for preserving Eastern knowledge and fostering intellectual
prestige.
Current Status
Today, the Biblioteca Nazionale
Marciana operates under Italy's Ministry of Cultural Heritage, with
reading rooms and offices in the Zecca since 1904. The original
Sansovino building functions as a museum within the St. Mark's Square
complex, accessible via tickets, showcasing historical rooms, artworks,
and chained books. It holds over 8,000 manuscripts and participates in
national cataloging and digitization, receiving local publisher deposits
but not full national legal deposit status. Preservation efforts,
including those by the Central Institute for Archive and Book Pathology,
ensure its role as a guardian of Venetian and classical heritage.
Since 1797:
Iacopo Morelli (June 1797 – 1819)
Pietro Bettio
(1819 – 1846)
Giuseppe Valentinelli (1846 – 1874)
Giovanni Veludo
(1874 – 1884)
Carlo Castellani (1884 – 1897)
Solomon Morpurgo
(1898 – 1905)
Giuliano Bonazzi (1905)
Carlo Frati (December 1905 –
July 1913)
Giulio Coggiola (1913 – September 1919)
Ester
Pastorello (regent) (September 1919 – November 1920)
Luigi Ferrari
(December 1920 – July 1948)
Pietro Zorzanello (1948 – 1951)
Tullia
Gasparrini Leporace (1951 – 1969)
Giorgio Emanuele Ferrari (1969 –
1973)
Eugenia Govi (1973 – 1976)
Gian Albino Ravalli Modoni (1976
– 1989)
Marino Zorzi (1989 – November 30, 2007)
Roberto Di Carlo
(regent) (December 2007 – April 2008)
Maria Letizia Sebastiani (May
2008 – February 2012)
Maurizio Messina (February 2012 – 31 July 2018)
Stefano Campagnolo (September 4, 2018 – present)
Jacopo Sansovino is called to build an important building which has
the heavy task of marking a strong sign in the square, also designed by
him but also that of not diminishing its meaning and value: it must also
dialogue with the pre-existing structures.
The project is
remarkable, the structure important. The decoration forms the basis of
the library, built on two floors. The architectural order, which
significantly defines the decoration of the building, is superimposed,
that is to say that we find on the ground floor a rich three-dimensional
Tuscan leaning against the pillars (in the Roman style) with evident
triglyphs and metopes and on the upper floor the Ionic . An example of
great innovation are the very compact serliane which characterize the
building on the first floor.
The decorative enrichment of the
library is embellished with sculptural works (do not forget that
Sansovino himself was a sculptor and in this case puts his skills to
good use). Festoons of fruit, a large cornice with important statues in
correspondence with the columns characterize the evident Renaissance
crowning. For the first time we notice the emptying of the parapets
right on the crown, an absolute novelty for the library.
In
addition to innovation, everything is designed with reference to Roman
models, such as the festoons that were used in Roman funerary works.
Palladio defines the library as "the richest and most ornate
building ever built by the ancients up to now".
The facade is on
two levels:
the arches on the ground floor are of the Tuscan order.
On them rests a Doric entablature alternating triglyphs and metopes;
on the second level there is an Ionic loggia, dominated in turn by a
rich frieze in which cherubs and festoons of flowers and fruit follow
one another. In the soffits, a rich sculptural decoration. On the top, a
balustrade surmounted by statues of classical deities, works by
Alessandro Vittoria, Tommaso Minio, Tommaso and Girolamo Lombardo,
Danese Cattaneo and Bartolomeo Ammannati (the latter are attributed the
six reclining rivers closest to Sansovino's Loggetta and the god
Phanes).
In the facade, light and chiaroscuro, the voids prevail
over the solids. It is a multipurpose organism, whose prospectus on the
square is resolved with a double order of arches with a Roman character,
inspired by the Teatro di Marcello and the Sangallesque projects for the
courtyard of Palazzo Farnese, but the alterations of the proportions
denounce a desire for interpretation that goes beyond academic citation.
The first order, portico, takes up the double Roman system of columns
supporting the architrave and pillars supporting the arches, and the
second (here the Mannerist derogation prevails) which has discontinuous
balustrades, columns supporting a very rich frieze and serliane so
contracted nullify their value as three-mullioned windows.
Bessarion had made the placing of the books in a worthy location as a
condition. But the Serenissima took a long time to fulfill this
condition. The library was first located in a building on the Riva degli
Schiavoni, then in San Marco and finally in the Doge's Palace.
Only in 1537 was the construction of the Palazzo della Libreria started,
located in Piazza San Marco and designed by Jacopo Sansovino.
In
1545 the ceiling of the reading room collapsed and Sansovino found
himself in prison. Thanks to the recommendations of influential friends,
however, he was soon released and was able to resume the work, but he
had to repay the damage with his own money. The library moved to the old
library in 1553. The building, however, was only completed in 1588 by
Vincenzo Scamozzi, who had taken over the direction of the work after
Sansovino's death in 1570.
Among others, Titian, Paolo Veronese,
Alessandro Vittoria, Battista Franco, Giuseppe Porta, Bartolomeo
Ammannati, Giovanni Demio and Tintoretto contributed to its decoration.
The Marciana National Library specializes in classical philology and
the history of Venice. His library holdings include:
Approximately
1,000,000 printed volumes
2,887 incunabula
13,117 manuscripts
24,060 sixteenth century
The most important specimens from the
end of the Marciana are the two most illustrious codices of the Iliad,
Homerus Venetus A (10th century) and Homerus Venetus B (11th century).
Also worthy of mention are Fra Paolino's Chronologia magna, a
manuscript of Pliny's Naturalis historia, copied for Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola in 1481, a copy of the first book printed in Venice, Cicero's
Epistulae ad familiaris of 1481 and four consilia manuscripts from
Bartolomeo Capodivacca in the fourteenth century. There are also the
Gesta Berengarii Imperatoris. Also very important is the "Grimani
Breviary", an important Flemish Miniato code donated by Cardinal Grimani
in the early sixteenth century.
The library also houses 56
volumes of diaries by Marin Sanudo, one of the most important sources of
Venetian history between 1496 and 1533. A particular treasure of the
library is a complete collection of the Aldines.
The library also
has a remarkable collection of maps and atlases, both historical and
current. The mappa mundi by Fra Mauro (1459) and the map of the city of
Venice by Jacopo de' Barbari (1500) stand out. Since 1996, the Library's
assets have been the subject of a series of bibliographic recovery,
reproduction, digitization and cataloging interventions. Some of these
interventions were also carried out thanks to funds from the Lotto game,
on the basis of the provisions of law 662/96.