The Biblioteca Aprosiana is the civic library of the city of Ventimiglia. It was the first public library to be opened in Liguria and one of the oldest in Italy.
History[edit]
Founded in 1648 by Angelico Aprosio, it was initially based in the convent of the Augustinians of Ventimiglia, to whose order Aprosio himself belonged.[1] In 1653 it was officially recognized by Pope Innocent X, who, aware of the importance of the library, tried to safeguard its contents through a special provision which threatened with excommunication anyone who traded or otherwise removed books from it.[2]
During the Seven Years' War, the Augustinian convent of Ventimiglia suffered serious damage and looting. At the end of the 1790s the Napoleonic invasion caused the loss of part of the bibliographic heritage, which was sold to some important Ligurian families (including the Durazzo family) or merged into various Genoese libraries.[3]
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the library came to be administered by the Municipality of Ventimiglia, which transferred all the surviving material it contained to various buildings in the upper city: first to the Church of San Francesco, then to an adjacent building, and finally, following of the earthquake of 1887 and thanks to the active contribution of Thomas Hanbury, in the then Civico Teatro (also known as the "Lascaris Theatre").[4]
Current consistency[edit]
Currently, thanks also to the work carried out in recent decades by some particularly active and capable librarians, the library hosts a collection of approximately twenty-six thousand volumes, of which over seven thousand belong to the so-called Ancient Fund.[5] To these must be added almost two hundred incunabula and manuscripts, some of which are of exceptional historical value (among which it is necessary to mention a variant, unique in its kind, of the Obras by Luis de Góngora),[6] as well as a picture gallery of around ten portraits (among which that of Aprosio himself, executed by Carlo Ridolfi in 1647).[5]
Notes[edit]
- ^ Asor-Rosa, Alberto (1961). "APROSIO, Angelico, detto il Ventimiglia". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 3: Ammirato–Arcoleo (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.
- ^ Autori vari, La Letteratura italiana vol. 9, Parte I (Critica e trattatistica del Barocco di Franco Croce), Milano, Edizione speciale per il Corriere della Sera, R.C.S. Quotidiani S.p.A., 2005 (Titolo dell'opera originale: Natalino Sapegno ed Emilio Cecchi (diretta da) Storia della letteratura italiana, Garzanti Grandi opere, Milano 2001 e De Agostini Editore, Novara 2005), pag. 31
- ^ Aprosiana (1981), p. 22.
- ^ Aprosiana (1981), p. 24.
- ^ a b "Oggi l'inaugurazione dell'Antica Aprosiana". La Stampa (in Italian). July 5, 2017.
- ^ Damonte, Mario (1996). "Un Manuscrito Gongorino desconocido en la Biblioteca Aprosiana de Ventimilla". Tra Spagna e Liguria: 336–350.
Bibliography[edit]
- Una biblioteca pubblica del Seicento l'Aprosiana di Ventimiglia. Mostra di alcune edizioni rare del Fondo aprosiano, 26 settembre-11 ottobre 1981. Città di Ventimiglia, Civica biblioteca aprosiana. 1981.
- Il gran secolo di Angelico Aprosio. Atti delle conversazioni aprosiane (29 agosto-29 ottobre 1981). Sanremo, Casino Municipale, 1981.
- Fondo antico spagnolo della Biblieteca Aprosiana di Ventimiglia (M. Damonte, A.M. Mignone eds.), Pisa, Giardini, 1984.
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