Handwritten indexes, notes and jottings, bindings

Handwritten indexes

The interest that an owner takes in his library is not only expressed in the careful choice of editions and authors, in their systematic arrangement on the shelves so that they are easy to find and can be preserved in the best way without bending and crumpling, but also in the interest given to these same volumes, which are treated, read and annotated with care and precision, as evidenced by the notes and indexes written by the hand of the Prefect himself.

In fact, many books in the Library are miscellanies, that is, they consist of several works by different authors, published and written in different eras, but linked together to form a single volume even if perhaps of a different format. In order to facilitate identification, Giovanni Marsili drew up lists of all the miscellanea, precisely indicating their contents.

Notes and jottings

Often on the front boards, or on the title pages of the volumes, Marsili also wrote – in his own hand in Latin, French or English – explanatory notes of a biographical nature, quotations from other texts, indications of responsibility for the work, critical comments ... and all the information that he considered it useful to keep for easier reading and to better understand their contents, including the indication that the volume was a gift of the Author. You can view a small sample below.

Bindings

The bindings of the Prefect’s Library are of various types: ranging from paper, to parchment, to leather, to covered boards; it is difficult to recognize the authors because many of the volumes were acquired pre-bound from the bookseller also abroad. For others, it was the Prefect himself who provided the bindings, simple but of excellent workmanship and decidedly inexpensive: they are cardboard ligatures, typical of scholarly libraries, characterized by the presence of two or more (depending on the format) looped filaments in tawed leather, generally with endpapers and front boards that bear on the back the title of the work or works contained therein, traced by the very hand of Marsili, whose handwriting is perfectly recognizable.