Drawings and prints

Description

The Palatina Library preserves an extraordinarily rich heritage of graphic materials, mainly gathered in three collections.

Vegetables collection

During the very long direction of the Palatina Library by Angelo Pezzana, from 1804 to 1862, the first and most substantial acquisition of graphic documents for the Library was recorded. The sovereign resolution ratifying the transfer of Massimiliano Ortalli’s print collection to the Ducal Library was dated 23 April 1828. Purchased in 1827 by the then director of the Academy of Fine Arts Paolo Toschi for 45,000 new lire, the Collection was sold by him the following year, under the same conditions and with the agreement of Massimiliano Ortalli, to Maria Luigia, Duchess of Parma, who did not leave it in the Academy, but deposited it in the Library. The sovereign, by allocating it for public use, made the idea prevail that it should serve the greatest possible number of citizens, and not exclusively artists, as would have happened if it had remained the property of the Academy alone. With the acquisition of the important collection of prints in the Parma institute, a public collection of graphics was established; it enjoyed the constant interest of the government authorities, who requested and urged its cataloguing.
The exceptional richness of the collection and its classification and ordering criteria make it an extraordinary study tool. A great didactic value, therefore, combined with an antiquarian and aesthetic value, which resides in the corpus, excellent in number, not in the quality of the single work. In a collection of prints by masters of every school, such as the Ortalliana, one cannot and must not underline the presence of single sheets, of engravings by famous engravers, who are nevertheless present in great numbers. From the first nielli to Antonio Pollaiolo, from Dürer to Luca di Leida and Marcantonio Raimondi, from Parmigianino to Salvator Rosa, Jacques Callot, Rembrandt and Tiepolo, on the supports of the large in folio volumes , the documents are compared – different states, copies, variants – one next to the other, famous intaglios of invention together with a copious amount of translations. Gathered by Ortalli’s passion for collecting, guided by a desire for systematicity and philological curiosity, the graphic corpus preserves intact its value as a documentation of the history of painting and the evolution of the art of engraving.

Ortalli Print List

Parma Fund

The Balestra collection, purchased in 1838, will instead constitute, with its 1067 pieces, the initial nucleus of the Parmense Fund, later integrated with various subsequent purchases, and still open. The aim pursued by Angelo Pezzana is the very clear one of integrating the Ortalli collection, evidently considered the main one, with missing engravings or with better preserved and less cut duplicates.

Palatine Fund

In 1865, when the Bourbon library in Lucca was acquired, the Palatine Fund entered, consisting of 379 engravings and 330 lithographs.

Finally, we should mention the Micheli Mariotti Fund, the Portrait Collection and, lastly, the Mossini donation , 36 engravings donated to the library by the artist from Parma Ettore Mossini in 1997.

Catalogues

Manuscript catalogue

Printed catalogues