Description
Parma Fund
The Parmense Fund undoubtedly constitutes the most conspicuous set of collections of the Library, being the historical memory of the increase of the bibliographic, manuscript and printed, as well as documentary and artistic heritage of the Library since its institution. With this term in fact we indicate, independently of the different locations attributed over time, all the acquisitions that entered the Institute by free choice of the librarians who have succeeded one another over the centuries, starting from the initial heritage, the result of the activity, research, and intellectual foresight of Paolo Maria Paciaudi.
Of this initial nucleus, one cannot fail to mention the Spanish collection of the “Siglo de oro”: the collection of works by Lope de Vega and Comedias de diferentes autores. The first is composed of 47 volumes containing 124 manuscript works and 267 printed works, the second of 87 volumes containing 800 texts, some of which are still to be attributed with certainty.
Paciaudi’s successor, Ireneo Affò, historian and man of letters, although with fewer economic resources, managed to acquire the library of the surgeon Antonio Galli, the Gridario degli Stati parmensi and other books including testimonies of homeland things by Captain Giuseppe Ferrari. But it is in particular during the very long direction of Angelo Pezzana, from 1804 to 1862, that numerous organic collections were acquired by the Library. Just to name a few: a first collection of 200 Bodoni printed works, which will be enriched, starting from 1843, by the Bodoni legacy, including letters, punches and matrices; the funds of suppressed monasteries, called conventual funds; the fundamental Library of Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, professor of oriental languages in the theological faculty of the University of Parma from 1769 to 1821.
We must also remember the collections of manuscripts and printed books of the scholar Michele Colombo and his student Giovanni Bonaventura Porta, and the library of the erudite and scholar of the Italian language Bartolomeo Gamba (which were however dispersed in several locations). And it is necessary to mention the fact that, since the end of 1814, the Library enjoyed the right to 2 copies of what was printed in Parma and Guastalla.
Two other large collections entered the Library in the 19th century. In 1828, Queen Maria Luigia purchased the Ortalli collection of prints and drawings from the engraver and painter Paolo Toschi, to donate to the Library. The collection included 40,000 engravings that bear witness to German, Italian, Flemish and French art from the 15th to the 19th centuries. This corpus of engravings was later joined by nine volumes of French portraits collected by Pietro Antonio Martini, and the 1067 pieces of the Balestra Collection.
Palatine Fund
The most significant increase occurred with the acquisition, desired by the Italian government in 1865, of the Palatine Fund, which still maintains this name. It was the private library of the Bourbon-Parma dukes, comprising 1034 manuscripts, many of which were illuminated, of Italian, French and Flemish origin, 349 incunabula, and approximately thirty thousand volumes from the 16th to 19th centuries.
Also of notable interest is the collection of Erudite Miscellanies (in folio, in 4°, in 8°), a collection of pamphlets printed mainly in the Duchy, from the 16th to the 19th century.
Ferrarini Fund
Moving on to other funds acquired in more recent times, it is necessary to mention the Ferrarini Fund, bequest of Mario Ferrarini, musicologist and scholar of dramatic literature, and the Mansueto Tarchioni Fund.
Micheli-Mariotti Archive and Library
Of particular note, finally, is the Micheli-Mariotti Archive and Library. The collections belonging to this fund are the result of the merger of the libraries and personal archives of Giuseppe Micheli, deputy, senator and minister, and of his uncle Giovanni Mariotti, mayor of Parma for a long time and also a deputy and senator.
The Micheli-Mariotti, with its minor archival corpora (Mistrali, Strobel, Mazza, Dal Prato, etc.), does not constitute the only fund of archival and documentary materials of the Library: among others, we can mention the Paciaudi, Pezzana, Affò papers, and the Moreau de Saint-Méry fund.
Mixed Fund
Finally, it should be remembered that in addition to the Parma and Palatine manuscripts, the Library conserves a third collection, called Mixed, which is less known and less conspicuous than the other two, and which contains approximately four hundred codices. The collection was established on the initiative of Angelo Ciavarella, director of the Library from 1957 to 1973, who gathered together in a single group manuscripts not belonging to the two main collections.
The modern songbook collection consists of a series of loose sheets, on which are printed stories in verse, generally with dramatic or passionate subjects, and was edited by the Parma dialect poet Alfredo Zerbini.
Finally, we must remember the donation of the industrialist Pietro Barilla: Maria Luigia’s personal library, consisting of 512 volumes (of historical, literary and travel literature), and also including 184 letters.