A monumental work, the Biblioteca di Disegni printed in Florence by Fratelli Alinari, has been donated to the Riccardiana Library.
The valuable volumes, published by Fratelli Alinari, were recently donated to the Riccardiana Library by Commendatore Claudio de Polo Saibanti.
This is a work of remarkable scope and importance: across 28 volumes it gathers no fewer than 1,120 collotype reproductions of drawings from the Italian schools dating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The work was printed in Florence between 1976 and 1981.
The 1,120 reproductions were produced by Fratelli Alinari of Florence using the last machines in the world still operating with the collotype method, a refined artisanal printing technique invented in the mid-nineteenth century. Collotype is a printing process that allows reproductions of exceptionally high quality, with continuous tones and without the use of a halftone screen, making it particularly suitable for fine art prints.
Alongside the reproductions are 28 accompanying volumes containing significant scholarly contributions in Italian and catalogues of the works in English. These were produced by the Stamperia Valdonega of Verona under the supervision of Giovanni and Martino Mardersteig.
With a print run of 325 numbered copies, this publication represents the largest undertaking ever realised using this printing technique.
The work, conceived, supported and brought to completion by Vittorio Cini, is regarded internationally as a landmark for the study of art history: thanks to this publication, approximately 40 per cent of the drawings have been reattributed.
The Directorate of the Library expresses its deepest gratitude to Claudio de Polo Saibanti for this important donation — an act of patronage and exceptional generosity. It also highlights a fruitful connection between Alinari, founded and developed for over a century and a half through private initiative and now a public institution of the Tuscany Region, and the Riccardiana Library of Florence, an institute of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
The Biblioteca di Disegni thus enriches the holdings of the Riccardiana thanks to the generous donation of Claudio de Polo Saibanti — Commendatore of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, an entrepreneur long committed to promoting Italy’s artistic heritage worldwide, President of Fratelli Alinari from 1984 to 2022, founder of the National Museum of the History of Photography in Florence, and above all a passionate and knowledgeable bibliophile.
