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The exhibition Bibliotheca Artis, Treasures from the Library of the Museo del Prado opens to the public on 5 October in Room D of the new extension.
Through 40 items from the Library and 8 paintings from the Prado’s collection,
it aims to draw attention to the important holding of early books that the Library has built up over the past few years.
In addition, it will emphasise the close links that exist between this collection and that of the Museum’s paintings.
The first section of the exhibition has the same name as that of the exhibition as a whole, “Bibliotheca Artis”.
It focuses on the principal theoretical treatises written in Europe in the early modern age,
with a first section devoted to the Italian Renaissance
that includes the great works of Alberti, Leonardo, Dürer and Vasari.
A second section looks at the contribution made by the Spanish Golden Age to Baroque
art theory and includes some very important, little known items including recently rediscovered manuscripts such as the one by Felipe de Guevara.
It also features an extremely rare leaflet by Velázquez’s father-in-law Pacheco with manuscript annotations in his hand
as well as one of the copperplates used for the illustrations of Palomino’s celebrated Museo pictórico.
The second section is entitled “Bibliotheca architecturae” and, as its name suggests, focuses on architectural treatises.
It includes a significant section again devoted to the Italian Renaissance,
with major texts by Palladio, Serlio and Vignola as well as the most important editions of the architectural treatise written by Vitruvius, the 1st-century BC Roman architect.
An area at the end of this section displays various French treatises such as the one by De L’Orme,
a German text in the form of Dietterlin’s treatise and various Spanish texts including one by Caramuel.
Also to be seen here are three important books of temporary decorations for public celebrations, interpreted as architectural texts
given that their importance lies in the fact that they record now lost ephemeral structures.
Finally, the third section of the exhibition, entitled “Bibliotheca imaginis”,
looks at the visual sources needed by artists to produce their own compositions
throughout the Renaissance and Baroque. It is divided into four sub-sections:
the first on drawing manuals, with rare Italian and Spanish examples; the second on the world of the portrait, including the major repertories of images
used by painters as sources for their own portraits; and the third on the textual sources that were so essential to painters,
with examples of emblem books, a fine edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the first illustrated edition of Ripa’s Iconology.
A small, fourth, section featuring only two works reveals the importance
of the role of the book in the international dissemination of single paintings and of the great European art collections.