Library rooms or Library halls

Abstract

Library Halls, understood as Renaissance and Baroque architectural creations, along with the furnishings and decorations, accomplish a cognitive task and serve to transmit knowledge. The design of these spaces based on the idea that they should reflect the merits and content of the collections housed within them, in order to prepare the mind of the reader to respect and admire the volumes. In accordance with this principle, in the fifteenth century library rooms had a basilican shape, with two or three naves, like churches, reflecting thus the spiritual value of the books contained there. Next to that inspiring function, library rooms had also the task of representing the entire logical and conceptual universe of human knowledge in a figurative way, including for this purpose also the and Kunst- und Wunderkammern, namely the collections of natural, artficial objects, and works of art. The importance of library rooms and their function was understood already in the early decades of the seventeenth century, as underlined in the treatise, Musei sive Bibliothecae tam privatae quam publicae Extructio, Instructio, Cura, Usus, written by the Jesuit Claude Clément and published in 1635. Almost the entire volume is dedicated to the decoration and ornamentation of the Saloni, and the function of the library is identified exclusively with the preservation and decoration of the collection, neglecting more specifically bibliographic aspects or those connected to library science. The architectural structure of the Saloni was destined to change in relation to two factors, namely the form of books, and the sources of light. As a consequence, from the end of the sixteenth century – or perhaps even before if one considers the fragments of the Library of Urbino belonging to Federico da Montefeltro – shelves and cabinets have been placed no longer in the center of the room, but were set against the walls. This new disposition of the furniture, surmounted by windows from which the light was supposed to come, left free space at the centre of the hall, where the desks, statues, globes and astrolabes were placed. A new flourishing of library rooms according to this view was largely due to the genius of Francesco Borromini, who designed and built the Hall of the Library Vallicelliana modeled on the one of the Barberina Library, and then subsequently worked at the Hall of the library of the Sapienza, the Innocenziana and the Pamphilia. Borromini was therfore the main force behind some of the major projects of Saloni of the Baroque, and his architectural solutions became a paradigm for the design of such environments. In the following centuries, many Library Halls were built troughout Europe, increasingly differentiating each other both for the celebratory function of their collections, and for their role as testimony of civilization and culture of the time in which they arose.