Traces of an «antica ed importante» library: the library of the Marquis Raffaelli di Cingoli

Abstract

The rare books collection of the Faculty of Law of Cagliari preserves about 60 sixteenth- and seventeenth-century editions showing the mark of ownership «ex libris Bibliothecę Raphaelię», placed normally after the title page. This is the largest number of editions with an ex libris (already sporadically found in some others volumes), mainly of legal interest, belonging to several private collections of contemporary scholars and bibliophiles. The ex libris refers to the library of the Marquis Raffaelli of Cingoli that in 1915 was sold at auction by the antiquarian bookseller Rossi of Rome, and was therefore dispersed. Based on a documentary research, the essay illustrates the most relevant episodes in the history of the library which, at the end of the eighteenth century, stood out in the context of the Marche cultural institutions and whose destiny is intertwined with some prominent figures in the panorama of the early twentieth century antiquarian trade. These ones include Ildebrando Rossi son and heir Dario Giuseppe, who bought the library from the Raffaelli family in 1913 and produced a partial sales catalog; Cesare Olschki who was in those years opening a branch of the Florentine bookshop in Rome and who in Ildebrando would find a guide for starting his own business; Attilio Nardecchia from which, in 1916, the volumes, now in the Faculty of Law of Cagliari, were acquired. The protagonist of this acquisition was Filippo Vassalli, professor of Roman law at the University of Cagliari, as part of a policy of developing the library of the institution, in turn animated by the conviction of the centrality of university libraries in the Italian library system.