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35-471: The Ambrosian Iliad or Ilias Picta (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana , Cod. F. 205 Inf.) is a 5th-century illuminated manuscript on vellum, which depicts the entirety of Homer's Iliad , including battle scenes and noble scenes. It is considered unique due to being the only set of ancient illustrations that depict scenes from the Iliad. The Ambrosian Iliad consists of 52 miniatures, each labeled numerically. It

70-413: A Siculo-Calabrian codex of Homeric texts. Comparisons of texts per page to other late antique manuscripts ( Vatican Vergil , Vienna Genesis ) has led some to speculate these miniatures were originally part of a large manuscript. This manuscript was unlike other illuminated manuscripts in its lack of gilding . Instead, the author(s) chose yellow ochre to represent gold within the individual images, i.e.

105-528: A bulwark of Catholic scholarship in the service of the Counter-Reformation against the treatises issuing from Protestant presses. To house the cardinal's 15,000 manuscripts and twice that many printed books, construction began in 1603 under designs and direction of Lelio Buzzi and Francesco Maria Richini . When its first reading room, the Sala Fredericiana , opened to the public on 8 December 1609 it

140-438: A side, when viewed in sequence demonstrate basic principles of geometry . It is believed that these tiles were arranged so as to be visible under the furniture originally planned; but this furniture was later changed to increase the number of reading desks in the room. In the ricetto , critics have noted that the recessed columns in the vestibule make the walls resemble taut skin stretched between vertical supports. This caused

175-533: A unique 11th-century diwan of poets, and the oldest copy of the Kitab Sibawahaihi . The library has a college of Doctors, similar to the scriptors of the Vatican Library. Among prominent figures have been Giuseppe Ripamonti , Ludovico Antonio Muratori , Giuseppe Antonio Sassi , Cardinal Angelo Mai and, at the beginning of the 20th century, Antonio Maria Ceriani , Achille Ratti (on 8 November 1888),

210-444: Is heightened by the unorthodox forms of the windows and, especially, by the compressed quality of all architectural elements, which creates a sense of tension and constrained energy. The use of the classical orders in the space is particularly significant. The recessed columns superficially appear to be of the austere and undecorated Doric order, typically considered to have a more masculine character. The Doric order would be placed at

245-530: Is thought to have been created in Alexandria , given the flattened and angular Hellenistic figures, which are considered typical of Alexandrian art in late antiquity , in approximately 500 AD, possibly by multiple artists. The author(s) first drew the figures nude and then painted the clothes on, much like in Greek vase painting . In the 11th century, the miniatures were cut out of the original manuscript and pasted into

280-672: The Codex Atlanticus . The library now contains some 12,000 drawings by European artists, from the 14th through the 19th centuries, which have come from the collections of a wide range of patrons and artists, academicians, collectors, art dealers, and architects. Prized manuscripts, including the Leonardo codices, were requisitioned by the French during the Napoleonic occupation, and only partly returned after 1815. In particular, Leonardo's aerial screw

315-582: The Codex Amiatinus , the Squarcialupi Codex , and the fragmentary Erinna papyrus that contains part of her Distaff . The Laurentian Library was commissioned in 1523 and construction began in 1525; however, when Michelangelo left Florence in 1534, only the walls of the reading room were complete. It was then continued by Tribolo , Vasari , and Ammannati based on plans and verbal instructions from Michelangelo. The library opened by 1571. In this way,

350-716: The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database . Biblioteca Ambrosiana The Biblioteca Ambrosiana is a historic library in Milan , Italy , also housing the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana , the Ambrosian art gallery. Named after Ambrose , the patron saint of Milan, it was founded in 1609 by Cardinal Federico Borromeo , whose agents scoured Western Europe and even Greece and Syria for books and manuscripts. Some major acquisitions of complete libraries were

385-545: The ricetto , is 10.50 m long, 10.50 m wide, and 14.6 m tall (34.5 by 34.5 by 48 feet). It was built above existing monastic quarters on the east range of the cloister, with an entrance from the upper level of the cloisters. Originally, Michelangelo planned for a skylight, but Clement VII believed that it would cause the roof to leak, so clerestory windows were incorporated into the west wall. Blank tapering windows—framed in pietra serena , surmounted by either triangular or segmental pediments, and separated by paired columns set into

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420-656: The Pinacoteca Ambrosiana includes Leonardo da Vinci's Portrait of a Musician , Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit , Bramantino's Adoration of the Christ Child and Raphael's cartoon of " The School of Athens ". Laurentian Library All of the book-bound manuscripts in the library are identified in its Codex Laurentianus . The library conserves the Nahuatl Florentine Codex , the Rabula Gospels ,

455-433: The addition of the library. Because of this, certain features of Michelangelo's plan, such as length and width, were already determined. Therefore, new walls were built on pre-existing walls and cloisters . Because the walls were built on pre-existing walls, recessing the columns into the walls was a structural necessity. This led to a unique style and pattern that Michelangelo took advantage of. The vestibule, also known as

490-632: The base in a hierarchy of orders, as found in Roman buildings such as the Colosseum, with the Ionic, Composite, and Corinthian being progressively lighter and more decorative and feminine. However, closer examination establishes that the Composite order is used, but with the characteristic decorative acanthus leaves and diagonal volutes of the capitals stripped off, leaving the top of the column denuded. In architectural terms,

525-418: The best of his abilities using a small clay model, scanty material, and Michelangelo's instructions. The staircase leads up to the reading room and takes up half of the floor of the vestibule. The treads of the centre flights are convex and vary in width, while the outer flights are straight. The three lowest steps of the central flight are wider and higher than the others, almost like concentric oval slabs. As

560-544: The ceiling, and the fine entrance of the Vestibule can never be sufficiently extolled. Boldness and grace are equally conspicuous in the work as a whole, and in every part; in the cornices, corbels, the niches for statues, the commodious staircase, and its fanciful division, in all the building, as a word, which is so unlike the common fashion of treatment, that every one stands amazed at the sight thereof. – Giorgio Vasari. The two-story quattrocento cloister remained unchanged by

595-510: The collection were made by its most famous librarian, Angelo Maria Bandini , who was appointed in 1757 and oversaw its printed catalogues. The Laurentian Library houses approximately 11,000 manuscripts, 2,500 papyri, 43 ostraca, 566 incunabula, 1,681 sixteenth-century prints, and 126,527 prints of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. The core collection consists of approximately 3,000 manuscripts, indexed by Giovanni Rondinelli and Baccio Valori in 1589, which were placed on parapets ( plutei ) at

630-591: The future Pope Pius XI , and Giovanni Mercati . Ratti wrote a new edition of the Acta Ecclesiae Mediolanensis ("Acts of the Church of Milan"), Latin work firstly published by the cardinal Federico Borromeo in 1582 . The building was damaged in World War II , with the loss of the archives of opera libretti of La Scala , but was restored in 1952 and underwent major restorations in 1990–97. Artwork at

665-460: The gold cuirasses of noble figures, and the halo of Zeus ( folios XXXIV). Cardinal Angelo Mai , librarian of the Ambrosiana in the early 1800s, became convinced that the manuscript was from the 3rd century, and therefore philologically extremely important. He labelled the miniatures, and applied harsh chemicals to the manuscript in an attempt to improve the legibility of the text. His actions caused

700-540: The layout of the ceiling and floor. Because the reading room was built upon an existing story, Michelangelo had to reduce the weight of the reading-room walls. The system of frames and layers in the wall articulation reduced the volume and weight of the bays between the pilasters. Beneath the current wooden floor of the library in the Reading Room is a series of 15 rectangular red and white terra cotta floor panels. These panels, measuring 8-foot-6-inch (2.59 m) on

735-470: The library integrates parts executed by Michelangelo with others built much later in an interpretation of his instructions. The Laurentian Library is one of Michelangelo's most important architectural achievements. Even Michelangelo's contemporaries realized that the innovations and use of space in the Laurentian Library were revolutionary. The admirable distribution of the windows, the construction of

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770-520: The library of the Dominican convent of San Marco . The library conserves the Nahuatl Florentine Codex , the major source of pre-conquest information about Aztec life in the western hemisphere. Among other well-known manuscripts in the Laurentian Library are the sixth-century Syriac Rabula Gospels ; the Codex Amiatinus that contains the earliest surviving manuscript of the Latin Vulgate Bible ;

805-578: The library on 14 September 1840 but was disappointed by the tight security occasioned by the recent attempted theft of "some of the relics of Petrarch" housed there. Among the 30,000 manuscripts, which range from Greek and Latin to Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopian, Turkish and Persian, is the Muratorian fragment , of ca 170 A.D., the earliest example of a Biblical canon and an original copy of De divina proportione by Luca Pacioli . Among Christian and Islamic Arabic manuscripts are treatises on medicine,

840-536: The library's opening in 1571. These manuscripts have the signature Pluteus or Pluteo ( Plut. ). These manuscripts include the library the Medici collected during the fifteenth century, which were re-acquired by Giovanni di Medici ( Pope Leo X ) in 1508 and moved to Florence in the 1520s by Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici ( Pope Clement VII ). The Medici library was enlarged by collections assembled by Francesco Sassetti and Francesco Filelfo, manuscripts acquired by Leo X, and by

875-678: The manuscripts of the Benedictine monastery of Bobbio (1606) and the library of the Paduan Vincenzo Pinelli , whose more than 800 manuscripts filled 70 cases when they were sent to Milan and included the famous Iliad , the Ilias Picta . During Cardinal Borromeo's sojourns in Rome, 1585–95 and 1597–1601, he envisioned developing this library in Milan as one open to scholars and that would serve as

910-648: The miniatures' colors to bleed through the pages and left them in the damaged state they are in today. Today the Ambrosian Iliad is held in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan , Lombardy , Italy , which is also the manuscript's namesake. It was purchased from Genoese collector Gian Vincenzo Pinelli 's library and added, by the famed Cardinal Federico Borromeo , to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana on 14 June 1608. The manuscript's images can be viewed on

945-435: The removal is an act of violence that is unprecedented in mannerism, and a sophistication that would not have escaped contemporary observers. The dynamic sculpture of the staircase appears to pour forth like lava from the upper level and reduces the floor space of the vestibule in a highly unusual way. In the central flight, the convex treads vary in width, which makes the entire arrangement disquieting. In sharp contrast to

980-481: The room to appear as if it mimics the human body, which at the time of the Italian Renaissance was believed to be the ideal form. The columns of the building also appear to be supported on corbels so that the weight seems to be carried on weak elements. Because of the seeming instability of the structure, the viewer cannot discern whether the roof is supported by the columns or the walls. This sense of ambiguity

1015-524: The space. Borromeo intended an academy (which opened in 1625) and a collection of pictures, for which a new building was initiated in 1611–18 to house the Cardinal's paintings and drawings, the nucleus of the Pinacoteca. Cardinal Borromeo gave his collection of paintings and drawings to the library, too. Shortly after the cardinal's death, his library acquired twelve manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci , including

1050-420: The stairs changed dramatically in the design phase. Originally in the first design in 1524, two flights of stairs were placed against the side walls and formed a bridge in front of the reading room door. A year later, the stairway was moved to the middle of the vestibule. Tribolo attempted to carry out this plan in 1550, but nothing was built. Ammannati took on the challenge of interpreting Michelangelo's ideas to

1085-420: The stairway descends, it divides into three flights. The reading room is 46.20 m. long, 10.50 m. wide, and 8.4 m. high (152 by 35 by 28 feet). There are two blocks of seats separated by a centre aisle with the backs of each seat serving as desks for the benches behind them. The desks are lit by the evenly spaced windows along the wall. The windows are framed by pilasters, forming a system of bays that articulate

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1120-446: The vestibule and staircase, the reading room's evenly spaced windows set between pilasters in the side walls let in copious amounts of natural light and create a serene, quiet, and restful appearance. Mark Rothko stated that the vestibule and the walls in the staircase of the library influenced his 1959 Seagram murals . In 1571, Cosimo I , Grand Duke of Tuscany, opened the still-incomplete library to scholars. Notable additions to

1155-452: The wall—circumscribe the interior of the vestibule. Lit by windows in bays that are articulated by pilasters corresponding to the beams of the ceiling, with a tall constricted vestibule (executed to Michelangelo's design in 1559 by Bartolomeo Ammannati ) that is filled with a stair that flows up to (and down from) the entrance to the reading room, the library is often mentioned as a prototype of Mannerism in architecture. The plan of

1190-494: Was one of the earliest public libraries . One innovation was that its books were housed in cases ranged along the walls, rather than chained to reading tables, the latter a medieval practice seen still today in the Laurentian Library of Florence . A printing press was attached to the library, and a school for instruction in the classical languages. Constant acquisitions, soon augmented by bequests, required enlargement of

1225-562: Was taken and is still in the Institut de France in Paris. On 15 October 1816 the Romantic poet Lord Byron visited the library. He was delighted by the letters between Lucrezia Borgia and Pietro Bembo ("The prettiest love letters in the world" ) and claimed to have managed to steal a lock of her hair ("the prettiest and fairest imaginable." ) held on display. The novelist Mary Shelley visited

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