Cicognara Library
The Cicognara Library consists of more than 5,000 works on painting, sculpture and architecture and their relationship with literature, music, Philosophy and other branches of knowledge, from antiquity to the beginning of the 19th century.
It also includes biographies of artists and poets, treatises and manuals on the various arts, programs of study on emblems, funerary rites, numismatics, Greek and Roman antiquities, architectural dictionaries, etc.
How to consult the collection
The microfiches will be requested through Unika. Once the notice of your availability has been received via e-mail, it will be sent to Main Library to consult.
The Library has a microfiche reader that can be used to consult the collection.
How to search in Unika
All the microfiches have the call number MF.m.Z.000.031. In each record, after the call number, the issue is included to locate the microfiche in the whole collection.
At Unika you can search by author or title for each of the works.
Leopoldo Cicognara
Leopoldo Cicognara (1767-1834), born in Ferrara of a noble family, was an Italian poet, patron and collector and one of the first art historians. He held various political and diplomatic posts and was also president of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice from 1808 to 1827.
He owned a magnificent Library which was acquired by the Vatican Library in 1824, under the pontificate of Leo XII, constituting the Cicognara Collection. Cicognara himself had published in 1821 a reasoned Catalog of his Library (Catalogue ragionato dei libri d'arte e d'antichità posseduti dal Conte Cicognara), which has become an irreplaceable guide of art history sources from antiquity to the beginning of the 19th century.
In 1989, the Library of the University of Illinois, at partnership with the Vatican Library, started a project microfilming of the Cicognara Library, which has not yet been completed.
More information on Cicognara Library.