Library Services Cicognara
The Library Services Cicognara 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 we receive the notice of your availability via email, you will go to Library Services Central for your enquiry.
The Library Services 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, there is the issue which allows the microfiche to be located in the collection as a whole.
In the Unika you can search by author or degree scroll 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 Services which was acquired by the Vatican Library Services in 1824, under the pontificate of Leo XII, constituting the Cicognara Collection. In 1821 Cicognara himself had published a catalogue raisonné of his Library Services (Catalogue of books of art and antiquities held by Count Cicognara), which has become an irreplaceable guide of the sources of art history from antiquity to the beginning of the 19th century.
In 1989, the Library Services of the University of Illinois, at partnership with the Library Services Vatican, started a project microfilming of the Library Services Cicognara, which has not yet been completed.
More information on Library Services Cicognara.