This issue’s bookplate was created for the Library of Count Vincenzo Ferdinando Antonio Ranuzzi, an Italian nobleman born in 1658, the son of Count Annibale Ranuzzi (1625-1697) and Dorotea Cospi. Through family relations Vincenzo was introduced to the Court of the Florentine Grand Duke Cosimo III de Medici at a very early age. In 1666 the grand duke invested him as a knight of St. Stephen, and in 1671 he was appointed a page to Prince Ferdinand, son of the Grand Duke Cosimo III. He was to remain at the court of the Medici, except for brief intervals, until he succeeded his brother as senator and head of the family in 1707.

            At the court of the Medici he received a broad education in history, literature, science, French, and Latin. He also benefited from contact with famous and learned men who were at the service of the Medicis. As he states in his Memorie in a chapter entitled “Primer diletto in raccoglier manoscritti” (First Pleasures of Collecting Manuscripts),¹ he began collecting manuscripts during the early years of his residence in Florence. Most of the manuscripts concerning the history of Tuscany and the Medicis were acquired during that period as well as some prose and poetry dedicated to the Medicis.

            After his return to Bologna he increased the holdings of his Library by the acquisition of the collection of Antonio Francesco Ghiselli (1670-1730), canon of S. Petronio in Bologna, which consisted of a large number of manuscripts about the history of Bologna. He also inherited the library of his brother, which included some rare medical manuscripts of the fifteenth century. Another addition to Count Ranuzzi’s Library was that of the papers of his uncle, Cardinal Angelo Ranuzzi (1626-1689), legate in Poland and France. These papers dealt with the history of the church. In addition, Gian Francesco Negri, a Bolognese historian and architect, gave Count Ranuzzi some of the original chronicles of Bologna of the fifteenth century and other historical documents.

            When Count Vincenzo Ranuzzi died in 1726, the Library was inherited by his son Marc’ Antonio. As a scholar on Roman law he added some manuscripts on this subject, in addition to ones on literature and poetry.

            The Library, which also included books, maps, engravings, woodcuts, and some printed material bound with the manuscripts, remained in the family for over a hundred years until, in 1847, due to the decline of the family fortunes with the French occupation in 1797, about 800 volumes of manuscripts were sold to John Payne and Henry Foss.² In London the Ranuzzi collection was disposed of in two sales: 117 volumes were sold to the British Museum and the rest of the collection (approximately 683 volumes) was sold to Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), the famous English private collector.

            In 1968, the portion of the collection owned by the Phillipps was purchased by Lew David Feldman of New York and subsequently sold to the University of Texas at Austin. The Ranuzzi Manuscript Collection now located in the Humanities Research Center consists of 620 volumes of manuscripts with some related print material, engravings, and maps. It is probably one of the most comprehensive collections of Italian manuscript material in the United States, covering a period of four centuries from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, with emphasis on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

            Count Ranuzzi’s bookplate was designed by an unidentified artist during the late seventeenth century. The center of the design is a free interpretation of the Ranuzzi coat of arms that reproduces the plasticity of the stone carved arms seen on the Ranuzzi Palace, rather than the geometric design found on the actual coat of arms. The Historical Encyclopedia of the Italian Nobility³ describes the colors of the coat of arms as follows: on a blue background the central band is gold as are the stars and the sun rays coming from the cloud, which is of a “natural color.” The border is blue, framed by two lines of red. The stars in the frame are gold.

            The two figures holding the coronet frequently appeared in the ornate style of sculpture and painting during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and were common ornaments added to a coat of arms when designed for a special purpose. The coronet indicates the title of nobility given to the Ranuzzi family in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV. The inked-in number represents Count Ranuzzi’s first attempt to catalog his collection. The original plate is about five inches tall.

 Notes

[Originally published in Journal of Library History, vol. 15, no. 1 (Winter 1990): 84-86.]