Doni, La seconda libraria, Venice, 1555, contemporary wrapper, uncut

DONI, ANTON FRANCESCO. La seconda libraria del Doni. Ristampata novamente con giunta de molti libri. Venice: Francesco Marcolini, 1555

UNCUT COPY of Doni's sequel to his pioneering survey of Italian printed books (for which see previous lot). Though traditionally regarded as a faithful, reliable, and accurate catalogue of published books and of manuscripts (see Besterman, Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography (1935)), more recently the Seconda Libraria has been regarded principally as a document of an "imaginary" or "fictitious" or "artificial" library (see Patrizia Pellizzari, “Anton Francesco Doni et les bibliothèques imaginaires en Italie” in Early Modern Catalogues of Imaginary Books: A Scholarly Anthology (2019), for a resume of the recent literature). Doni pretends to offer an alphabetical inventory of books that he had seen in manuscript and which were not yet printed, but includes many invented authors and imaginary titles.

This copy was once in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in Milan, founded in 1763 from the nucleus of the library of Count Carlo Pertusati. With increasing suppression of religious congregation, the library quickly accumulated volumes from the Society of Jesus and local cloistered libraries. It opened officially to the public on 2 November 1786, with around 80,000 volumes.