Italy

Maria Gaetana Agnesi was an Italian polymath with a heart of gold. Born into a wealthy Milanese family, Agnesi's brilliance was used to entertain family friends and visitors from an early age. She was a child prodigy, speaking 7 languages by the age of 10 and delivering speeches in Latin about the education of women to her father's circle of academics and intellectuals. As the eldest of 21 children, Agnesi was tasked with teaching the others, a responsibility that inspired this book. Finding mathematical textbooks insufficient, Agnesi originally began writing this text for her siblings.

Maria Gaetana Agnesi was an Italian polymath with a heart of gold. Born into a wealthy Milanese family, Agnesi's brilliance was used to entertain family friends and visitors from an early age. She was a child prodigy, speaking 7 languages by the age of 10 and delivering speeches in Latin about the education of women to her father's circle of academics and intellectuals. As the eldest of 21 children, Agnesi was tasked with teaching the others, a responsibility that inspired this book. Finding mathematical textbooks insufficient, Agnesi originally began writing this text for her siblings.

Observations over some Fragments of Ancient Glass Vases Ornamented with Figures Found in Rome Cemeteries is the work of Filippo Buonarroti (Florence, 1661- 1733), an early scholar of Etruscan art and antiquities, studying the collection in the family palazzo-museum, Casa Buonarroti. He made a study of the bottoms of Roman gold glass vessels that were used as grave markers on the walls around the burial niches of catacombs in Rome. Buonarotti included many illustrations of these decorated pieces and fragments of glass, many of them showing portraits of the gravesite owners.

This early and only edition consists of an illustrated three volume study of Roman vessels drawn and engraved by Italian artist and editor Carlo Antonin (born circa 1740). Volume one features vessels in the Pio-Clementine and Chiaramonti Museum at the Vatican; volume 2 shows items in the Capitoline Museum and the galleries of Rome; and volume 3 has images of other antique “Rome district” vases. This book includes more than 195 full-page images illustrating variant forms and decoration on Roman vases and vessels.

Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) created detailed and elaborate etchings illustrating the antiquities of Rome as well as a fictitious and atmospheric series entitled Carceri d'invenzione (Imaginary Prisons). The Smithsonian Libraries is fortunate to own several first-editions of Piranesi’s publications, including his book on fireplaces and mantels entitled Diversi Maniere d'Adornare i Cammini and “vedute” or views of Rome, an example of which is this 1761 folio.

The Book of the Art of Cennino Cennini is an English translated book from Italian, first published in 1859. The artist, Cennino Cennini, was an Italian painter born around 1360 and died before 1427. He trained under Agnolo Gaddi, and worked in Padua, at the court of Francesco Novello da Carrara. This book is an English translation of Cennino Cennini’s most notable publication, Il Libro Dell'Arte, with an introduction and commentary by celebrated British artist (and art patron), Christiana J. Herringham.

Italian polymath Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) has been called the father of natural history by such giants in the field as Carl Linnaeus and the Comte de Buffon. A true Renaissance man, he studied law, philosophy, and medicine before being named the University of Bologna’s first Chair of Natural Science in 1561. He founded the University’s botanical garden— one of the first of its kind in Europe— several years later, and included space for his natural history collection, which included animal specimens, minerals, plants, and man-made artifacts.