‘The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries’ – gefotografeerd door Massimo Listri

• Massimo Listri, Elisabeth Sladek, Georg Ruppelt
The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries

Taschen, juli 2018
ISBN 9783836535243, 560 pagina’s
XXL-formaat | 39,5 x 29 cm. | 6,2 kg
> gebonden € 150 |

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Massimo Listri (1953) is een Italiaanse fotograaf die vaak interieurs van groot architecturaal en cultureel belang vastlegt. Hij heeft klassieke villa’s en paleizen gefotografeerd, evenals verborgen tuinen, bibliotheken, kloosters en universiteiten. Zijn foto’s worden regelmatig tentoongesteld en vastgelegd in tientallen fotoboeken.
[zie zijn website]

Uitgeverij Taschen komt nu met een boek op groot formaat met foto’s die Listri maakte van Europese klassieke bibliotheken uit de 15e tot 19e eeuw. De foto’s worden begeleid door teksten van Elisabeth Sladek, Georg Ruppelt.

Massimo Listri travels to some of the oldest and finest libraries to reveal their architectural, historical, and imaginative wonder. Through great wooden doors, up spiraling staircases, and along exquisite, shelf-lined corridors, he leads us through outstanding private, public, educational, and monastic libraries, dating as far back as 766. Between them, these medieval, classical, baroque, rococo, and 19th-century institutions hold some of the most precious records of human thought and deed, inscribed and printed in manuscripts, volumes, papyrus scrolls, and incunabula.

Featured libraries include the papal collections of the Vatican Apostolic Library, Trinity College Library, home to the Book of Kells and Book of Durrow, and the priceless holdings of the Laurentian Library in Florence, the private library of the powerful House of Medici, designed by Michelangelo.

With meticulous descriptions accompanying each featured library, we learn not only of the libraries’ astonishing holdings-from which highlights are illustrated-but also of their often lively, turbulent, or controversial pasts.

Georg Ruppelt – After studying history, German language and literature, education and philosophy, Georg Ruppelt gained his PhD with a doctoral thesis on Friedrich Schiller. He subsequently worked as a librarian, becoming deputy director of the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel in 1987, and director of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek in Hanover from 2002 to 2016. Ruppelt has published over 400 essays and 40 monographs on the subject of books, library science, and cultural history.

Elisabeth Sladek studied Art History in Vienna, Classical Archaeology and Judaic Studies and wrote her dissertation at the Max Planck Institute in Rome. Her special field is the history of the Baroque art and architecture and she is an active researcher and teacher, among others in Vienna, Rome and Zurich. She also publishes regularly on the respective themes.