The Malatestiana Library

Today, of many medieval and humanistic libraries, there only remain ancient lists of books, mostly no longer recognizable, or few volumes which were able to survive here and there in the current collections.

Thus, not far from Cesena, the fifteenth-century library of the Ducal Palace of Urbino is today an imposing empty room...

The manuscripts collected or prepared by Federico di Montefeltro (1422-1482) for this library, created by the architect Luciano Laurana between 1465 and 1474, were relocated to the Vatican Apostolic Library during the XVII century.

The library of the Dominican Convent of San Marco in Florence - which in terms of dates and architecture is comparable to the Malatestiana Library -
is also a fascinating place to visit, but it lacks the collection that the humanist Niccolò Niccoli (1364-1437) had donated to his city.

Meanwhile in Cesena, the green plastered ancient silent hall, completed in 1452, is fully preserved in its original form and it still houses the volumes that Malatesta Novello, the lord of Cesena, commissioned and enchained to the reading desks.
The aura of the place is entirely preserved and so are the books, creating a special atmosphere that has been able to overcome time.

It has been observed that, through the rose window facing east, the morning light reflecting on the curvature, pleasantly diffuses into the upper space.

The capitals of the columns and semi-columns leaning against the walls are of different types: they together constitute an elegant form of variatio.

Some of them are attributable to the Italic type, a mixture of Ionic and Corinthian forms, instituted by Leon Battista Alberti in his treatise "De re aedificatoria"; others are of the ionic and laurate type.
On many capitals, we can notice the Malatesta’s coats of arms.

The architecture of this hall, not only excels in beauty and harmony, but also presents a perfectly functional structure for the conservation of books, sheltered from the dangers of violent and sudden atmospheric events.

The library is in fact located on a first floor and is sheltered from solar radiation by a large cavity between the barrel and cross vaults and the roof, in such a way that both, too-high-temperature peaks during the summer and the lower ones, typical of winter, are completely avoided.

At the entrance to the ancient hall, a plaque bears the explicit attribution to the architect Matteo Nuti da Fano: "1452 Matheus Nutius Fanensi ex urbe creatus Dedalus alter opus tantum deduxit ad unguem".
Here the architect is defined as 'a second Daedalus' - referring to the mythical artist of antiquity - and it is said that he 'brought this work to perfect completion', thus insinuating the doubt that the initial project was designed by others.

The three heads: one of the Malatesta's coat of arms.

The wooden entrance door bears the signature of its creator: «1454 adi 15 d’agosto Christofaro de Sancto Iohanne in Persixedo».

Cristoforo di San Giovanni in Persiceto worked on walnut wood carving the Malatesta heraldic symbols, four-petaled and helical rosettes.

At the origin of this library we find the initiative of Malatesta Novello, a military man of one of the most prestigious families in Romagna.
He was a powerful man too, enough to deserve an elegant portrait from the artist Pisanello, who immortalized him as "Dux equitum praestans", a handsome cavalry commander (1444-1445).
The portrait of Malatesta Novello constitutes the front of a bronze medal, now preserved in several copies, which is considered one of the earliest examples of an artistic medal used with a propaganda function.

After having founded the library and having entrusted it to the care of the Franciscan citizens, Malatesta Novello had the foresight to leave an income for will so that the institution could continue to preserve the library and the books:
«Singulis annis ducatos centum auri qui distribuantur et errogentur pro conservatione illius bibliotece et librorum».

The two keys that allow the entrance to the Library.

The 343 codices and volumes, that Malatesta Novello bought and commissioned to be copied and decorated by the best professionals of the time, have remained chained to the ancient wooden plutei, fueling the studies on classicism and medieval texts for almost six centuries.

Among the manuscripts that Malatesta Novello made copy we find many Christian and classical authors: Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Gregory the Great, Cicero, Lucretius, Caesar, Livy, as well as humanistic translations of the Greeks, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Plutarch.
All of them feature rich decorations and elegant humanistic scriptures.

In 1484, to the manuscripts of the lord of Cesena was also added the legacy of his doctor Giovanni di Marco: a collection of texts about science and medicine.

Inside the ancient hall, the librarians added some printed volumes, incunabula and other ancient books of authors from Cesena.
That’s why in the first benches on the right of the ancient hall are now chained the treatise “De honore mulierum” by Benedetto da Cesena (Venice 1500), the commentary on Dante Alighieri's Comedy by Jacopo Mazzoni (Cesena 1573, 1587 and 1688) and the works of Scipione Chiaramonti, Galileo Galilei's interlocutor, published in the century XVII.

Here Ezra Pound would have liked to have an edition of his "Cantos" chained, but the director of the time, Manlio Dazzi, refused to contaminate the Malatestian collection.