Leopoldo Cicognara and his library: Formation and significance of a collection (I)

How many sleepless nights the desire for a book costs, how many letters, how much research, and how many heartbeats amidst the dust of ancient book caches that are returned to circulation! I seem to hear these collectors always repeating, but this book is necessary, but you need this one, and this necessity knows no limits: here is that insatiability that is the precise indication of an illness of the spirit fomented, unfortunately, by the excessive quantity of books that inundate the earth.Thus wrote Leopoldo Cicognara in the summer of 1807 to his friend Luigi Bossi, a painter, scholar, first secretary of the Accademia di Brera, and above all a collector and cultivated bibliophile to whom Cicognara will dedicate a booklet on the Vita di San Lazzaro monaco e pittore preceduto da alcune osservazioni sulla Bibliomania [Life of St. Lazarus, monk and painter, preceded by some observations on Bibliomania], published that same year. These are significant words that best express the care, dedication, and passionate research that Cicognara devoted to the formation of his library ('object of so much of my care, and delight of my best years'),1 which was surely one of the most important and appreciated in all of Europe.2 Earlier, on the occasion of his 1788 sojourn in Rome, but particularly during the years 1798-99 (when he served as Minister Plenipotentiary of the Cisalpine Republic at the Savoy Court), he began to develop the groundwork for a long and productive project as a collector,3 destined to continue until 1821, when, burdened by terrible financial difficulties, he was forced to put his collection up for sale.