Building a Library: The Cavagna Sangiuliani Collection at Illinois

Building a Library: The Cavagna Sangiuliani Collection at Illinois On display September 14 – December 14, 2018 Curated by Chloe Ottenhoff In 1921, the University of Illinois purchased the Cavagna Sangiuliani Collection of Italian imprints and manuscripts from the descendants of Count Antonio Cavagna Sangiuliani di Gualdana (1843-1913) as part of a wider effort to […]

Almanacchi Italiani

Almanacchi Italiani A  pop-up exhibit at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library Spring 2018 Curated by Gabriella Stuardi & Chloe Ottenhoff Just in time for the spring planting season, this exhibition presents some of the most curious and unique Italian almanacs held in the Cavagna Sangiuliani Collection, acquired by the University of Illinois in 1921. […]

Peekaboo!

We’re so excited about the eclipse, here at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. This graphic comes from an announcement published in 1760 in Milan, alerting citizens of an upcoming eclipse to occur on June 13 of the same year. As the diagram shows, only seven-tenths of the sun would be covered. Spiegazione geografica dell’ecclisse […]

Cave of the Dogs

Next time you’re in Naples, why not take a side trip to the Grotta del Cane (Cave of the Dog)? As you can see from this engraving from the 1652 edition of Giulio Cesare Capaccio’s La vera antichita di Pozzuolo, it looks like quite the tourist trap. The Cave of the Dog takes its name […]

Opulent Almanacs

                  It’s been a wonderfully colorful week here at the Illinois RBML: after Joan Friedman’s illuminating lecture on Owen Jones and color printing on Wednesday, we came across these exquisite chromolithographed title pages from Goffredo di Crollalanza’s series of almanacs: the “Almanach Héraldique et Drôlatique”, from 1883-1885. […]

Reunited for the First Time Since 1879: Six Books and an Invoice

When private libraries like the Cavagna Collection–containing over 40,000 books and manuscripts–are purchased, one of the first questions that arises is how these owners and collectors acquired their books. A Pavia native, Cavagna purchased his books primarily from booksellers around northern Italy. The evidence we’ve encountered so far suggests that he turned and returned to […]