21/03/2021
When you are able to come back to Florence, make sure you get to visit the Michelozzo Library, the first public library in modern history.
Perhaps the best early expression of the modern concept of the public library is to be found in the establishment of the San Marco library, the first public library at Florence.
The monumental library, architectural masterpiece of Michelozzo, was built for Cosimo the Elder of the Medici as a “public library”, and was therefore intended not only to be used by the friars of the monastery but by all scholars, including laity.
Regarded by visitors to the museum as one its most loved spaces, it houses an extraordinary collection of illuminated manuscripts from the 15th Century, some of which were illustrated by Fra Angelico and his collaborators.
The library is one of the most elegant creations of Michelozzo. It is composed of three aisles of equal height, the outer ones groin-vaulted, the central one roofed by a barrel vault and supported on an airy arcade of delicate Ionic columns; such a combination has no precedent. The effect of perspective recession is very strong.
The long narrow design with windows on both sides is created to maximize the availability of natural light; this functional aspect of the architecture would have been more important to the monks who worked in this space - reading, writing, and copying manuscripts - than any of the architectural refinements we admire in the structure today. The light, whether it shines in from the east or the west, is concentrated in the aisles (where desks with their books once were and which today is where display cases stand containing illuminated books), leaving a delicate twilight suffusing the central corridor.
