Collecting rare books can be a dangerous passion both for the temptation to have more and the obsessive dream to handle papers and manuscripts signed or possessed by philosophers, explorers or kings forgetting, often, everything else…
Apart from the recurrent (innocent) thought of finding forgotten works in dusty countryside libraries (besides the second book of Aristotle’s Poetics) I did not manage to do great harm or to ruin the family’s savings, yet.
Books soon became for me the bridge to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (abusing both terms in this occasion), allowing me long walks through those enchanted worlds.
The love for the handmade object adds to the fascination for the ideas and the time in which they were conceived and shared, creating a double excitement especially for first editions of poets, military architects, doctors and visionaries.
Thus, handling the 1632 edition of Galileo’s Dialogo can truly be a thrilling experience imagining “firsthand” both the scandal, the emotions of those days in Rome, and the sequence of events occurring at the time when that very copy was getting out of press.
This collection took shape over almost thirty years while visiting book fairs and auctions in renown events as well as in second-hand bookshops in charming neighborhoods or historic towns.
It is a work in progress, with the hope to give justice to the preciousness of some of these books and manuscripts while getting comments and support to describe others whose bibliography was not completed or just put aside for the moment. Thanks for every bibliophile’s help in adding information or adjusting the description!
Some of the books will be put on sale to refine the collection and adapt to the taste of the uncontrollable collector…