Today we went to the Biblioteca Palatino, I think it was called, and saw an amazing collection of rare books, illuminated manuscripts, printed books, in Hebrew, Arabic, Ethiopian, Japanese, Chinese…all from one man’s collection. Mind boggling-ly awesome. It was great to have Claudio, a scholar of old books and the like, explain what they were about and how they were made. The other amazing collection was the Bodoni Museum, which had all of the books that Bodoni had printed, books that explained the history of printing (in Latin of course) and then books that were made in Parma, contemporaneously with Bodoni. I was very starstruck with the Albrecht Durer print, the Da Vinci book, and the type, tools and press of Bodoni. Amazing!! Later in the day we drew the beasts around the baptistery, which was also of course luxurious and wonderful.
