Biblio heaven

No photos!!
This room is a book lover's dream. The enormous library is decorated with frescoes by Tibaldi of the Liberal Arts and Sciences personified by individuals who had cultivated these disciplines. Scenes on the friezes refer to the trivium and quadrivium. Of the former, Grammar is represented by the School of Babylon and the Tower of Babel, Rhetoric by Hercules the Gaul and Cicero Defending Gaius Rabirius, and Dialectics or Logic by SS Ambrose and Augustine and Zeno of Elea Showing the Gates of Truth and Error.
Of the quadrivium, Arithmetic is represented by the Gymnosophists and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Music by Orpheus Rescuing Eurydice and David Playing the Harp before Saul, Geometry by the Death of Archimedes and the Priests of Egypt Dividing the Lands and Astronomy by the Solar Eclipse at Heliopolis after the Death of Christ and King Hezekiah Contemplating the Orbit of the Sun.
Philosophy on the north wall (the School of Athens with Zeno and Socrates) and Theology on the south (Constantine the Great at the Council of Nicaea) complete the programme encompassing knowledge.
In the middle there are some toys or scientific instruments. The black rocks hanging in the pendulum are iron and designed to swing according to the forces of the magnets. You can still get them today, 500 years or so later!
In each bookcase there is a scriptorum which can be pulled open to make a lockable reading desk.
All the wood is inlaid and in excellent condition. And I also managed to get a shot of one of the 40,000 old books they possess, although this is a facsimile on show.Leggi altro