A library is not just a collection of books: it is a geography of knowledge, a map of collective and intellectual memory. And today, with the entrance of the Serlupiana Library to the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut (KHI), this geography is enriched with a new, very valuable cartography. Indeed, with an official ceremony held on the morning of June 3, 2025 in the Salone dei Cinquecento of Palazzo Vecchio, an extraordinary donation was celebrated: the Serlupiana Library, with its approximately 14,000 volumes, from ogi becomes part of the KHI. In the presence of the Mayor of Florence Sara Funaro, Max Planck Society President Patrick Cramer, donors Marchesi Don Raffaele and Donna Laetitia Carrega Bertolini, and scholars and figures from the cultural world, an important step for the life of the institute and for humanistic research was sealed.
With the Serlupiana Library, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut (KHI) receives the largest and most important donation in its history. Although the growth of the institute’s library from its founding in 1897 to the present has been marked by numerous donations-including funds from private libraries-the Serlupiana Library far exceeds all previous ones. These include as many as 250 incunabula, as well as manuscripts, autographs and first edition illustrated books dating from around 1470 to 1940, spanning disciplines and literatures. Thanks to its broad chronological and thematic horizon, the Serlupiana delineates an essential segment of European cultural history and knowledge in its medial, historical and intellectual variety, offering immense potential for international research.
The collection was started in the 1920s by Count Filippo Serlupi Crescenzi and his wife Gilberta von Ritter de Zahony. Its preservation and expansion are the work of Raffaele Carrega Bertolini and Laetitia Lefèvre d’Ormesson, to whom we owe the donation to the KHI, including valuable documentation that allows us to trace the history of the collection, offering interesting insights into the antiquarian market of the time and the prominent personalities - scholars and collectors - who contributed to its formation in 1930s Florence. Prominent among them are personalities close to the KHI, demonstrating the link between the Institute and the collection since its inception.
The Serlupiana Library donation was celebrated at the invitation of the City of Florence in the Salone dei Cinquecento of Palazzo Vecchio. The event was attended by the Mayor of Florence, Sara Funaro, the President of the Max Planck Society, Prof. Patrick Cramer, Maddalena Fossombroni (founder and director of the cultural enterprise Todo Modo and the Picopress publishing house), Prof. Stéphane Toussaint (Sorbonne Université Paris - Centre André-Chastel) and donors Marchesi Don Raffaele and Donna Leatitia Carrega Bertolini, VI Princes of Lucedio. The ceremony was moderated by KHI Director Prof. Gerhard Wolf.
To the donors of the Serlupiana Library, Mayor Funaro presented an award from the City of Florence for their act of generosity, the Marzocco, one of the symbols of the city, and a scroll; President Cramer in turn presented the donors with a symbolic award from the Max Planck Society.
A selection of volumes from the Serlupiana Library will be on public display on June 10 and 17 (2 to 6 p.m.) and June 13 (10 a.m. to 1 p.m.) at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (Via Giuseppe Giusti 44, 50121 Florence). On display here will be writings by Marsilio Ficino, Dante Alighieri (with Cristoforo Landino’s 1481 commentary), Hartmann Schedel ’s Liber chronicarum (1493), two works by Girolamo Savonarola, Giovanni Battista Piranesi ’s Opere varie (1750), as well as, for example, Jean Cocteau’s Le Livre Blanc , Marcel Proust ’s À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs or Pablo Picasso’s Eaux-fortes originales pour des textes de Buffon (Histoire naturelle).
The integration of the Serlupiana Library into the KHI’s research infrastructure has two fundamental consequences. On the one hand, it makes possible the opening and accessibility of the hitherto unknown collection to the city and the world of research, as desired by the donors. On the other, it significantly enriches the Institute’s work and increases its attractiveness for international research. The book is both a tool and an object of humanities research, in its dual function as a medium for learning and a vehicle for cultural transmission. The history of publishing, the reception and transfer of knowledge and its conditions related to the form and materiality of the book, but also the process of production and distribution, the book trade and the changing culture of reading and writing, can only be effectively investigated from as broad a material base as possible.
It is precisely these aspects that make the Serlupiana Library unique: to the obvious value of its contents is added the systematic nature of the collectors’ activity, which makes it possible to trace for each book its publishing and material history. The strong link with the history and intellectual culture of Florence binds the Serlupiana to the city in a double thread: Florence, with its artistic heritage and research traditions, is reflected in every corner of the library, helping to create a rich and unprecedented tool for study and discovery. This connection is also reflected in KHI’s numerous art-historical and cultural-historical research projects, characterized by diverse methodological approaches and international collaborations. The presence of Florence as a backdrop further amplifies the value of the Serlupiana, making it not just a collection of books, but a true laboratory of the city’s cultural richness and intellectual tradition, a bridge between past and future.
For years already, the KHI has been engaged in the study of the ancient book in its materiality and physicality. The established methodology of work in this area - autopsy, documentation, possible conservation measures, publication of the results and digitization - will be applied in the future also to selected volumes of the Serlupiana Library. This process of analyzing the book forms the necessary basis for its multi-level description and subsequent application in interdisciplinary research contexts. The use of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, will also make it possible to generate and share other perspectives of knowledge. However, the direct investigation of objects and their contextualization within a historically oriented yet modern humanities research library will remain the indispensable basis for a comprehensive exploration of the history of books and knowledge.
For the KHI, the donation of the Serlupiana Library represents a key opportunity to expand and consolidate research activities, for example in the history of the book, and to integrate them into an interdisciplinary discourse with art history and neighboring disciplines. The donation has been enthusiastically welcomed by scholars at the institute, however diverse their interests, projects, and methodological approaches, and will open up fascinating new perspectives for research and knowledge transmission to an interested public as well. A major exhibition dedicated to the Serlupiana Library is planned for 2026/27.
“We are proud and grateful to be able to host such a special donation at our Institute in Florence,” said Max Planck Society President Professor Patrick Cramer. “For years, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz has been doing vital work to make its library holdings accessible to new research approaches - including in the context of the Digital Humanities. The Serlupiana Library will offer new impulses in terms of both content and methodology, and the enthusiasm it has generated can be felt throughout the Institute. I am convinced that it will also resonate in the international scientific community.”
“Today we celebrate a forward-looking and visionary gesture and an act of generosity that expresses a high and shared idea of community,” says Mayor Sara Funaro. “The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut, is a prestigious institution, appreciated for its transcultural perspective and its outlook on Italy, Europe and the Mediterranean. To Raffaele Carrega Bertolini and his wife Laetitia Lefèvre d’Ormesson goes our most heartfelt thanks: with this gift they have forever linked their name to our city. A special thank you then goes to the director of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut Gerhard Wolf, who has enthusiastically welcomed this precious book collection, committing himself to its preservation and enhancement. This donation is a declaration of love for Florence. We are and will be at the side of the Kunsthistorisches Institut, also to make the wonders of the Serlupiana accessible to scholars, researchers, students and enthusiasts.”
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| Florence, extraordinary donation to Kunsthistorisches Institut: the Serlupiana Library arrives |
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