On an Architect’s Library. The Intellectual World of Francesco Peparelli (1587–1641)

Francesco Peparelli’s large collection of books not only lends us a detailed intellectual and professional understanding of a civilized artist, but also demonstrates his connections with the cultural world of his day and with his fellow artists. The library can be seen to represent the paper traces of memory, the tangible record of the relationship between the draftsman and the authors he has consulted and read. In Peparelli’s library - as in that of other architects - we can find a complete range of sixteenth and seventeenth-century architectural treatises, from Vitruvius to Serlio, from Rusconi to Tartaglia, but there are also works on the art of painting, poetry by Petrarch, Marino and Niccolò Franco, the Amadis de Gaula saga and works by Stefano Guazzo. The book collection of a master-builder emerges as a small universe responding to the ideal of complete proficiency in the liberal and mechanical arts.