In 1824 Conte Leopoldo Cicognara (1767-1834), a poet, amateur artist and a founding father of the discipline of art history, sold his collection of over 5,000 volumes on the subjects of art, architecture, and classical archaeology to the Vatican Library. This collection, the largest in the field at the time, brings together volumes dating from the beginning of printing to Cicognara’s time that include engravings, instructions on drawing and painting, books and pamphlets on museums and private collections, sale catalogs, and much more.

In an effort to make the contents of the Cicognara Library accessible worldwide, the Vatican Library and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, sponsored by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, have made this collection available through microfiche. Stanford University Libraries owns a copy of this important collection and in order to make these resources more visible to our users, the Metadata Department has recently processed and loaded individual records so that they may be available through our discovery environment SearchWorks. This increases the searchability of the collection a tremendous amount by allowing its discovery through individual works.

You can view these records in SearchWorks by searching “Cicognara Library”.

For more information about this collection and The Cicognara Project go to www.cicognara.com or contact the Art Library at artlibrary@stanford.edu.

-Alissa Hafele, E-Resources Metadata Librarian