Conversazioni Serlupiane I
Anima, Mondo, Libro: Ficino

The Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut has received the “Biblioteca Serlupiana” as a generous donation, the largest in its 125-year history. The collection will be presented to the public for the first time with an exhibition and a study day on March 7, 2025. The Serlupiana brings together over 500 years of book history – in a broad geographical framework and with a wide range of disciplines from philosophy, literature and law to theology, history and beyond.

With more than twenty incunabula, the writings and translations of the Florentine philosopher and physician Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) form an important nucleus of the collection. Ficino’s work ranges from reflections on the position of the soul in the cosmos, to dietary advice on how to avoid melancholy, up to reflections on the nature of love and beauty. As the historian of philosophy Paul Oskar Kristeller, who was closely associated with the “Biblioteca Serlupiana” and its founders Filippo Serlupi Crescenzi and Gilberta Ritter de Zahony, wrote, “man and his attitudes constitute the point of departure” of Ficino’s thinking.

As unique physical objects and multi-layered spaces of knowledge, Ficino’s codices, letters and books printed in his lifetime have lost none of their relevance and still invite us to think about books and their biographies, their readers, as well as fundamental philosophical questions of being-in-the-world.

A selection of Ficino’s works can be viewed for a week at the KHI, in an exhibition to be inaugurated on March 7, 11.30am (in Via Giusti 44), whereas the study day on that afternoon will take place at Palazzo Grifoni, Via dei Servi 51.

Organizers of the study day: Hannah Baader, Hana Gründler, Gerhard Wolf

Curators of the exhibition: Anette Creutzburg, Camilla Musci, Jan Simane, and the organizing team of the study day

Programme:

11:30 Presentation of the Biblioteca Serlupiana and Opening of the Exhibition (in the Presence of the Donors)
Via Giuseppe Giusti 44, Firenze

Inaugural addresses:
Gerhard Wolf (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – MPI)
Eugenia Valacchi (Soprintendenza Archivistica e Bibliografica della Toscana)

12:30 Refreshments

14:30 Study Day
Palazzo Grifoni Budini Gattai, Via dei Servi 51, Firenze

Hannah Baader, Hana Gründler, Gerhard Wolf
Welcome

14:45–16:00 Anima, Libro

Hannah Baader (KHI Florenz – MPI)
Nelle Ville

Anne Eusterschulte (Freie Universität Berlin)
The Golden Chain of Books – Foundations of Aesthetics in Marsilio Ficino

Tanja Klemm (Universität Konstanz)
Imagines fabricare. Processes of Making in Ficino

Hana Gründler (KHI Florenz – MPI)
"The Present is Filled by Echoes of Past". Derek Jarman's Ficino

16:00 Break

16:20–17:15 Mondo, Libro

Stéphane Toussaint (Sorbonne Université Paris – Centre André-Chastel)
Ficino perso e ritrovato. Un primo sguardo alla Serlupiana

Kathryn Rudy (University of St Andrews)
The Black Face of Christ with a Forked Beard: Why no Printed Images Survive

Gerhard Wolf (KHI Florenz – MPI)
Commentarii

17:30–19:00 Conversazioni in mostra (for speakers only)

Camilla Musci (KHI Florenz – MPI)
Da collezione privata a patrimonio condiviso: i primi 100 anni della Biblioteca Serlupiana

Jan Simane (KHI Florenz – MPI)
Landino's Commentary on Dante (1481) – an Ambitious Publishing Project with some Shortcomings

Rebecca Bowen (KHI Florenz – MPI)
After 1481: Renaissance Dantes in the Biblioteca Serlupiana

The event is accompanied by an exhibition of books and documents on the first floor of via Giusti 44, which will be open to the public from March 7^th to 14^th, (except the weekend), from 2 pm to 6 pm.