The Leopardi Library takes us back 500 years and unveils a 16th-century fresco
Restoration work has brought to light paintings that had been hidden away since 1841. Giacomo’s library now offers visitors the added attraction of the Sala degli Antichi
Key points
A past stretching back five centuries returns and imposes its beauty to enrich the history of the Palazzo Leopardi Library in Recanati. And the rooms of the “paternal hostel” are transported back over five hundred years, revealing the painted decorations seen by Giacomo, before they were concealed by work on the plaster, carried out in 1841, as noted by the father of the young fabulist.
Monaldo Leopardi writes, in fact, in his diary: “The small room in my flat adjoining the Library has been restored”. The Sala degli Antichi has been restored to its former glory thanks to meticulous restoration work, which has brought to light the gilded bronze caryatids and the niches painted with allegorical sculptures of Charity and the Sibyl. These figures frame the larger scenes: the biblical scene of the Expulsion of Adam from the Garden of Eden, a seascape featuring a ship, Aeolus, guardian of the winds with a star and a scroll bearing the phrase “In te confido”. The upper pictorial cycle depicts hunting scenes and pilgrimages within a landscape reminiscent of the Apennines.
In the belief that art is meant to be shared, the Sala degli Antichi will enhance the library’s collection, which, with its 20,000 volumes, attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year driven by their love for an “infinite” poet.
Opening the doors to Giacomo’s library are Countess Olimpia Leopardi, a descendant of the poet, who speaks of her surprise and delight at a discovery that has exceeded all expectations.
Olimpia Leopardi’s story
“Our family’s mission has always been to preserve the places Giacomo loved and called home; the places where he dreamed, studied, imagined, wrote poetry and lived through the happiest years of his life. With this in mind, though without expecting anything extraordinary, we decided to undertake a major restoration of the walls in what has been commonly known since 1898 as the manuscript room,” explains Olimpia Leopardi - The name derives from the fact that Giacomo Leopardi (the poet’s namesake nephew) enlarged, altered and furnished it in the style of the time, to celebrate his uncle’s greatness by displaying Leopardi’s manuscripts and first editions in that space. Old houses always hold surprises, for better or for worse. What we have the pleasure of sharing with the public today is one of those discoveries which, step by step, give rise to amazement and wonder, as one glimpses its potential and hopes, with growing excitement, that it is not merely an illusion.
