Accademia di belle arti (Milan)

Discorsi letti nella grande aula del Palazzo Reale delle scienze e delle arti in Milano, in occasione della solenne distribuzione de’premj della R. Accademia delle belle arti, fattasi da S.F. il Sig. Conte Ministro dell’Interno il giorno xi agosto mdcccxii.

Milan, Stamperia Reale, 1812

octavo (210 × 128 mm), (32) ff. signed 1–4⁸ and paginated 1–63 (1).

provenance bound for Eugène Rose de Beauharnais, Prince of Venice, Viceroy of Italy (1781–1824) — Count Jean-Louis Temple de Rougemont (1910–1990) and Countess Louise du Temple de Rougemont (née Louise Lejeune, 1913–2002) — sale by Sotheby’s, ‘Prove­nances impériales: Biblio­thèque du Général et de la Comtesse du Temple de Rougemont’, Paris, 6 December 2006, lot 70

In fine state of preservation.

bound in contemporary straight-grain, red morocco, arms of the kingdom of Italy as created by Napoleon blocked in gold on both covers within roll-tooled frames of Neoclas­sical ornament, the flat back decorated by interlinked quatrefoils and lettered Distrib | de | Premj, another roll on turn-ins, the board edges ornamented by a single fillet; by Luigi Lodigiani of Milan, his oval, yellow engraved ticket Lodigiani | Relieur | de S.A.I. | à Milan pasted in upper corner of front free-endpaper.

A fine binding by Luigi Lodigiani of Milan (1777–1843) on a volume issued in 1812 by the Milanese Academy of fine arts, in which the prize-winners in the annual students’ compe­titions (architecture, painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing) are published, together with a catalogue of the display of the academicians’ production, the texts of two discorsi: one delivered by the Secretary of the Academy and Professor of Architecture, Giuseppe Zanoia (1752–1817), the other by Luigi Rossi, ‘Ispettore generale della Direzione di pubblica Istruzzione’ (1776–1824), and a list of the forty-five members of the Academy, headed by the Viceroy of Italy, Eugène de Beauharnais (1781–1824).

As the insignia on the covers incorporates elements of the coat of arms of Napoleon i, including the eagle, the chain of the Légion d’honneur, and impe­rial mantle, and in addition the Napoleonic star and Napoleonic n, our volume – like other books fea­turing the same insignia – has been misidentified as a book bound for Napoleon himself.¹ The arms are in fact those of the kingdom of Italy (decreed on 18 February 1806), which Eugène de Beauharnais applied on certain of his books. Curiously, Napoleon never assigned any arms to his adopted son: before his appointment as Viceroy, Eugène employed his father’s arms; thereafter, until the end of the kingdom in 1814, he showed his ownership by the present insignia, or by an eagle with the Lombard crown,² or – after his marriage on 1 April 1806, to Augusta-Amalia of Bavaria (1788–1851) – by the monogram ea surmounted by the electoral crown.

After Napoleon’s abdication, Eugène de Beauharnais retired to Munich, where he was cre­ated Duke of Leuchtenberg and Prince of Eichstätt. He succeeded in taking many of his books with him, and continued to collect avidly.³ His accomplish­ment as bibliophile how­ever was hidden, until a series of four auction sales of the Leuchtenberg library, conducted 1928–1935,⁴ ‘revealed him as the most important book-lover to have appeared in Italy for over a century’.⁵

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Fig. 1 Binding by Luigi Lodigiani for Eugène de Beauharnais as Viceroy of Italy (height 214 mm)

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The discovery of Leuchtenberg library focused attention on the binder Luigi Lodigiani, whose work for the Viceroy’s General Secretary, Étienne Méjan (Mejean), Comte d’Empire (1766–1846), had already been noted.⁶ Lodigiani’s other notable clients were the Emperor Francis i,⁷ Archduke Rainer of Austria,⁸ and by repute Napoleon (this information may be based on the traditional mis­reading of the Beauharnais arms as those of Napoleon);⁹ he must, however, have operated a large shop, and catered for numerous clients, as sub­stantial quantities of his bindings are now being identified, not only locally, in the Ambrosiana, Braidense¹⁰ and Trivulziana¹¹ in Milan, the Biblioteca Statale di Cremona,¹² and Biblioteca Civica Queriniana in Brescia,¹³ but also in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, Universitätsbiblio­thek Graz,¹⁴ and Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. A preliminary organisation of these bindings accord­ing to type is well-underway.¹⁵

Lodigiani worked in Paris in 1807–1808 and adopted the conventions of the Bozerian style. A roll used on this binding resembles one asso­ciated with Jean-Claude Bozerian (1762–1840),¹⁶ another roll is a copy of one associated with the Duplanil bindery.¹⁷

The Discorsi of the Milan academy was published annually from 1806. Another volume in the series (commemorating the competition held in 1810), bound by Lodigiani using the same armorial block, was in the Mortimer L. Schiff collection.¹⁸ Neither it nor the present volume can be traced in the 1928–1935 Leuchtenberg sale catalogues.¹⁹

A fine set of the Discorsi – though not contain­ing the present volume – is in the Getty Research Insti­tute²⁰ and another is in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense;²¹ most libraries, however, hold individ­ual volumes (the National Gallery of Art, Washington, dc, possess 1810 only). No copy of this 1812 edition is located in the United Kingdom (according to copac); five copies are cited in the Italian census (iccu):

● Cremona, Biblioteca statale ● Crescentino, Biblioteca civica De Gregoriana ● Milan, Biblioteca comunale – Palazzo Sormani (mistakenly as 46pp.) ● Milan, Biblioteca delle Civiche raccolte stori­che, Inv. 10047, shelfmark MPP.3443²² ● Parma, Biblioteca Palatina

and these are recorded elsewhere

● Lugano, Biblioteca Salita dei frati Lugano²³ ● Milan, Biblioteca dell’Associazione Famiglia Meneghina²⁴

references Leopoldo Cicognara, Catalogo ragionato dei libri d’arte e d’antichità posseduti dal conte Cicognara (Pisa 1821), no. 1337 (within series); Fabia Borroni Salvadori, ‘Il Cicognara’: bibliografia dell’archeologia classica e dell’arte italiana, i /2 (Florence 1955), pp.39–40 no. 1514 (1812 edition)