Project / Digitised Materials

The PNRR Project of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei includes:
– the digitisation of the Manuscript Collection dating from the 11th to the 15th century, together with the related indexing of works by Dante;
– the digitisation of the main series published by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei from 1871.
The project focuses on five categories of materials: Manuscripts – Incunabula and antique books –Publications by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei – Correspondence – Drawings and Prints.

Project partners:
Glossa
CoperArte

Manuscripts
The Academy’s extensive manuscript collection spans the 11th to the 19th century and consists primarily of two sections: the Collection of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, containing manuscripts from the 17th to the 19th century, and the Corsini Collection, which preserves earlier volumes. The digital repository currently hosts manuscripts from the 11th to the 15th century belonging to the Corsini Collection, enriched since 1785 by the holdings of the bibliophile Nicola Rossi. The collection further comprises around sixty manuscripts – some richly illuminated (15th-19th century) – on hermetic and alchemical subjects, forming part of the Vincenzo Verginelli and Nino Rota Collection, donated to the Accademia in the mid-1980s. Search functions follow the criteria used in the MANUS cataloguing system. Each manuscript description provides information on provenance and, where available, a relevant bibliography.

Incunabula and antique books
The collection of incunabula held by the Academy’s library comprises 2,325 volumes, recorded in the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue, and includes many unique exemplars documenting editions otherwise unknown. The digital repository further includes the volumes identified in the census of incunabula printed in Italy in the vernacular, a project initiated by the BEIC Foundation in 2007.
Each record follows the SBN cataloguing standard, supplemented by information on the provenance of the volumes.

Publications of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
The section encompasses numerous editorial series reflecting the scientific life of the Academy across the 19th and 20th centuries. The Modern Collection comprises the works published by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei from its refoundation in 1871, known collectively as Atti accademici (“Academy Proceedings”).
The project also includes a bibliographic review of the individual articles in the series, thus facilitating research by topic and author.
Through the selected series digitised within the PNRR Project, users can trace both the development of scientific knowledge and the evolution of the Academy itself throughout the 20th century, alongside the principal scientific and cultural events of the past hundred years.
More recent series, or those no longer in publication, are not included in the current project but will be considered for future digitisation.

Correspondence
The correspondence of Giovanni Gaetano Bottari (1689-1775) – scholar, historian, librarian of the Corsini Library, and a central figure in 18th-century Roman intellectual life – comprises approximately 10,450 letters preserved in about 140 volumes. Some were written by Bottari himself, others were addressed to him by numerous correspondents, both well-known and lesser-known.
Among them are Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Apostolo Zeno, Bernardo Tanucci, Bartolomeo Corsini (Viceroy of Sicily), Almada Mendoza (Ambassador of Portugal), Cardinal Prospero Lambertini (later Pope Benedict XIV), together with numerous other political and ecclesiastical figures.
Notable artists such as Giovan Battista Piranesi and Giuseppe Vasi also appear among the correspondents, as does the French collector Jean Pierre Mariette within the non-Italian exchanges.

Drawings and Prints
The remarkable collection of drawings and prints, originally belonging to the Corsini family and now held by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, contains numerous examples from the principal Italian and European schools, including many rare and valuable works. The digital repository will host part of this collection – specifically, the portion physically preserved in the library.
It includes 21 volumes comprising more than 4,700 drawings, a collection of prints dating from the 17th to the 19th century (many attributed to Giovan Battista Piranesi), a fine herbarium illustrated with drawings and engravings originating from a collection of drawings from the holdings of Cassiano del Pozzo. This last group documents the interests and work of the Lincei during the earliest phase of the Academy’s history, concluding in the first half of the 17th century.