Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana. The Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana is a public library in Venice, Italy. Founded in 1468 as the library of the Republic of Venice, it is one of the earliest surviving public libraries and depositories for manuscript in Italy and holds one of the greatest collections of classical texts in the world. It is named after St. Mark, the patron saint of the city. The original building, prominently located in Saint Mark's Square with the long façade facing the Doge's Palace, is the masterpiece of Jacopo Sansovino and a key work in Venetian Renaissance architecture. The great architect Andrea Palladio considered it perhaps the richest and most ornate building that there has been since ancient times up until now, and Frederick Hartt described it as surely one of the most satisfying structures in Italian architectural history. No less important for its art, the library houses many works by the great painters of sixteenth-century Venice, making it a comprehensive monument to Venetian Mannerism. Today, the historical building is customarily referred to as the Libreria sansoviniana and is largely a museum. The library offices, the reading rooms, and most of the collection are housed in the adjoining Zecca, the former mint of the Republic of Venice. Cathedral and monastic libraries were the principal centers of study and learning throughout the Middle Ages. But beginning in the fifteenth century, the humanist emphasis on the knowledge of the classic world as essential to the formation of the Renaissance man led to a proliferation of court libraries, patronized by princely rulers, several of which provided a degree of public access. In Venice, an early attempt to found a public library in emulation of the great libraries of Antiquity was unsuccessful as Petrarch's personal collection of manuscripts, donated to the Republic in 1362, was dispersed at the time of his death. In 1468, however, the Byzantine humanist and scholar Cardinal Basilios Bessarion donated his vast and precious collection of Greek and Latin codices to the Republic of Venice, stipulating that a public library be established to ensure both their conservation for future generations and availability for scholars. The valuable bequest included the 482 Greek and 264 Latin codices which were transported to Venice in crates the next year. To this initial delivery, more codices and incunables were added following the death of Bessarion in 1472. The letter of donation, addressed to Doge Cristoforo Moro, narrates that following the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and its devastation by the Turks, Bessarion had set ardently about the task of acquiring the rare and important works of the classical Greek philosophers and adding them to his existing collection so as to prevent the further dispersal and total loss of ancient Greek knowledge. The Cardinal's stated desire in offering the collection to the Venetian Republic specifically was that the manuscripts should be properly conserved in a city where many Greek refugees had fled and which he himself considered a second Byzantium. But despite the grateful acceptance of the donation by the Venetian government and the commitment to establish a library of public utility, the collection remained crated inside the Doge's Palace, entrusted to the care of the state historian under the direction of the Procuratori di San Marco de supra. Access was difficult and consultation impracticable. To no avail, Marcantonio Sabellico and Andrea Navagero, in their capacity as official historian, and other prominent humanists urged the government over time to provide a suitable location. But the political and financial situation during the long years of the Italian wars stymied any serious plan, notwithstanding a statement of intent to build a library in 1515. However, with the nomination of Pietro Bembo as gubernator in 1530 and the termination of the War of the League of Cognac in that same year, efforts were renewed. In 1531, the collection was transferred to the upper floor of Saint Mark's Basilica, and although the codices were still crated, loaning conditions were improved. The following year, 1532, Vettore Grimani pressed his fellow procurators, insisting that the time had come to act on the Republic's longstanding intention to construct a suitable public library where Bessarion's collection of codices could be housed.
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