Parma, opens the new Bodoni Museum, the oldest printing museum in Italy

On Wednesday, November 30, 2022, the Monumental Complex of the Pilotta in Parma will inaugurate the new Bodoni Museum, the oldest printing museum in Italy, which will now be housed on the ground floor of the Palatina Library.

Previously it was located on the third floor of the Library in a location that was difficult to access and had poor visibility; therefore, it was decided to move the museum’s new home to spaces on the ground floor that had previously been used as the Library’s own storerooms. The museum was established in 1963 on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the death of Giambattista Bodoni, the Piedmontese typographer who made Parma the world capital of printing from the second half of the 18th century, and managed by a specially established foundation with the aim of illustrating the work, figure and collections of the famous composer and printer as well as to promote studies and research in the field of graphic and typographic art.

The museum’s move necessitated the rethinking of the entire exhibition itinerary, and its curatorship is the result of a joint project by Complesso della Pilotta Director Simone Verde and Bodoni Museum Foundation Scientific Director Andrea De Pasquale.

Characterized by an aesthetic, coeval to Giambattista Bodoni’s years of activity, with a laid wooden floor intended to echo the pattern and design of 19th-century French parquet floors and with empire green walls, the new museum displays a rich selection of Bodoni editions (including unique and extremely rare specimens printed on parchment or silk), the typographic-factory furnishings and other memorabilia that belonged to Bodoni’s workshop. New pendant lamps with an essential design give light to a series of showcases displaying masterpieces from the history of publishing and graphic design more generally.

In the exhibition itinerary, the printing press, a faithful reconstruction of the one used by the Saluzzo printer, and the original Louis XV cabinets, inside which Bodoni kept the boxes of punches, introduce the section devoted to “The Book Factory.” Inside four large showcases, part of the museum’s original furniture from the 1960s, the various stages of Bodoni’s work are reconstructed: starting with the design of the typeface and creation of the punches, from the manufacture of the matrices and casting of the typographic alloy with all the working tools used, forms for casting the characters, files, planes, spoons, to the finishing and composition for typographic, chalcographic and xylographic printing.

The room is completed with a large cabinet-library dedicated to “Bodoni’s Masterpieces” in which the collection of Bodoni’s volumes is displayed, with special emphasis on the Palatine collection still with original bindings, to document Bodoni’s bibliophilia. These include some of the rarest editions, such as Anacreon’s Odes on Bavarian parchment and Poliziano’s Stanze printed on silk. In the center, a multimedia and interactive table presents, in digital format, several volumes including the Typographical Manual consisting of one hundred round Latin, fifty cursive and twenty-eight Greek characters that Bodoni worked on throughout his life, and the work of theOratio Dominica, the Our Father in 155 languages using as many as 215 different Latin, Greek and exotic characters, printed by Bodoni in less than a year. Thanks to this touch-screen device, it is possible to search by volume and flip through the pages of the work in its entirety, so that the refinement of Giambattista Bodoni’s typographic work can be admired. The collection has recently been expanded thanks to the thirty-four original lapis drawings used in 1800 by engraver Rosaspina to illustrate Bodoni’s book Pitture di Antonio Allegri detto il Correggio, donated by Professor Corrado Mingardi, advisor to the Bodoni Museum Foundation.

“The new museographic layout of the Bodoni involved a total redesign of the previous spaces, with structural work, plant engineering and the creation of new exhibition furnishings,” said director Simone Verde. “An important effort aimed at restoring value and dignity to an authentic first and only jewel of its kind in Italy. From today, public and scholars visiting the new Bodoni Museum will be able to enjoy a doubly immersive experience, which on the one hand evokes the appearance of the ancient printing house and, on the other, traces the history and birth of the ducal printing works and the culture of a time when Parma was among the true European capitals.”

For info: https://complessopilotta.it/museo-bodoni/

Photo by Giovanni Hänninen

Parma, opens the new Bodoni Museum, the oldest printing museum in Italy

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