Bibliothecae Angeli ad Nidum ab inclyta Brancatiorum familia constructae, et ab aliis deinceps auctae Catalogus, in quo singuli singularum artium, & scientiarum libri, qui in quavis fere lingua exstant, auctorumque cognomina ordine alphabetico recensentur

NAPLES' FIRST PUBLIC LIBRARY
Folio (328x224 mm). [4], 331, [1 blank], 8 pp. Engraved vignette on the title page. Woodcut ornaments and initials. Text printed in two columns. 20th-century boards, lettering piece on spine (slightly worn and rubbed). Browned and foxed throughout as most Neapolitan editions of the time. A good, genuine copy.
First edition of the first printed catalogue of the Brancacciana Library, which was Naples' first public library, located in the building adjacent to the church and hospital of Sant'Angelo a Nilo. The catalogue, which lists approximately 10,000 works, is arranged in alphabetical order by author's surname and is alphabetical by title for anonymous works. Each entry includes author, title, place and date of printing, format, and shelf mark.
The Biblioteca Brancacciana was established in Rome in the first half of the 1600s by Cardinal Francesco Maria Brancaccio (1592-1675) and later moved to Naples at his request. The cardinal owned a collection of around 20,000 books and stipulated in his will that they should be left to the city to form a public library after his death. His nephews, who were the executors of his will, oversaw the arrangement of the library in the building adjacent to the Church and Hospital of Sant'Angelo a Nilo. The Brancacciana, with an annual endowment of 800 gold scudi, was inaugurated in 1690, but, in order to complete the placement of the volumes and the furnishings, it was opened to the public in mid-1691. Some gifts of considerable importance brought further additions, such as that of Baron Andrea Gizio, a patrician from Benevento, who in 1700 donated an interesting collection of manuscripts and printed books on heraldry and genealogy (annotated by himself), and that of the Neapolitan jurist Domenico Greco, which arrived in 1738. In 1724, the Brancacciana obtained from Charles VI of Austria, then King of Naples, the right to receive a copy of everything printed in the city, a decree later confirmed by King Charles of Bourbon in 1742. In 1809, Joachim Murat placed the library under his protection, declared it royal, and assigned it an annual endowment for its increment. In 1896, the Brancacciana, which by then had reached 90,000 volumes, was annexed to the University Library and in 1922 it was finally incorporated into the National Library of Naples.
Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\SBLE\015570; Christie's, Bibliotheca Bibliographica Breslaueriana, New York, 22-23 March 2005, lot 828; S. Nicolini, Bibliografia degli antichi cataloghi a stampa di biblioteche italiane, Florence, 1954, pp. 47, no. 30.