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The Marino Parenti Autographic Collection is one of the many branches in which the archival part of the Parenti Collection is divided, a bibliographical and archival set, but also graphic and photographic, reached the Library in 1966 thanks to the mediation of prof. Luigi Firpo. The great bibliophile, bibliographer and publisher Marino Parenti died in 1963, and a few years later the entire collection was purchased by the Province of Turin, because it was considered consistent with the original address of the institution, that is to document together with the history of Piedmont, the Italian history of the Resurgence period. The autograph collection was created by Parenti through occasional finds on the antique market, to which he was not unfamiliar even professionally. These are largely letters, characterized by the particular importance, in some cases, of the authors or recipients, without the pretence of constituting significant sets useful for a comprehensive reconstruction of individual biographical or other events. In this collection the taste of the trouvaille, the external value, the curiosity, the rarity prevails instead.
It's a review of names a bit decontextualized because aimed at forming a sort of random gallery of famous people, politics, letters and art. But they are in any case notable personalities: among the main ones include Graziadio Ascoli, Daniello Bartoli, Vittorio Bersezio, Leonardo Bistolfi, Arrigo Boito, Massimo Bontempelli, Antonio Canova, Luigi Capuana, Giosuè Carducci, Carlo Cattaneo, Camillo Benso di Cavour, Collodi, Crispi, Gabriele d'Annunzio, Edmondo De Amicis, Alexandre Dumas, Antonio Fogazzaro, Ugo Foscolo, Pietro Giordani, Victor Hugo, Alessandro Manzoni, Giulio Mazarino, Giuseppe Mazzini, Vincenzo Monti, Giovanni Papini, Giovanni Pascoli, Ippolito Pindemonte, Luigi Pirandello, Marco Praga, Giovanni Prati, Giacomo Puccini, Stecchetti, as well as some popes and rulers. The archive was inventoried in 1967 by Aldo di Ricaldone, with criteria that were generally maintained in the revision carried out for the computerisation of the inventory itself (2020), revision that was limited to updating obsolete inventory and lexical formulas, without intervening in the organization of the material and its description. The index of names has been updated to the current numbering.
A part of the material, identified in the inventory by a footnote, is not physically present in the Collection, but is kept in the Rare Relatives section of the library, in the books and pamphlets in which it has been placed since its origins.
- Archive inventory (pdf 278 KB)