Cantata Manuscripts in the Casanatense Library

Rome's Biblioteca Casanatense (I Rc) came into being through a bequest made in 1698 to the Dominican Order by Gerolamo Cardinal Casanate.1 The friars used the money to construct a research center in an upper floor of a large building directly behind their mother church, Santa Maria sopra Minerva. From the church, which was already four centuries old and the repository of holy relics and of art works by Lippi and Michelangelo, one could enter the library by a raised, covered walkway, now no longer in use. The original Dominican library survives intact, although visitors may enter it only with a staff member as a guide. Well worth seeing, the large oval room has bookshelves two stories high on all sides, surmounted by windows and a high arched ceiling. From every shelf hangs a leather dust apron that protects the books on the shelf below.