CICLOGNA, EMANUELE ANTONIO

CICOGNA, EMANUELE ANTONIO. — Prince of scholars and bibliophiles of his time, born in Venice in 1799, he studied at the College of Nobles run by the Somaschi Fathers in Udine. Passionate about erudition and bibliophilia, he devoted his entire life to studying the history of Venice, its political figures and writers, and to collecting manuscripts, incunabula, books, pamphlets by or about Venetian authors and subjects. The fruit of his long labor was the Cicogna Library, now housed in the Museo Correr as a bequest, rich in over 40,000 printed volumes and 5,000 manuscript codices, and a fine body of publications, among which stand out the six large volumes of Venetian Inscriptions, published in Venice from 1824, and the volume of the Saggio di bibliografia veneziana, published in Venice in 1847 and continued in a second volume by G. Soranzo, published there in 1885. He died almost eighty years old in 1868, honored by the three governments he had faithfully served—the Austrian, the French, and finally the Italian—grieving only for all that had been lost to his beloved Venice in those years.