CICOGNA, EMANUELE ANTONIO. - The foremost scholar and bibliophile of his time, born in Venezia in 1789, he studied at the College for Nobles run by the Somaschi in Udine. Passionately devoted to scholarship and bibliophily, throughout his life he studied the history of Venezia, its political figures and writers, and collected manuscripts, incunabula, books, pamphlets by Venetian authors or concerning Venetian authors and subjects. The fruit of his long labours was the Cicogna library, now in the Museo Correr by his bequest, containing more than 40,000 printed volumes and 5,000 manuscript codices, as well as a fine group of publications, among which stand out the six large volumes of the Iscrizioni veneziane, published in Venezia from 1824 onwards, and the volume of the Saggio di bibliografia veneziana, published in Venezia in 1847 and continued in a second volume by G. Soranzo, published there in 1885. He died, almost eighty years old, in 1868, honoured by the three governments he had faithfully served—the Austrian, the French, and finally the Italian—consoled only by the thought of all that had been lost in those years for his Venezia.
Bibl. A. Sagredo, E. A. C., in Arch. st. ital., 3ª series, 7 (1868), pp. 208-21 (ibid., pp. 216-17, bibliography of his writings); for the Iscrizioni veneziane, V. lo stesso, in Arch. st. ital., 2ª series, 14 (1861), pp. 77-105; for the Bibliografia veneziana, and other writings: I. Neumann-Rizzi, Di alcuni scritti pubblicati da E. C. veneziano dall'anno 1808 al 1850, Venezia 1850. Luigi Berra