The Invention of the Renaissance: The Humanist, the Prince and the Artist.

The Renaissance was a decisive moment in the emergence of a new relationship with knowledge and writing, expressed in a series of practices and visual representations. The concept of the library was then renewed. Conceived as both an instrument for the preservation and expansion of knowledge, it embodied scholarship and showcased it.
Humanist culture profoundly renewed the relationship with knowledge in the 14th and 15th centuries. Starting with the founding figure of Petrarch, a new kind of scholar who advocated the study of ancient texts with an ethical aim, this catalogue seeks to show how this ideal was realized through the work of collecting manuscripts of classical authors from Antiquity and transmitting them through copies and translations.
This literary culture is complemented by a visual culture nourished by a passion for Antiquity and aims to magnify the text by developing a new decorative vocabulary, both in illuminated manuscripts and in bindings (antique architectural decorations, medal motifs copied from antique medals, decorations for triumphal arches, etc.). It will also lead to a new art of portraiture, taking up the humanist theme of the "great man" and illustrating the faith in the moral perfectibility of the individual thanks to education and literature.
Finally, this humanist model gives a new luster to the institution that is the library, itself called upon to be both the place where this knowledge is gathered and the place where it appears in all its glory, thus fulfilling a practical function and a symbolic function.