Book collections

The fund was donated by the widow of the art historian Aldo Bertini who held the chair of History of Medieval and Modern Art in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Turin from 1958 to 1975.

It has a total of approximately 3400 volumes.

This collection includes monographic works relating to Italian and foreign artists from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, with a specific predilection for Renaissance artists and for Michelangelo in particular, of whom the scholar was a distinguished specialist; exhibition catalogues; catalogs of Italian and foreign museums; works on ancient drawing; general reference works on Italian and foreign art; finally travel guides and Italian and foreign monuments. The section dedicated to Sotheby's auction catalogs is particularly large, especially that of Impressionist painters.

All the bibliographic material of the Bertini Fund can be searched via the online catalogue of the University of Turin.

The Guido M. Gatti fund it has a total of around 5400 volumes and reflects the research and interests of one of the leading Italian musicologists between 1910 and 1970.
The collection also reflects Italian musical culture of the Italian historical twentieth century. It was donated by the critic's wife and daughter to the Institute of Music History of the Faculty of Arts in 1974.
The fund is made up of:

- a section of monographs containing works of historiography and essays on the history of music and dance (MUSIC.G);
- a section composed of a small group of ancient books (MUSIC.G ANT);
- important collections of European magazines of criticism, history, musical and dance analysis (MUSIC.G magazines);
- the section of the 48 theater librettos of the Turin Theatre, of which Gatti was artistic director (MUSIC.GA T.D.T). 
        The theater booklets have been digitized and are visible via links from the respective tabs in the online catalog or on the platform DigitUniTo.   
- the section of opera librettos (MUSIC.GA MISC.L: cataloging with the SBN-musica procedure created by Letizia Di Bari with the

       contribution from the Institute for Musical Heritage in Piedmont).
       Question the Catalog Index by names of the opera librettos of the Gatti Fund
       Question the Catalog by authors of the text of the opera librettos of the Gatti Fund
       Question the Catalog for composers of the opera librettos of the Gatti Fund

- a section of excerpts (MUSIC.GA MISC.S)

One was also added to the Gatti fund collection of manuscript music of the end of the century 18th-early century XIX (copies of music by the composers Asioli, Anfossi, Paisiello, Haydn etc., attributable to the owner Teofila Billotti), found in the Department premises in 2008 (MUSIC.MANO MS). The material in the collection has been cataloged and is now searchable inOPAC. Further information and viewing of the collection catalog can be found below link.  

In the background there is also the"Guido M. Gatti" archive, composed mainly of archival materials (notes, minutes, photographs, etc.) present in the volumes at the time of donation.

Aggregated to the Gatti archive is the Marco Fini collection of documents relating to Riccardo Gualino (sub-fund "M. Fini"), donated to the library by Marco Fini (1934-2017) in January 2013. It consists of 3 preliminary series of typescripts, 8 series of minor material, 22 series of different materials (letters, photocopies, reproductions of documents on the well-known entrepreneur and patron and his relationship with art, cinema, collecting, music and theatre), 7 series of printed materials (clippings and three large format volumes of press reviews of articles on the activity of the Turin Theatre), 5 series of illustrations and photographs. It finds its place alongside the books that already belonged to Guido Gatti, who was artistic director of the Turin Theater (1925-1930), wanted by Gualino. 
An initial inventory is visible below link.
The collection is being reorganized and can be consulted by appointment.

Halfdan Rasmussen Fund (Centre of Studies for Nordic Entertainment)

The collection represents part of the library of Halfdan Rasmussen, Danish poet and writer (Copenhagen 1915 -2002), donated by his daughter, Iben Nagel Rasmussen.
Halfdan Rasmussen was one of the main writers of his generation: a supporter of politically engaged poetry and literature, he also collaborated with musicians and theater people.

The core of his library donated to the Centro Studi per lo Spettacolo Nordico is composed of volumes of poetry and fiction in the Nordic language by twentieth-century authors with some presences of nineteenth-century classics and thus constitutes one of the main sources in Italy for the study and research on Scandinavian literature. 

All the bibliographic material of the Rasmussen Fund can be searched via the online catalogue of the University of Turin.

The fund comes from a bequest from the heirs of the art historian Lionello Venturi, professor of Art History at the University of Turin from 1915 to 1931. 

Lionello Venturi's library was composed of three sections. The first included volumes on the history of modern art, the second on the history of contemporary art, the third on artistic literature and the history of art criticism. In the dismemberment of the precious Library following Venturi's death (1961), the modern art section was donated to the University of Perugia, the contemporary art section to the La Sapienza University of Rome; finally that of artistic literature and history of art criticism at the University of Turin. 

The Fund has a total of approximately 1600 volumes. It is a section that well documents Venturi's interests in this specific sector of study which culminated in the publication in 1936 of the History of Art Criticism.

In summary, the fund is divided into two parts. The first includes ancient sources and treatises of Italian artistic literature from the 15th century to the 19th century. The second, critical essays on the history of modern art criticism.

The artistic literature section includes important original Italian and foreign editions from the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century: a first edition of the Screw by Vasari; a sixteenth-century edition of Painting dialogue by the Venetian Lodovico Dolce, previously owned by the Bolognese historian Giovanni Pietro Cavazzoni Zanotti, which bears original pen drawings identified by Gianni Carlo Sciolla as the work of the eighteenth-century Bolognese designer Donato Creti; the original edition of the treaty of Lomazzo; the seventeenth-century edition of Rubens' treatise, numerous rare editions of French treatise writers between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Added to these are the main modern critical editions of the main writers of ancient artistic literature (from Baldinucci to Vasari; from medieval sources to Cicognara).

The section of theoretical essays of the twentieth century is particularly important because it brings together a large series of volumes published in the United States in the thirties and forties of the twentieth century, on the psychology of art purchased by Venturi during his American stay.

All the bibliographic material of the Venturi Fund can be searched via the online catalogue of the University of Turin.

Attached are the overall summary lists of ancient books and modern books and the report on the cataloging of the Venturi Fund (edited by Monica Perillo Marcone - 2007)

Nel 2008-2009 il Crut (Centro Regionale Universitario per il Teatro) acquisì il fondo dalla Associazione O.R.S.A., che a sua volta nel 2005 aveva ricevuto il materiale da Judith Malina - storica costitutrice del Living Theatre, compagnia teatrale nota a livello internazionale - e dal compagno di lei Hanon Reznikov.

Al momento della disattivazione del Crut, il fondo transitò nel patrimonio della Biblioteca di Arte, Musica e Spettacolo.

Il fondo, una parte discreta del quale è in copia fotostatica, si compone di manifesti, locandine, copioni, dossier, fotografie e altri vari materiali  relativi a spettacoli, seminari, laboratori, azioni, incontri.

Al momento il materiale non è consultabile, in quanto oggetto di una revisione inventariale e descrittiva. Per ulteriori informazioni rivolgersi all'indirizzo mail della biblioteca: <biblio.dams@unito.it>

The Stefano Ajani fund it was donated by Paolo Robotti in 2014 and is a collection of musical documents that belonged to Stefano Ajani, a scholar of publishing and Piedmontese musical civilization.

The collection is made up of three sections: a first section of approximately fifty monographs by Andrea Della Corte  (1883 - 1968), music critic and music historian, to whom Stefano Ajani was very close; a second section of different monographs (on Italian melodrama of the Baroque age, on music in Piedmont, on Italian composers of the modern age) and a third section of archival materials (draft articles by Stefano Ajani; press reviews of articles written by Andrea Della Corte for "La Stampa" during the 1930s and 1950s; clippings on composers and conductors of different eras and on Piedmontese musicians; a press review of musical articles from 1894).

The fund is being reorganized. To book the consultation write to biblio.dams@unito.it