In the collective imagination, Margaret of Savoy embodied an exemplary model of sovereignty, in which the awareness and pride of belonging to one of the oldest royal houses in Europe were combined with closeness to the people, interest in the needs of the most needy and a lively passion for culture. In this regard, the conspicuous collection of books collected by the sovereign over a lifetime testifies to the fascination that the intellectual world exerted on her, as well as to the eclectic taste of a curious woman, a lover of Italian and European literature, the figurative arts, poetry, music and the most innovative aspects of the society of her time.
During 2022, the entire book collection – consisting of 13,560 volumes – was the subject of an ambitious new project, promoted by the National Library in collaboration with Culturalpe s.c., aimed at the preservation, enhancement and free use of the collection through the inventory revision and computer cataloguing of all the works included in it, with a view to their transfer from the deposits to the Library’s exhibition hall, with a permanent arrangement designed to promote the widest and most cross-cutting knowledge possible. Through unprecedented narrative lines and the aid of multimedia apparatus, visitors are invited to walk among the beautiful shelves of the collection, in which the books respect the catalographic order desired by the sovereign and, thanks to the creation of special display libraries, they can see several dozen volumes on display, thus discovering the literary tastes and cultural relations that Margaret knew how to cultivate throughout her life.
What is most striking is the enormous potential of the material: not only because of the richness of numerous bindings made especially for the queen and the refinement of the guard papers protecting the texts, sometimes decorated with daisies in homage to her name, but also the practical use of such a collection. In fact, alongside the precious texts are numerous “common” books that might be found in the average reader’s library. It is in fact a collection that has been carefully read by the queen, as evidenced by the numerous handwritten notes in which, in her own hand, she specifies that she wants to take them with her to Bordighera, for example, or that she has begun to read the book or even that she finds it interesting. And so autograph notes, dedications, bindings, along with ex libris (in fact, those of Victor Emmanuel II, Umberto I, and his daughter-in-law Elena also appear in the Library) help the scholar and the contemporary visitor to delve into and revive the myth of a sovereign who knew how to unite Italy from North to South and from top to bottom, from literary circles to crowds.
The exhibition, divided into thematic nuclei, proposes some in-depth themes and features more than 120 volumes that belonged to the first queen of Italy.
The books are flanked by a number of period objects and a bust portraying Margaret, specially made through 3D scanning technology by Roberto Rossetti and Alberto Braghieri, with supervision and retouching by Gabriele Garbolino Rù, on a copy of the original preserved at the Royal Museums of Turin – Royal Palace.
