The Biblioteca Estense (English: Estense Library), was the family library of the marquises and dukes of the House of Este. The exact date of the library's birth is still under speculation, however it is known for certain that the library was in use during the fourteenth century. Whilst it was greatly enriched during the Renaissance years in Ferrara, the library was concretely established in Modena in the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is known as one of the most important libraries in Italy. The library is located, along with the Galleria Estense directly below its collection of artworks, in the Palazzo dei Musei (Piazza Sant'Agostino 337) in Modena.
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Biblioteca Estense in the context of Cantino planisphere
The Cantino planisphere or Cantino world map is a manuscript Portuguese world map preserved at the Biblioteca Estense in Modena, Italy. It is named after Alberto Cantino, an agent for the Duke of Ferrara, who successfully smuggled it from Portugal to Italy in 1502. It measures 220 x 105 cm.
The planisphere is the earliest surviving map showing Portuguese geographic discoveries in the east and west and is particularly notable for portraying a fragmentary record of the Brazilian coast, which the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral explored in 1500, the southern coast of Greenland, studied in the late 1490s, and the African coast of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans with remarkable accuracy and detail.
View the full Wikipedia page for Cantino planisphereBiblioteca Estense in the context of Modena Codex
The Modena Codex (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, α.m.5,24; often referred to with the siglum Mod A) is an early fifteenth-century Italian manuscript of medieval music. The manuscript is one of the most important sources of the ars subtilior style of music. It is held in the Biblioteca Estense library in Modena.
The precise origin of Mod A is controversial, with Pavia/Milan, Pisa and Bologna all being proposed. Firm evidence of ownership of the book by the Biblioteca Estense only occurs in the early nineteenth century, although a 1495 catalogue of the Este family library in Ferrara might refer to it. It was rediscovered by the philologist Antonio Cappelli in 1868.
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