Cosimo de' Medici (1393-1464), a banker and ruler of Florence, spent great
sums in collecting and copying manuscripts. Vespasiano, a fifteenth-
century bookseller of Florence, has left us an interesting picture of the
work of Cosimo in founding (1444) the great Medicean library [16] at
Florence (R. 130) and of the difficulties of book collecting in the days
before the invention of printing.

[Illustration: FIG. 71. BOOKCASE AND DESK IN THE MEDICEAN LIBRARY AT
FLORENCE
(Drawn from a photograph)
This library was founded in 1444. It contains to-day about 10,000 Greek
and Latin manuscripts, many of them very rare, and of a few the only
copies known. The building was designed by Michael Angelo, and its
construction was begun in 1525. The bookcases are of about this date. It
shows the early method of chaining books to the shelves, and cataloguing
the volumes on the end of each stack.]

Under Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, who died in 1492, two
expeditions were sent to Greece to obtain manuscripts for the Florentine
library. Vespasiano also describes for us the books collected (c. 1475-80)
for the great ducal library at Urbino (R. 131), the greatest library in
the Christian world at the time of its completion, and the work of Pope
Nicholas V [17] (1447-1455) in laying the foundations (1450) for the great
Vatican Library at Rome (R. 132). Nicholas was an enthusiast in the new
movement, and formed a plan for the translation of all the Greek writers
into Latin. A later Pope, Leo X (1513-1521), planned to make Rome the
international center for Greek learning.

THE MOVEMENT EXTENDS TO OTHER COUNTRIES. Petrarch made his first great