This is a study of the study, the personal workspace where we think, read, and write. I argue for the following: Transhistorically, our inner lives are shaped by our interior spaces. Historically, the studiolo was created in the Renaissance. Conceptually, the studiolo is a pharmakon, a cure or poison for the soul. In its highest aspirations, the studiolo, as developed by humanists from Petrarch to Machiavelli to Montaigne, is a sanctuary for self-cultivation. Bookishness was elevated into a saintly virtue in the iconology of Mary in the Annunciation and St. Jerome in his Study paintings. But, when you spend too much time in the studiolo, bibliophilia turns to bibliomania, which spawns delusions and solipsism. The fates of Panagruel, Don Quixote, Prospero, and Doctor Faustus are shaped by the books they greedily consume. If the sleep of reason produces monsters [reference to Francisco de Goya’s print], the dream of the Renaissance library produced modernity. (ix)

The two parts of my book—bibliophilia and bibliomania—have hopefully revealed how the studiolo as media and infrastructure is a pharmakon—at once remedy, poison, scapegoat. The intellect expands or atrophies or combusts in such a circumscribed space. The great Faustian themes of alienation, restlessness, and disenchantment are diseases that the studiolo can cure—or exacerbate. … Petrarch and Machiavelli and Montaigne found nourishment from with their studies. Rabelais shows us the transition from medieval to early modern epistemology. Don Quixote, at great cost and after many adventures, finally recognizes his bibliomania. So too Prospero. His experience on the island taught him what no study could. (236)

I rather enjoyed this wide-ranging “historical investigation into the personal library” and wanted to pass on a little about it. In addition to the quotes above, you can visit the linked publisher page and read the Introduction. (Note that study, studio and studiolo, the Italian diminutive of studio, are often interchangeably used.)

Hui starts with the tradition of monastic cells as places to read sacred texts, then focuses on Renaissance humanists who created private spaces for secular reading and study. The Augustinian model of reading as a dialogue with God evolves into making the study “a personal site of self-care,” one not associated with any church, political, or university institution. While studios weren’t just for solitude and others could visit for conversation and refreshment, the emphasis for owners was for personal use and privacy. It’s interesting to note that the three authors mentioned in the opening quote’s paragraph lived in some sort of exile at times, whether officially imposed or self-chosen, and a study (even though more of an escape from society) provided a type of reprieve in order to ‘converse’ with ancient or current authors.

That an individual’s studio played an important consideration when designing a household had long been detailed in building guides, from Vitruvius’ book on architecture (1st century BC) through to Leon Battista Alberti’s On the Art of Building (15th century).

At some point, bookishness came to be associated with sanctity. When Renaissance painters visualized the intellectual and spiritual virtues they wished to portray, books were usually included in their portraits. Religious leaders, notably cardinals and popes, set up studios and employed librarians and bookfinders. Along with the growth of the library came an increase in library staff: “clerics, scholars, canon lawyers, artists, binders, bookmakers, illuminators, and copyists.” Not to mention the development in government and religious censors.

The chapter on Montaigne was probably my favorite of the book. Hui asks the question “How to build a library?” and provides ten attempts at an answer using Montaigne as his guide. He notes he is indebted to Sara Bakewell’s approach in How to Live; or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer. Some answers Hui expands on include don’t have a thesis, buy as many books as you can, look out your window, and read yourself in others. 

The second section moves from looking at the history of bibliophilia to the literature of bibliomania in the characters mentioned in the opening quote: “Though the topos of multitude librorum—too many books—existed already in antiquity, the proliferation of texts brought on by the printing press was unprecedented. That the La Manchan gentleman, Milanese duke, and Wittenberg professor all were driven to bibliomania suggest their inability to cope with the cognitive inundation of their very bookish culture. They show the tragedy of reading too much, and too wrongly.”

Hui looks at each of these, highlighting some of the mistakes they make, such as Don Quixote replacing reality in his mind with the imaginary world located in his library. Books bewitch the Don, Prospero, and Faustus (using Marlowe’s play): “One goes mad; one is exiled; the last is damned. At the end, Don Quixote renounces his folly, Prospero seeks forgiveness, and Faustus, without success, tries to abjure.” Hui provides my favorite line when looking at Faustus: “While he thinks he stands at the summit of an illustrious career, on closer scrutiny his words resemble more the rantings of a disgruntled undergraduate filling out his end-of-semester course evaluation.”

As Hui points out, the word ‘study’ can be a verb or a place, but the verb is ambivalent as to what exactly is studied, whether for good or not. When done right, finding a space of your own to read and think can help one better engage in life with others. Hui includes a bibliographic essay, which I wish more authors would provide.

This has been a very quick run-through, but hopefully I’ve included enough for you to evaluate if you want to read this book in your study.

On the importance of a studio or study

• From Petrarch’s letters on the magical space of the library
• From Machiavelli’s letter to Francesco Vettori of 10 December 1513
• Gilles Corrozet in Blasons Domestiques “A house which likewise is not in possession of a fruitful study, is lacking (to tell the truth) a great benefit. And contains nothing useful to that mind, for in truth, solitary study is the nourishment of the mind, at least if it relishes the delights of reading, and there is no meat as pleasing to the body as study is fitting to the spirit: but what greater pleasure could one have, than to teach, to learn & to know!” [Translation by Simon Jervis in Furniture History 25 (1989), pages 32-33]  
• Montaigne’s inscribed credo on his tower (and later addition): In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, his birthday, Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will complete this abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure.
• A catalogue of beam inscriptions in Montaigne’s tower