Ultimo aggiornamento 5 July 2023
Over the course of its life, the institute has boasted many different logos, all with visual contents linked to the philosophy of attention to the book heritage and its protection.
At the birth of the Royal Institute of Pathology of the Book Attilio Giuliani (Rome 1899-Milazzo 1975), master of xylography, created two images, one in which appears the phoenix rising from the fire and bearing the motto of the Institute “Post fata resurgo” , the other in which appear, separated by the fasces, two pages of a book, one of which bears the incipit of the Canticle of the Creatures.
This second logo was also used for the Bulletin of the Royal Institute of Book Pathology until 1946.
After the war and the birth of the Italian Republic, the Institute changed its name, becoming the Institute of Book Pathology and Giuliani’s logo was replaced by the one created by the painter and engraver Tarquinio Bignozzi (Rome 1885-Rome 1967) which shows the motto of the Institute “Post fata resurgo” and summarizes the skills of the various laboratories: the books in order on the shelf for humanistic research, the microscope for biology and the retort for chemistry, all applied to damaged books, shown in the foreground , ready for restoration. This too appears in the Bulletin of the Institute until 1968, when it is slightly modified and remains in use until 1972.
A further change of name of the Institute, which became Istituto Centrale, led to the birth of a new logo, which in 1978 appears in the Bulletin and shows only the four letters that make up the acronym ICPL.
In the second half of the 1990s, the contemporary Piedmontese artist Gaudenzio Nazario created a new logo for the Institute.
The image had to appear as if it were a line watermark and shows a book on the front cover of which the letters of the acronym of the Institute cross. The shafts of the I and L engage in an arrow that strikes a silver fish, symbolizing the Institute’s fight against one of the possible damages done to the books.
This logo, which appears in two versions, one with the name of the Institute in full, the other only with the drawing, remains in force until 2007, when a new change of name of the Institute, which becomes Istituto Centrale per il Restauro and the Conservation of the Archival and Librarian Heritage, requires a change in the graphic design.
The new 2008 logo features a tree, which symbolizes rebirth and is also linked to wood, a very common raw material for making paper.
Since then, until 2019, the image has always remained identical, but the way of making the name of the Institute explicit has changed.
2020 sees something of a throwback: a phoenix rises from an open book, flanked by a retort and a microscope. The Institute’s motto of the Post fata resurgo is back.
