Johannine Library

Johannine Library 
A baroque masterpiece
Founded by King John V of Portugal (1689 - 1750) it is one of the richest baroque libraries in Europe. Built between 1717 and 1728, this library is located in the most central place of the University of Coimbra, the Palace of Schools (Paço das Escolas). It was built to house the university library and has a collection of about 70 thousand volumes (prior to 1800), with a large nucleus of the Old Book.

The library space includes three rooms that communicate with each other through arches entirely covered with shelves. Chromatically, the first room has a gold decoration on a green background, the second one a gold decoration on a red background and the last one a gold decoration on a black background.

The architecture of this magnificent space focuses on the figure of the Illuminist monarch: the portrait of King John V of Portugal, placed on the wall at the top of the building, in the three rooms, functions as a "vanishing point", like an altar of knowledge in an allegory of the figure of the King.

In addition to the many works of New Christian teachers at the University of Coimbra, this library houses one of the most important treasures of the Jewish heritage in Portugal, the Coimbra Bible, commonly known as the Abravanel Bible.

A magnificent and extremely rare specimen of the illuminated Hebrew bible of the second half of the 15th century, the Abravanel Bible was wrongly related to this important Lisbon philosopher due to an incomplete reading of the possession and genealogical notes which are inscribed in the very support of the text - in fact, the figure of Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) is fundamental to understand the culture, philosophy and Sephardic theology of the late 15th century, and this thinker was a very active figure in the cultural strengthening of his community, especially by creating a library and a religious school in Lisbon, and it was natural to associate his name, almost mythical, to this unique book.

This illuminated Bible is one of the most important examples that proves the wealth and prosperity of the art of illumination in the second half of the 15th century, when printing was already beginning to develop through Gutenberg's technique. Certainly produced by the so-called School of Lisbon, with strong influences from the School of Andalusia, this magnificent volume recovers elements of decoration with a clear Islamic flavour, of a horizon of interculturality and of interface between the Jewish, Islamic and Christian monotheisms.

The decoration favours vegetal and geometric motifs, whether in decoration or micrography. Indeed, the Coimbra Bible, or Abravanel, is still a magnificent example of this style of writing and decoration where drawing is achieved through writing so small that, when not attentive to it, it seems to be a simple trace. The consultation of the works requires prior scheduling.