On the occasion of the sesquicentennial of the Gonnelli Antiquarian Bookshop, the Marucelliana Library of Florence hosts the exhibition “150 years of publishing activity of the Gonnelli Antiquarian Bookshop (1875–2025)”,
dedicated to the long editorial history of today’s antiquarian bookshop, auction house, publishing house and art gallery, one of the oldest and most prestigious cultural institutions in the city.
The exhibition, which can be visited until 19 December 2025, curated by Roberto Maini, Marco G. Manetti, Gloria Manghetti and Maria Beatrice Sanfilippo, with the collaboration and support of the Marucelliana Library, presents an extensive documentary journey through books that retrace a century and a half of publishing activity, from the first publications by Luigi Gonnelli in 1880 to the recent art and philology editions edited by Marco Manetti for Edizioni Gonnelli.
Through letters, purchase registers and archive documents, the exhibition highlights how the Marucelliana has constantly enriched itself thanks to purchases from the Gonnelli bookshop, testifying to a continuous collaboration from 1886 to the present day.
The exhibition therefore offers a selection of 46 works that document the evolution of Gonnelli’s editorial production: from the linguistic pamphlets of Giuseppe Manuzzi and the Dictionary of living Italian artists edited by Angelo De Gubernatis (1889), up to the art publications of Aldo Gonnelli and to the avant-garde editions promoted by
Ferrante Gonnelli, who was the editor and animator of the first Florentine Futurism. Among the rarest pieces also include the first edition of Orphic Songs by Dino Campana (1914) 
embellished with an autograph dedication by the poet to Ferrante Gonnelli, exhibited next to the manuscript de The longest daythe first editions of Ferrante Gonnelli with covers created by artists such as Giovanni Costetti, Ardengo Soffici, Tito Lessi and Guido Nincheri, the documentation on the relationship between Ferrante Gonnelli and artists and writers such as Soffici, Papini, Boccioni, and also dummy, printing tests, proofs, newspaper clippings, posters, etc. of printing of Comprehensive bibliography of Bodoni’s editions from 1927 by Cecil Brooks.
A section is dedicated to the editorial activity curated by Alfiero Manetti and Mariapia Gonnelli, in the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, with the birth of fundamental series such as “Papyrologica Florentina” and “Documenti inediti di cultura Toscana”, and to the contemporary activity promoted by Marco Manetti, who relaunched the brand with new scientific series and art catalogs edited by Emanuele Bardazzi.
The last publication closes the journey Fortunato Depero. Futurist projects (2025), edited by Maurizio Scudiero, catalog no. 12 of the “Quaderni Gonnelli”, which symbolically celebrates the historical relationship of the publishing house with Futurism, in an ideal bridge between past and present.
Carlo Franza