Miseria e nobiltà di due bibliotecari del Settecento italiano: Tommaso Verani e Carlo Carlini tra professione e erudizione

The paper aims to analyze the correspondence between Carlo Carlini (Cremona 1730-Saronno 1789), custodian of the Royal Library of Brera, and the Augustinian Tommaso Verani (Turin 1729-Chieri 1803), who was archivist and librarian in several convents of the Observant Congregation of Lombardy. Their exchange of letters began in the spring of 1784, on advice of Girolamo Tiraboschi, and continued until the death of the Braidense librarian. This documentation, kept at the Central Civic Library of Turin and the Historical Archive of the Astronomical Observatory of Brera, is particularly useful to shed light on the human and professional affairs of both librarians, who experimented in the forefront the movements of the books of the late eighteenth century, including international collecting, acquisition at the State property of well-known private libraries and dispossession of the book assets of religious orders. The correspondence between the two also allows us to appreciate the methodological reflections that emerged from the daily work in the library and from the discussion on the cataloguing and the organization of library collections. Two particularly significant and still unpublished examples of their writings are presented here.