On the history of the studiolo
Rooms set aside as places of private study made their first appearance outside the Curia or the court in the second half of the fourteenth century, with the burgeoning of Renaissance humanism. The earliest surviving example of such a room, and at the same time one of the most famous, is the studiolo belonging to the scholar and poet Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374). Over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as the upper middle classes, too, laid increasing claim to learning and cultivation, the studiolo became a natural part of a city palazzo.
Its function thereby usually went beyond that of a room dedicated purely to study: the studiolo often served simultaneously as a treasury or a setting in which to display a private collection, a family archive, an office in which to conduct business, and a place for religious contemplation and the enjoyment of art—with shifts in emphasis depending on individual needs and the nature of the space.
Its function thereby usually went beyond that of a room dedicated purely to study: the studiolo often served simultaneously as a treasury or a setting in which to display a private collection, a family archive, an office in which to conduct business, and a place for religious contemplation and the enjoyment of art—with shifts in emphasis depending on individual needs and the nature of the space.