Donazione "Putti" - Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli - Bologna

The collections of the institute, situated in the former Olivetan monastery of San Michele in Bosco built in 1364 but going back to the 12th century, include the scientific libraries to which the Putti Donation pertains. The collection, the bequest of the famous orthopaedic surgeon Vittorio Putti (1880–1940), is organised in the former apartment of the conventual prior: it includes manuscripts, incunabula, more than 200 16th-century works and over a thousand ancient books of medicine. The collection of surgical instruments, ranging from antiquity to the preindustrial age, is fascinating, as are the series of over 700 portraits and autographs of famous physicians, an armillary sphere dated 1528, a globe by Greuter dated 1636, and two marvellous anatomical figurines from the 16th century. The institute’s important printed assets, which includes over 20,000 volumes (monographs and orthopaedic reviews), are in the rooms of the old Olivetan library, designed for the prior Taddeo Pepoli by Giangiacomo and frescoed by Domenico Maria Canuti, a pupil of Guido Reni, and the Swiss painter Haffner in 1677–80.