Biblioteca Marciana

A topographical cabinet card showing the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (English: National Library of St Mark's) in Venice. Built in the sixteenth century, the Renaissance building is one of the earliest surviving public manuscript depositories in the country, holding one of the greatest classical texts collections in the world. The library is named after St Mark, the patron saint of Venice. It is not to be confused with the State Archive of the Republic of Venice, which is housed in a different part of the city.

Photographed by Carlo Ponti of Venice.

Carlo Ponti studied photography in Paris in the 1840s. In 1852, he obtained a license to produce and sell photographs in Venice. He ran the first of the big photographic businesses in the city, producing albums with architectural views of great artistic sensitivity. He was also the inventor of camera lenses suitable for panoramic photography.