NEW YORK— An Italian €100,000 ($126,000) coffee-table book — or rather, a book the size of a coffee table — is making its U.S. public debut at the New York Public Library through Monday, reports the New York Times. The 61-pound handcrafted book, titled Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano, or “Michelangelo: The Learned Hand,” is an Italian celebration of the artist’s work and the result of a collective effort by scholars, artists, and artisans employing Renaissance techniques over the course of several months.

Published by FMR, a fine-art publication house in Italy whose charitable foundation donated this copy to the New York library, the book is intended to be “a provocation in the age of the Internet,” said FMR president Marilena Ferrari. “It is important to reaffirm that books are not disappearing.”

Referencing the Renaissance, the book’s cover is adorned with a bas-relief of Michelangelo’s Madonna of the Steps sculpted from the same white marble, from one of the Polvaccio quarries in Carrera, Italy, that Michelangelo used himself. The binding is covered in red velvet from the Italian workshop that has supplied stage curtains to the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala in Milan, and the book’s photographs and plates of the Sistine Chapel are printed on luxurious pure-cotton paper produced in Italy.

Paul LeClerc, president of the library, said “It is one of the single greatest books made in the last 100 years. There is nothing else at this level.”

Next week, the NYPL’s copy will “join the first copy of the Gutenberg Bible brought to the Americas” in the library’s rare book division, according to Michael Inman, the library’s curator of rare books.

So far, 33 of a planned limited edition of 99 copies of the book have been created, and 20 of those have sold, Ferrari said.