In 1902, when J. Pierpont Morgan commissioned Charles Follen McKim — of the celebrated firm McKim, Mead & White — to design "a gem" of a building to house his encyclopedic collection of books, manuscripts, prints, and artifacts, the financier was so unrelenting in suggesting new aesthetic filigrees that he supposedly drove the oft-depressed architect to a nervous breakdown. It seems fitting, then, that the result of Morgan's obsession, the stunning Morgan Library & Museum (donated to the public in 1924), is now showcasing other bastions of meticulous architectural craftsmanship in the exhibition "Great European Libraries: Photograph by Massimo Listri."

A restoration of McKim's sumptuous marble villa on 36th Street was just completed in the fall, sprucing up its Henry Siddons Mowbray ceiling murals, buffing its walnut bookcases, and installing warm new lights to illuminate its many bound treasures. What a wonderful place, then, to marvel at Listri's large-format works, which are on view until Sunday. The nearly five-by-four foot photographs by the Florence-based artist document the great libraries of Europe — private, public, ecclesiastical, and academic havens of the 15th to 19th centuries — whose grand caverns, like the Morgan's, provide appropriately sacred shrines to the written word.

Morgan, who became a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1888 and served as its president for the decade leading to his death in 1913, is reported
to have said that "no price is too high for an object of unquestioned
beauty and known authenticity." To understand the banker's particular
love of collectible books, however, it is perhaps important to note that
they were the only art objects that did not carry severe import taxes
by the United States government in the early 20th century. 

View Slideshow: Unpacking the Libraries of Europe at J.P. Morgan's Villa

Within the Morgan are collected such rare finds as a copy of the Gutenberg Bible on vellum, the 1459 Psalter, and one of three known copies of the Constance Missal, along with specimens from the banking titan's extensive autograph manuscript collection, which features saucy and grumpy inscriptions by a teenage Elizabeth I and Balzac, respectively. Morgan's deep passion for the power and sanctity of a library is clearly shared by Listr — though perhaps not to the same extent. In 1907, during the great stock market panic of that year, Morgan famously locked a conclave of
bankers in his library until they agreed to a rescue plan for the flailing economy to douse the public pandemonium. 

Both the lovely refurbished New York institution and the photographs that grace its walls until the end of the week recall the sentiment of another bibliophile, Walter Benjamin, whose essay "Unpacking My Library" is printed in the theorist's 1955 collection "Illuminations." "Join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight after two years of darkness," Benjamin writes, "so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood — it is certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipation — which these books arouse in a genuine collector."

And while many are busy with fire-and-brimstone prophecies of the imminent extinction of the written word, "Great European Libraries" similarly resists the easy moodiness of the elegiac. Rather, the images, like the Morgan itself, remain a testament to the fact that books are imbued with anticipation — a forward-looking sensation. They have survived in their lush palaces for centuries, and will continue to reside there for many more.