Cover of Carrà, sei tavole a colori, showing a painting with a statue head.

Italian Art Collection

The Italian Art Collection at the Alexander Turnbull Library includes books and museum catalogues mostly in Italian.

Italian books and catalogues

The Italian Art Collection is made up of 171 titles, mostly relating to major Italian artists and principally published in Italy during the 1950s.

The collection also includes Italian museum catalogues. Most of the books are in Italian. It is part of the Turnbull Named Collections.

This collection is largely of unknown provenance; however, some of the books were donated by the Italian government to New Zealand in 1958.

See also the Montfort Trimble Italian Statecraft Collection

Cover of Pietro Aretino's Lettere sull’arte, very cleanly lettered.

Record page

Access items in this collection

Original items in this collection can be requested through the Library’s catalogue and consulted in the Katherine Mansfield Reading Room.

This collection is catalogued online and may be called up as a list on the National Library catalogue by searching ‘ItalArt’ using the ‘in call number’ search option in the NLNZ catalogue advanced search.

Cover of Carrà, sei tavole a colori, showing a painting with a statue head.

Record page

Feature image at top of page: Detail of cover of Carrà, sei tavole a colori by Carlo Carrà.