This part of the Library is named after the administrator Giuseppe Bossi, who, in all respects can be considered its founder. Initially a place only for teachers and oriented to support a classicist education based on the conveyance of architectural rules (the sixteenth and seventeenth century editions of the essays of Vitruvius, Selio, Palladio, Vignola) and of models (descriptions of ancient monuments) extended at a later stage to the Lombard Renaissance, to medieval and moorish art and to new grammars of Ornament (Girault de Prangey, Gruner, Owen Jones), the Library, after the creation in 1863 of the teaching chair in the History of Art, became increasingly more a training ground for connoisseurs and art historians as well as for architects-restorers and museum curators, many of whom would then go on to leave their study materials to the Accademia, as for example Giovanni Morelli in 1891 (649 works) and Gustavo Frizzoni in 1919 (829 works).Over time, important personal libraries such as those of the painter Francesco Hayez, the marquis Filippo Ala Ponzone (approximately 4,300 volumes, two thirds of which are deposited in the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense) and Camilo Boito (1265 volumes) were donated, enriched with historical-artistic collections, exhibition catalogs, museum and private collections, guides and periegetic literature. In the post unification decades considerable effort was made to update through the subscription of French, German and English art periodicals.
The historical collection has, since its foundation until around 1945, consolidated a patrimony of 16,800 volumes, the catalog of which is now being digitized.
Consultation is subject to written request to bibliotecastorica@accademialibreria.milano.it and upon agreement to an appointment.