What is a zibaldone?
Lately, I’ve been focussing on the history and use of the zibaldone or commonplace book.
A zibaldone is an Italian vernacular commonplace book. The word means a heap of things or miscellany in Italian. A commonplace book can be described as a register of continuous learning. They date back to antiquity and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas …
