This contribution offers a reflection on the achievements of the ‘MAGIC’ project in the field of Digital Humanities. It outlines the results obtained with regard to the methodology for the digitization of manuscripts and early printed books (incunabula and sixteenth-century editions), and examines how digital image enhancement has impacted philological research.
In particular it looks at the use of computer-vision algorithms designed to reduce bleed-through (the migration of ink from recto to verso) and asks how these tools can improve the readability of marginal notes that are otherwise difficult to decipher, opening new perspectives for the study of textual transmission. The case study will be primarily on «postillati» ‒ copies containing annotations, marginalia, and ownership notes ‒ belonging to a collection examined within the project, namely the substantial Torraca Collection preserved at the Accademia Pontaniana (Via Mezzocannone 8, Naples).
The ‘MAGIC’ project was carried out through a collaboration between the Department of Humanities and the Department of Physics “Ettore Pancini” of the Università degli Studi di Napoli «Federico II», and resulted in the creation of an operational prototype of a ‘Smart Library’: an infrastructure capable of combining the material preservation of digitized items, scientific analysis, specialized metadata creation, and open digital access, thus reconfiguring the library from a place of custody into a dynamic instrument for the production, integration, and dissemination of knowledge.
The digital catalogue has been available since December 2023 at https://www.magic.unina.it/ and is continuously updated.
Digitization activities focused on three main corpora: the illuminated manuscripts of Dante’s Commedia; the incunabula and sixteenth-century books of the Accademia Pontaniana and of the Society of Sciences, Letters and Arts of Naples; and the Copia lettere and Copia dispacci of the Royal Palace of Caserta.
As mentioned above, our case study concerns the Torraca Collection of the Accademia Pontaniana, consisting of 192 editions from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (6 incunabula and 186 sixteenth-century editions). The corpus is highly heterogeneous: it includes mainly works of Latin literature (59) and Italian literature (43), followed by history (33), philosophy (12), religion (10), and law (6).
The volumes were digitized using high-resolution planetary scanners, followed by image processing (adjustment of saturation, brightness, color balance, and verification of image integrity) in accordance with IFLA guidelines for the handling of rare books. The master files, produced in TIFF format with JPG derivatives, were converted into F.I.T.S. Thanks to macro-data processing, and through pixel classification and spatial coherence–based filtering, it was possible to increase text legibility by reducing the aforementioned bleed-through effect and thus to recover glosses and marginal commentaries, with significant implications for philological analysis and for the description of layers of use.
A specific case is presented: a copy of the edition Opera de lo elegante poeta Thibaldeo ferrarese, Venice, Bindoni, Francesco Bindoni & Maffeo Pasini, 1535, which contains a small series of annotations by a Petrarchan scholar.
Bibliography
G. Petrella, Scrivere sui libri. Breve guida al libro a stampa postillato, Roma, Salerno editrice, 2022.
G. Petrella, Patrimonio “diffuso”. Gli incunaboli delle biblioteche di Napoli. Storia e catalogo, Roma-Padova. Editrice Antenore, 2025.
S. Sbordone, Le edizioni del ‘400 e del ‘500 nell’Accademia Pontaniana di Napoli, in «Quaderni dell’Accademia Pontaniana», 51, 2007.