being convinced that the older served as a model for the more modern. Moreover, as I have often urged when speaking on this subject, no forms are so persistent as those of pieces of furniture, and I feel sure that in these libraries we have survivals of what was once in general use. Again, it must be remembered that Sixtus IV. was General of the Franciscans when elected Pope, and would of course be familiar with the houses of his Order, and, as the Library of
Fig. 3. Diagrammatic sketch of a bookcase with reader's desk and seat, in an English Library of the fifteenth century.
the Malatestas was attached to a Franciscan convent, it is most probable that he had visited it. We shall not be far wrong, I feel sure, in taking the general design of the seats at Cesena as a model for those of the Vatican.
I need not, for my present purpose, describe the desks at either Cesena or Florence minutely[1]. Their general scheme will be understood from the illustrations (figs. 4, 5), and from
- ↑ I have given an account of the library at Cesena in Camb. Ant. Soc. Proc. and Comm. viii. 2-6.
