The Camaldolese monk Fortunato Mandelli (1728-1797) is perhaps best known
as the librarian of the monastery of San Michele in Isola in the second half of the
18th century. He is hardly ever mentioned in scholarship studies on collecting
and erudite culture in Venice in the same period, and this absence is even more
striking in studies about the history of numismatic collecting in the second half of
the 18th century. However, both the protagonists/collectors and the scholars of
that time were fully aware of the fact that numismatics was central to Mandelli’s
work and interests. The present contribution, therefore, intends to rediscover the
numismatic writings of this important Italian scholar of the Age of Enlightenment.
