Laudator Temporis Acti

J.K. Newman, "Philologists or Philosophers?" Illinois Classical Studies 27/28 (2002-2003) 197-212 (at 200):

A caption to a scene painted before 1590 on the wall of the Sistine salon in the Vatican Library reads:

ATTALICI REGES MAGNIS PHILOLOGIAE DULCEDINIBUS INDUCTI EGREGIAM
PERGAMI BIBLIOTHECAM AD COMMUNEM DELECTATIONEM INSTITUUNT.

The Attalid kings, attracted by the great charms of philology, establish a distinguished Library at Pergamum for the common enjoyment.

Dulcis is often a much stronger term in Latin than mawkish English translations allow. What does Dido imply, for example, in her dulce at Aen. IV.318? Dulcedinibus here reminds one of an image in the opening of Marlowe's Faustus (v. 34): "Sweet Analytics, 'tis thou hast ravished me!" Delectatio recalls the Renaissance ideal of dilettantismo and of course Dante's noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto....¹¹ Nowadays, a scholar would be described as a "dilettante" only to be dismissed. When did that change occur? Was it good that it should happen?

¹¹ Inf. 5.127, the Paolo and Francesca episode. Readers will remember Eduard Fraenkel's application of this passage to the genesis of a philological venture (Kleine Schriften [Rome 1964] II. 339).

The caption is adapted from Vitruvius 7.pr.4. Was the scene painted before 1590? See Thomas Hendrickson, Ancient Libraries and Renaissance Humanism: The De Bibliothecis of Justus Lipsius (Boston: Brill, 2017), p. 23:

In 1610-1611, Paul V refurbished two halls adjoining the library, the Sale Paoline, with frescoes painted by Giovan Battista Ricci da Novara, following an iconographic program designed by Baldassarre Ansidei (and perhaps Alessandro Rainaldi).⁶⁶ In the first hall, a cycle of ancient libraries faces a cycle of popes improving the Vatican library. The very first fresco depicts Ozymandias founding a library in Egypt, the second the Attalid kings and the Pergamene Library, the third Asinius Pollio and the Atrium of Liberty, the fourth Trajan and his library, and finally Matthias Corvinus and the library at Buda.

⁶⁶ Cirulli (1997: 141-147) provides background on the frescoes of the Sale Paoline.

Cirulli is Beatrice Cirulli, "L'affresco della riforma dei tribunali nelle Sale Paoline della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: una proposta di lettura," Roma moderna e contemporanea 5 (1997) 141-153, which is unavailable to me. I can't find a reproduction of the Ricci's fresco representing the Attalid kings and the Pergamene Library on the World Wide Web, but according to Hendrickson it features the inscription adapted from Vitruvius.