Borromeo family

Prefazioni di Cinzia Cremonini e Paologiovanni Maione
Collana “Storie d’Europa” diretta da C. Cremonini (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) e Antonio Álvarez Ossorio Alvariño (Universidad Autonoma di Madrid) – pubblicato da EDUCatt Milano – ISBN 978-88-9335-815-6, 290 pagine

Quando Carlo IV Borromeo Arese giunge nel 1710 a Napoli, una città complessa e tra le più importanti della monarchia degli Austrias, l’Europa è lacerata dalla Guerra di successione spagnola, che modificherà gli equilibri internazionali. Borromeo Arese, nato nel 1657, appartiene a una delle più importanti famiglie lombarde, e, grazie alle indubbie abilità politiche, alle entrature acquisite e ai due matrimoni con due famiglie “papali”, quali gli Odescalchi e i Barberini, ha un ruolo centrale a Milano quale leader della fazione filoimperiale.
Nei tre anni di permanenza a Napoli si scontra con una realtà molto diversa da quella milanese, e il volume ricostruisce luci e ombre del suo viceregno, aiutando a comprendere la vicenda umana e politica vissuta dal conte, desideri e aspirazioni spesso frustrate dai molti problemi che si trovò ad affrontare in un momento così complesso della storia europea.
Se Borromeo Arese non seppe adattare i principi che da sempre avevano guidato le sue azioni alla diversità del contesto in cui si trovò a operare e alla situazione politica che stava ormai cambiando inesorabilmente, da aristocratico pienamente consapevole del suo ruolo seppe interpretare il complesso cerimoniale che vedeva il viceré, vero e proprio alter ego del sovrano, partecipare a un fitto calendario di processioni e feste religiose, compleanni e onomastici, incontri e visite di cortesia, passeggi e cavalcate, spettacoli musicali e divertimenti, ricostruiti con minuzia di particolari grazie alle “Memorie giornali”, una sorta di diario redatto dal maestro di casa, e interamente trascritto in Appendice.

When Charles IV Borromeo Arese arrived in Naples in 1710, a complex city and one of the most important of the Austrias monarchy, Europe was torn by the War of the Spanish Succession, which will change the international balance. Borromeo Arese, born in 1657, belongs to one of the most important Lombard families, and, thanks to his undoubted political skills, the acquired entrances and the two marriages with two "papal" families, such as the Odescalchi and the Barberini, has a central role in Milan as leader of the pro-imperial faction.
In the three years of his stay in Naples he clashed with a very different reality, and the volume reconstructs the lights and shadows of his viceroyalty, helping to understand the human and political story experienced by the count, desires and aspirations often frustrated by the many problems that he found himself facing such a particularly complex moment in European history.
If Borromeo Arese did not know how to adapt the principles that had always guided his actions to the diversity of the context in which he found himself operating and to the political situation that was inexorably changing, as an aristocrat fully aware of his role he was able to interpret the complex ceremonial: the viceroy, a true alter ego of the sovereign, participated in a busy calendar of processions and religious festivals, birthdays and name days, dating and courtesy visits, walks and rides, musical performances and entertainment, reconstructed with meticulous detail thanks to the "Memorie giornali ”, a sort of diary drawn up by the house master, and entirely transcribed in the Appendix.

Giberto Borromeo’ artistic homage to pope Urban VIII
The study of the artistic gift offered by Giberto Borromeo to Urban VIII enables us to get acquainted with a work of great refinement, and at the same time to reflect on the use of images in baroque political language. Pope Barberini, the addressee of the gift, is celebrated as the holder of Supremum Regimen, that is of the union of spiritual and temporal power. Giberto, the giver and the representative of the whole Borromeo family, underlines his own credentials as a loyal upholder of the pope and of his double authority in order to lay claim to preferment, in other words to a cardinal’s hat which several years later will be the crowning achievement of his career in the Church. If the purpose of the initiative is obvious, its realization was none the less slower than expected, partly because of the difficulties attending any lofty enterprise, partly as a consequence of the extreme care with which Giberto chose his cooperators, who had to be associated with the Roman Jesuits but also clients of the Barberini. Leone Santi, Sforza Compagnoni, Andrea Camassei, Giovanni Luigi Valesio and Greuter were selected because they could translate in words and images the political aspirations of Urban VIII as leader of the world by God’s grace.

Around 1440 the construction of a vast feudal domain near the shores of Lake Maggiore allowed the Borromeo family to radically change their position within Milanese society. The paper aims to reconstruct this process, by focusing on the administration of justice, which played a crucial role in establishing good relationships between the lords and the local communities. The counts offered their subjects a fast and cheap procedure, as well as flexible and able to adapt to individual cases. The
core of this system were the Borromeo, who presented themselves to the homines as helpful lords, eager to endure the «thousand troubles» which came from all over the domain in the form of petitions.

Il saggio ricostruisce le vicende del convento e delle Vergini dal 1590 al 1811, con particolare attenzione ai suoi inizi, sotto la protezione della contessa Margherita Trivulzio Borromeo.
Sono studiate le varie religiose che entrarono alla Purificazione, delle quali in appendice si fornisce un elenco completo con il nome e cognome e, laddove possibile, paternità, date d nascita e morte, ingresso nel convento, cariche ricoperte.

Nella scheda si dà conto anche della proposta di attribuire a Marco d'Oggiono il nucleo di ritratti leonardeschi di dibattuta paternità radunati intorno al Ritratto Archinto (Londra, National Gallery), elaborata dall'autrice nella tesi di dottorato.

Tomás Luis de Victoria and Cardinal Carlo Borromeo probably never met in person. In 1583–4, however, they were in contact by letters (now preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan) and through intermediaries. This article explores the circumstances of this meeting-at-a-distance between the two men, showing that it was rooted in a complex web of relationships, notably involving the Roman milieu of Filippo Neri’s Oratory. Contact began with Victoria sending music books in December 1583, part of his ongoing marketing campaign. It was maintained through Borromeo’s plenipotentiary in Rome, Cesare Speciano, and continued during 1584, when the cardinal sought a new organist for the Duomo and consulted Victoria as a trusted advisor. Borromeo died in November 1584.

This case study sheds new light on Victoria’s publishing efforts of the 1580s and on his carefully planned schemes for distributing his music. At the same time, it provides new information about Borromeo’s interest in liturgical music and his strategies for the recruitment of musicians. More generally, it suggests that the figure of Borromeo, so extraordinarily prominent in the history of early modern Catholicism, needs to be analysed and interpreted by musicologists in new ways; his correspondence, the significance of which as a source for music history still has to be fully explored, will surely be valuable in this effort.

Divulgazione del sapere, divulgazione scientifica e specificità della ricezione nel mondo femminile nella prima metà del Settecento. La singolare figura della Borromeo interpreta al meglio alcune delle contraddizioni legate alla distinzione di "genere" in una delle fasi storicamente più sensibili, grazie anche al ruolo eccezionale che - tra Vallisneri e Muratori - seppe ritagliarsi nella "Repubblica delle Lettere".

European Heritage Days - Giornate Europee del Patrimonio 2017
Heritage and Nature - Cultura e Natura

Intervento al Convegno "Realtà culturali e natura" - Archivio di Stato di Verbania 23 settembre 2017 - ore 15.00-17.00

Sergio Monferrini, SCRIUNIUM - Amici dell'Archivio di Stato di Novara
Fra orti e giardini, documenti d'archivio

Abstract not yet available.

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Di/by Alessandro Nesi e/and Simone Andreoni.

La sezione su Francesco Traballesi è mia.
The section on Francesco Traballesi is mine.
In this section, I present a newly discovered series of frescoes by the Florentine painter Francesco Traballesi in the roman basilica Santa Prassede. Therefore, these are the ONLY SURVIVING TRACE of san Carlo Borromeo's patronized works there.

The text is in Italian. You can ask me privately its translation.