Costruire cattedrali. Il popolo del Duomo di Milano [Building cathedrals. The people of the Duomo of Milan] (original) (raw)

Abstract

For centuries, historians attributed the construction of Milan’s cathedral to the Prince Gian Galeazzo Visconti. A new, detailed analysis of unedited medieval documents turns this classic interpretation upside down. The author demonstrates that nearly all the revenue supporting the construction came not from the Prince, but from the Milanese people. The majority of these donations consisted of thousands of small offerings from poor people – an egg, a piece of cheese, a little coin. Buried in the long lists of donations are moving stories about the donors’ charity: the prostitute Marta who, converted, abandoned the brothel; Marco, the rich merchant who bequeathed everything and then lived as a poor man until his death; the commander Alessio, only to name a few. On the backgrounds of these lives, Saltamacchia sketches late fourteenth-century socio-political events, revealing how the construction of Milan’s cathedral became a place of freedom and autonomy for the Milanese people under the despotic Viscontean dukedom.

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