This research revises and updates previous surveys about financial administration of the State of Milan between the mid-sixteenth and the seventeenth century; it particulary deals with the accountancy departments of the two chief income offices (Ordinary and Extraordinary "courts") and the General Treasury. We analyze here the criteria and mode of selection of the "employees"; the tangled web of relationships and interests that bound together the officials; career paths and transmission dynamics that governed the internal mobility. The study allows to ascertain that, lacking defined paths of technical and theoretical training, the financial administration management responded mainly on criteria of competence and experience rather than to the logic of patronage or economic (eg through the mechanism of venality), with a strong attention - very concrete and therefore very "Lombard" - to the good handling (if not efficiency) of daily administration, a major objective to be achieved in such a delicate and strategic area.
Keywords: Accountant, Financial administration, Treasury, State of Milan