On the trail of a portrait: an account of a survey

The discovery of an old portrait brought a story to the author’s mind, a story her mother used to tell her when she was a child. It was about a challenge which had been faced more than a century before by the portrayed ancestor: Father Maurizio Malvestiti. This led the author to want to find out more about him and why he represented the city of Brescia at such a highly dramatic moment in its history. The article explains how research was carried out, starting from the Father’s hometown, and, through letters, pieces of writing and compositions kept in convents and private collections, how it continued with the events that saw him together with historical, scientific and literary perso nalities of the time. A very high-level intellectual and moral human figure has emerged. Indeed, thanks to the documentation gathered during the research work, historians from Brescia wish to pay due tribute to this figure and give the general public the opportunity to rediscover him.

Keywords: Father Maurizio Malvestiti, Haynau, Lioness of Italy, Luciano Bonaparte, Canino, Vulci. 134

Virginia Guarneri, Sulle tracce di un ritratto: cronaca di una ricerca in "GRUPPI" 1/2014, pp 117-124, DOI: 10.3280/GRU2014-001012