<I>Un Pantheon cittadino. Giovanni Girolamo Agnelli e gli “uomini illustri” ferraresi</I>

Abstract

Cesare Orlandi (1734 - 1779) is known as the editor of the Iconologia by Cesare Ripa. In 1766 he compiles a questionnaire and sends it to all Italian city officials asking key information on each municipality. A question refers to who are, in the opinion of the local officials, the ‘illustrious men’ who have lived or are currently living in the city. The purpose of the questionnaire is to compile an encyclopaedic volume on Italy titled Delle Città d’Italia e sue isole adiacenti.

The city of Ferrara, upon receiving this request, charges a local man of letters, Girolamo Agnelli (1701-1773) to write a response. Agnelli is a member of the Arcade Society, of the ‘Accademia degli Intrepidi’, and the author of the poem Il Limbo.  Agnelli’s response, titled Notizia, is yet unpublished and deserves to be studied further. In this paper I outline the basic content of the Notizia and discuss in particular the notable people who are mentioned by Agnelli and form what we could term as the city’s ‘Pantheon’. Agnelli devotes many pages to the Estensi family, the former rulers of Ferrara, who had been forced to flee the city by the Pope in 1598. The author strives to create the perception of an harmonious continuity between the Estensi’s past and the current Papal rule of Ferrara, papering over any possible tension or discontinuity between the old and the new regime. He also plays down any tension between different professional categories of citizens. Agnelli presents the presence of the Pope in the city as a natural outcome of the fact that the Estensi did not have a direct heir. Yet a notable aspect of the Notizia is the discussion of the professional middle class. It emerges from the text that professionals are rooted in the city and dominate the economic and cultural life of Ferrara in the 18^th century.