UNA PERDUTA ISCRIZIONE A PAOLO PARUTA SULLE LAPIDI DEL CORTILE DEL BROLETTO DI BRESCIA

Abstract

Thanks to a passage of Coryat’s Crudities (1611), where the English traveller describes his visit to Brescia (August 1608), now is possible to reconstruct a lost commemorative plaque, once placed upon the internal wall of the local Broletto (City Hall). The inscription upon that marble plaque, dated 1591, was erased almost one hundred years later (1692) by the authorities of Venetian Republic, worried for the growing self-glorification of patrician magistrates. Luckily Coryat transcribed the inscription, dedicated to Paolo Paruta (1540-1598), statesman and historiographer of the Venetian Republic, capitano of Brescia from 1590 to 1592, when he was appointed as Ambassador to Rome. Starting from the discovery of this lost inscription, this essay tries to investigate how Paolo Paruta, a refined political writer but also an able statesman, took his 2 year office in Brescia, at that time the second city of Venetian Terraferma.