Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere
<p><strong>L’Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere</strong> è una realtà culturale radicata da più di 200 anni nella città e nel territorio lombardo. L’Istituto, sito a Milano nel quadrilatero di Brera, è innanzitutto sede di memoria, a partire dal prezioso patrimonio archivistico e librario che custodisce, ma anche vivace contesto di riferimento per la ricerca, l’alta formazione e la cultura in genere.</p>PAGEPress Scientific Publications, Pavia, Italyit-ITIstituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere2384-9150SALVATORE VECA
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/820
<p>Non disponibile.</p>Alberto MartinelliSilvio Beretta
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.820PER L’ANNIVERSARIO DI UN GRANDE POETA: ANDREA ZANZOTTO E I SUOI AUTOGRAFI
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/809
<p>The article examines the main features of Andrea Zanzotto’s poetry (1921-2011) and scrutinises the poet’s manuscripts kept at the University of Pavia’s Centro Manoscritti di Autori Moderni e Contemporanei. The analysis specifically focuses on the intricate genetic and elaborative processes underlying Zanzotto’s ‘trilogy’ or ‘pseudo-trilogy’, composed of three poetry collections published in nearly a decade, <em>Il Galateo in Bosco</em> (1978), <em>Fosfeni</em> (1983), and <em>Idioma</em> (1986).</p>Francesco Venturi
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.809COSA VUOL DIRE: OBBLIGO VACCINALE?
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/790
<p>In reference to a topical issue, the Note examines the conceptual confusions that rage on the mass media and that are reflected in the lexicon of the Italian legislator when it has to issue measures to face the Covid-19 epidemic. With reference to the case-law of the ECtHR which ruled on vaccination obligations, it is specified to what extent one can speak of a legal duty to be vaccinated.</p>Antonio Gambaro
Copyright (c) 2022 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2022-05-262022-05-2610.4081/lettere.2022.790FERDINANDO DI FENIZIO INTERPRETE DI KEYNES
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/807
<p>The article analyses the contribution by Ferdinando di Fenizio to the introduction of Keynesian thought into Italy; di Fenizio’s work is discussed within the historical context of the economic doctrines prevalent at that time. The comparison shows how the adaptation of Keynes’s thought to the Italian environment was a long and laborious process. The article covers the academic and life experience of di Fenizio (1906-1974) during the 1930s and 1940s. It is emphasized that his entry into the Milanese environment, in particular in the Montedison’ research department and the editorship of “L’industria”, contributed to bringing about what was to be a constant feature of his research activities: close attention to facts, empirical verification, relevance of theory for the analysis and economic policies. His editorship of “L’industria” was central to the diffusion of Keynes’s thought from the beginning of the post World War II period, and significantly contributed to the progress of economic studies in Italy, both in terms of research and teaching of economics. In the early post-war years, di Fenizio published many essays which analyzed various aspects of the Keynesian system: overall supply and demand, effective demand, income and employment. Di Fenizio systematically highlighted – in Keynes’s work – the elements of continuity up to <em>The General Theory</em>. The paper emphasizes, in particular, that Fenizio identified three eighteenth-century authors as precursors of the Keynesian system as an aggregate and real-monetary integrated system, all significant from the point of view of monetary analysis albeit very heterogeneous: John Law, “the true ancestor of the concept of manipulated money” according to Schumpeter, the mercantilist banker Richard Cantillon, and the physician, physiocratic and “economist” François Quesnay.</p>Silvio BerettaRenata Targetti Lenti
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.807LA SPECIALE NATURA DEI SOGNI E I DIRITTI DEGLI ANIMALI NEI <em>TRÄUME</em> DI JOHANN GOTTLOB KRÜGER (1754)
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/806
<p>Without a doubt, the issue of animal rights has now become part of the socio-cultural perspective in a much stronger moral and legal sense than in the past, in the wake of the “animal turn” of the early 90s of the last century. One aspect that has been most debated since ancient times is, however, whether animals have a soul and whether the lack of speech can be considered a symptom of a completely inferior capacity for reasoning. The era of the European Enlightenment certainly showed a peak of interest in this debate, especially on the basis of scientific experiments carried out on animals, but also on the basis of reflections on the natural law of living beings. In Germany, as part of the medical studies in Halle, Johann Gottlob Krüger distinguished himself for having grasped the importance of the considerations - albeit sometimes paradoxical - that had emerged in the context of several interdisciplinary symposiums held in Leipzig at the beginning of the years’ 40 of the eighteenth century on the theme of the soul of animals. The classical philologist Johann Heinrich Winkler had published them later, in 1745, in a volume entitled <em>Philosophische Untersuchungen von dem Seyn und Wesen der Seelen der Thiere</em> […], already preceded by another from 1742, dedicated to a similar topic. The point of interest, however, consists in the particular literary strategy with which Krüger returns these debates of an academic nature, taking advantage of the register of satire to make animals and men and animals of various species interact with each other. In the fictitious dimension of the dream, in which the Hallense physician situates these disputes, it is possible to retrace the various theoretical stages that in the philosophical field accompanied the development of the vexata quaestio relating to the soul of animals, reviewing the positions of Girolamo Rorario (1485-1556), of the surgeon Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente (1533-1619), of Montaigne (1533-1592), of Descartes (1596-1650) and of the iatroteologist Michael Alberti (1682-1757). What matters most, however, are the absurd theoretical justifications that human thought pushes to legitimize its unfair attitude towards the animal world, well highlighted in Krüger’s literary dreams.</p>Elena Agazzi
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.806IL MAGISTRATO DI SANITÀ DELLO STATO DI MILANO (1534-1786) E LE SUE POLITICHE SANITARIE
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/815
<p>The purpose of this article is to explain how the State of Milan protected itself from epidemics (particularly the plague) and epizootics in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Magistrate of Health (Magistrato di Sanità), which operated from 1534 to 1786, was the organization in charge of this responsibility. The primary objective is to study this magistrature's internal structure, authority, and capacity of involving local communities in preventative action. The second goal is to outline how this magistracy was able to swiftly establish strict sanitary cordons that, despite the era's limited scientific understanding, partially protected the State of Milan from epidemics and epizootics.</p>Livio Antonielli
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.815HISTORIC-ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH OF THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF THE SACRED HEART OF MILANO ON THE INDUS DELTA (2019-2021)
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/816
<p>storic-Archaeological Research of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milano on the Indus Delta (2019-2021). History and Archaeology, Science and Technology. During the last three years of field-work (2019-2021), in the central-western portion of the mound we came across a vast area stretching along the east-west main road-axis of past epochs, replanned and rebuilt as a market-zone, where luxury goods were produced by skilled craftsmen converged there from different parts of the Indian Ocean (see ibid preceding note 2018/2019 and Piacentini & Fusaro PSAS 2022). We were facing a new phase of the site’s life and model of peopling. This article aims at focusing on the historical stage of this last period (written data complemented and integrated with archaeological evidence), the role played by our site as crossroads within the international trades of its time on land, on river and on sea. How science and technology have complemented a theoretical panorama through archaeometric analyses and drone’s plans of the bastioned mound, its environment and excavated trenches (see here below the notes by Prof. Mario Piacentini, and A. Tilia & S. Tilia). Stratigraphic levels associated with pottery and other little objects found <em>in situ</em> provide a first image of the new urban plan, its political and institutional reorganization and economic system. Textual sources confirm and integrate. Archaeometric analyses have allowed chronologies (complementing historical texts), pottery’s provenience (produced <em>in situ</em>, imitation or imported), interesting notes on glass and metallurgy, plus some hypotheses on the significance of the rich variety of moulds found <em>in situ</em> (spare parts used and thrown away?) or around small smelting kilns. All in all, a vivid plastic image of the last phase of the site’s peopling and its abandonment.</p>Valeria Piacentini Fiorani
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.816IL GRUPPO EQUESTRE DI OLDRADO DA TRESSENO NEL BROLETTO DI MILANO
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/817
<p>equestrian statue depicting Oldrado da Tresseno (1233), ostentatiously placed in a niche in the centre of the southern façade of the 13th-century Palazzo della Ragione in the Broletto in Milan, represents one of the first large equestrian monuments of the mediaeval age and an early inspiration to those of Antiquity. Described and commented on, as early as the 14th century (Galvano Fiamma), as a self-celebratory portrait by a podestà, the relief, as widely acknowledged by critics, especially in the 20th century, undoubtedly presents stylistic features ascribable to the Antelami workshop and indeed at times attributed directly to Benedetto Antelami. This study proposes, also following other interventions by the author, the attribution to a sculptor who worked with Antelami in Parma, and who executed some works at the Cathedral of Reggio Emilia, the Cathedral of Fidenza and the Church of St. Andrew in Vercelli. Having confirmed the stylistic characteristics of the staute and briefly examined the historical figure of Oldrado, this essay intends to indicate, also in the light of the inscription engraved under the aedicule that hosts it, how the real reasons for the creation of this sculptural monument do not lie in the desire for self-assertion of the person depicted, but in the symbolic representation of the role and functions of the foreign official whose task it is to govern the city annually, and in particular the administration of justice. In this, the monument constitutes the figurative counterpart of the theoretical reflection that constituted the subject matter of a wide range of treatises produced around the first half of the 13th century on the subject of city government. The theory of the transposition of imperial prerogatives into the figure of the podestà, especially in matters of justice, finds its place in this doctrinaire strand. Hence the reference to the monarchical institution that must find expression in the conduct of the actions and lifestyle of the podestà and even in the municipal palace, likened to a palace, in the same terms used in the inscription under the statue of Oldrado to describe the Town Hall. The doctrinal literature, as well as part of the inscription itself, also refer to legal terms derived from Roman sources of law. All this clarifies the significance of the presence in the aedicule of the large painted eagle above the equestrian statue, symbolising superior imperial power. This element too, in addition to those mentioned, thus contributes to the recognition of the references to equestrian statuary of Antiquity (the Marcus Aurelius in Rome and the 'Regisole' in Pavia) from which Oldrado’s monument is partly inspired. Finally, the analysis was extended to the numerous traces of polychromy that have been brought to light by the recent restorations to the entire complex, and which make it possible to reconstruct the probable original layout of the sculpted relief, in which the sumptuous robes of the podestà, not of a military nature, reinforce the reference to royalty. Finally, close examination of the sculpture has allowed us to confirm that the podestà originally held an object in his right hand, probably a sword, as a symbol of Justice.</p>Saverio Lomartire
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.817ESSERE UMANI
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/818
<p>What does “human” mean in the age of artificial intelligence and the digital revolution? Why do we feel the need to say «let’s stay human»? Where will our evolutionary process take us? The extraordinary multiplicity and diversity of what constitutes us - organic matter, brain, mind, consciousness, emotions - makes the answer difficult, especially in definitive terms. The human is configured as an always open construction site, of great complexity and in continuous evolution.</p>Edoardo Boncinelli
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.818UMM-EL-BREIGÂT (TEBTYNIS): CAMPAGNA DI SCAVO 2021
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/808
<p>En 2021, la mission franco-italienne constituée par l’Ifao et l’Université de Milan a continué ses fouilles à Tebtynis dans les mêmes secteurs où elle avait travaillé les années précédentes: le vaste dépotoir à l’est du temple de Soknebtynis et la partie de l’habitat longeant la grande allée dénommée <em>dromos</em> de <em>Tefresudj</em>(<em>ty ?</em>). Dans le dépotoir, environ 150 textes ptolémaïques, écrits sur papyrus et tessons en démotique ou en grec, ont été recueillis et une maison d’<em>exopylitai</em> remontante aux III<sup>e</sup> s. av. J.-C. a été repérée. Dans l’habitat, trois salles affectées aux réunions d’associations religieuses ou professionnelles (II<sup>e</sup> s. av. J.-C. – I<sup>er</sup> s. apr. J.-C.) et six tombes de crocodiles (I<sup>er</sup> s. apr. J.-C.) ont été retrouvées sur le côté sud de la rue. À l’extrémité est de l’allée, le temple du dieu dénommé <em>Tefresudj</em>(<em>ty ?</em>), bâti à la fin du II<sup>e</sup> s. av. J.-C., a été atteint et en partie mis au jour. Au-dessous, les fondations du temple l’ayant précédé, érigé au début du III<sup>e</sup> s. av. J-C., ont été découvertes.</p>Claudio Gallazzi
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.808ALFONSO CORTI: L’UOMO, LA VITA, LE OPERE
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/810
<p>ABSTRACT. – Marquis Alfonso Corti di Santo Stefano Belbo, descendant from a rich and noble family of Lombardy and Piedmont, described for the first time, in 1851, a series of cellular structures of the inner ear, basic for the auditory function, now known as “Corti’s organ”. Corti, born in Gambarana near Pavia on June 25, 1822, enrolled in 1841as a medical student at the University of Pavia. Here his favorite study was microanatomy, under professors Bartolomeo Panizza and Mauro Rusconi. In 1845, Corti moved to Vienna to complete his medical studies and to work at the Anatomical institute of the University under the supervision of professor Joseph Hyrtl and in August 1847 received the degree in medicine, with a thesis on the cardiovascular system of a lizard, the <em>Psammosaurus griseus</em>. At the end of December 1847 Corti was chosen as Hyrtl’s second prosector, but he soon had to relinquish this position. With the outbreak of the 1848 Revolution he left Vienna and, after a brief military service in Italy, from February to August 1849 was in Bern, where he began his own-microscopic studies in collaboration with the physiologist Gustav Gabriel Valentin. Except for a trip to England, where he met some important microscopists, Corti spent the rest of 1849 with his relatives in Paris, working at the Institute of Anatomy of the Sorbonne. In the middle of January 1850, Corti left for Wurzburg Institute of Anatomy, directed by Albert Kölliker, where he began to work on the mammalian auditory system. In August 1850 Corti spent a short time at the Observatorium microscopicum in Utrech, then he returned to Würzburg and later to Paris, to complete his study of at least 200 cochleas of man and different animals. His famous paper, “<em>Recherches sur l’organe de l’ouie des mammiferes</em>”, appeared in 1851 in Kölliker’s journal <em>Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie</em>. After the publication Corti left Paris for Turin where he had to interrupt his scientific work in order to deal with the division of his father estate. Suddenly and inexplicably, Corti gave up any scientific activity and disappeared from the scientific world. In 1855 Corti married Maria Bettinzoli, lady of noble birth, who presented him with a daughter Bianca, and a son Gaspare, but in 1861 she died, leaving him with the responsibility of rearing the children. Corti spent the rest of his life as a country nobleman and selected winegrower in his Villa Mazzolino in Corvino San Quirico near Casteggio, soon restricted in his mobility due to a severe arthritis deformans, and died in Corvino on October 2, 1876. After Corti brought his relations with his anatomist colleagues in 1854, his stature began to fade. During the second half of the 19th century, Corti’s <em>Recherches</em> were cited more and more in articles and treatises on otology, but the memory of their author has been lost. Corti passed like a meteor in the scientific world of the mid 19th century and it was only at the beginning of the 20th century that some researches began to wonder about the man behind the name of Corti’s organ.</p>Eugenio Mira
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.810FILOSOFIA E SCIENZA AD INIZIO DEL XXI SECOLO
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/819
<p>I. The relationship between philosophy and science is one of the central themes of Western culture, dating back to the physiology of the Pre-Socratics. This relationship involves another theme of enormous importance, consisting in the relationship between philosophy and theology, or between reason and faith, in a dimension that is, so to speak, secular. Philosophy represents the search for truth that human beings carry out through the organ of pure faculty. Therefore philosophy over time has always felt the need to face the results achieved by the physical-mathematical disciplines, based on the need to achieve the truth with the principles of observation and experiment too. At the beginning of the 21<sup>st</sup> century or, if we prefer, the third millennium, the relationship between philosophy and science is essential, if, among other things, it is considered necessary to reflect on the connotation of philosophy and the sciences. In this historical context, the need emerges to reflect above all on the destiny of humanity, dominated by the barbarism of war and social inequalities.</p>Piero Di Giovanni
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.819DANTE TRA L’AMBROSIANA E IL LOMBARDO
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/822
<p>Giovanni Galbiati, “Prefetto” of the Ambrosian Library from 1924 to 1951, effective member of the Istituto Lombardo since 1928, chaired the Milanese Committee of the Italian Dante Society from 1935 to 1944. Close to fascism, he organized, and then edited, the publication of numerous Dante’s conferences promoted by the Milanese Committee. These conferences, moving very often, like many of Galbiati’s premises to the volumes, on the cultural lines of the fascist party, illustrate in an exemplary negative way, how Dante’s work could be bent to interests and ends completely unrelated to it.</p>Giuseppe Frasso
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.822DANTE E LA LOMBARDIA
https://www.ilasl.org/Lettere/article/view/823
<p>The essay is divided into two parts. The first deals with the presence of Lombardy in Dante Alighieri’s <em>Divine Comedy</em>. Some characters of Lombard origin are analyzed and also the allusions to the Lombard capital, Milan. We come to the conclusion that the characters, the cities, the Lombard principalities have a lot of prominence in Dante’s work. The author sees in this region a multiplicity of civil, cultural and political experiences far superior to other Italian regions (even if Tuscany and Florence have a more relevant presence). The second part briefly investigates the fact that the renewed interest in Dante originates in the early nineteenth century in Milan, where several editions of his works are printed and comments and studies are developed. It is also important to point out that the interpretation of Dante as the first and greatest Italian writer must be framed in the Italian culture of the first decades of the nineteenth century, when romantic poetics arrived in Italy and at the same time the ideas of the Risorgimento spread, so much so that we trace in those same decades Dantesque influences also in the creative works of writers and artists from the Lombardy area.</p>Francesco Spera
Copyright (c) 2023 Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere • Rendiconti di Lettere
2023-07-042023-07-0410.4081/lettere.2022.823