«Dipignere con lo sparviere in pugno». Mecenati e pittori nella Milano del Cerano

«Painting with a sparrowhawk in his hand». Patrons and painters in Cerano’s Milan ABSTRACT: Two unpublished inventories illustrate some of the dynamics of Milanese patronage in the first decades of the 17th century: that of the nobleman Giovanni Maria Visconti (1638) and that of the painter Giovanni Battista Crespi, known as Cerano (1632).The figure of Visconti appears as a guide for the Milanese patrons in their attention to ‘modern’ painters, but with a marked interest also directed towards the conservation of works of the early Milanese Renaissance. On the other hand, the information on Cerano’s lifestyle allows us to reflect on the social status of Milanese painters. At the same time, the genesis and collecting vicissitudes of some important paintings of the 16th and 17th centuries are rewritten, such as the private devotional altarpiece representing the Madonna of San Celso with St. Francis and Blessed Charles Borromeo, now in Turin (c. 1610), or the panels of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ and Pentecost by Bartolomeo Suardi, known as Bramantino, now in the Mezzana di Somma Lombardo (c. 1510). The author highlights the relationship between Cerano and the Visconti in the commission for the altar of Sant’Ignazio in San Fedele and in the design of the frontispieces of 16th and 17th century editions of Milanese historical texts. Also, the preservation of the memory of Giovanni Maria’s patronage in the Visconti collections until the 18th century is here re-examined.