Exactly two hundred and sixty years ago, in 1764, the well-known Milanese jurist Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) finished writing his masterpiece, the treatise On Crimes and Punishments, and published it in the same year. In the exhibition The treatise On Crimes and Punishments by Cesare Beccaria, from Milan to Europe to the World the original manuscript of the work, the Italian editio princeps, will be exhibited, and all the other first editions that followed in the various European languages, including two recent non-European publications, testifying to a diffusion that spread from Milan throughout Europe and the entire world.
THE BECCARIA LIBRARY AND THE AMBROSIANA
Upon Beccaria’s death, his library, including his manuscripts, printed works and various personal memorabilia, passed to his son Giulio Beccaria, who in turn bequeathed it to his wife Antonietta Curioni de’Civati. Donna Antonietta, significantly, in her will of 29 March 1866, hoped that her daughters would undertake to place this precious cultural heritage «in some public institute in perpetual memory of the illustrious philosopher, such as for example in the Ambrosiana Library, already rich in monuments and other national illustrations”. This wish did not come true immediately, because Cesare Beccaria’s library passed to one of his son-in-laws, the Milanese commendatore Angelo Villa Pernice, a well-known bibliophile, as well as an economist, public administrator and politician.
When, in 1910, after the death of her husband, his wife Donna Rachele Villa Pernice donated the entire family book heritage to the Ambrosiana Library, the collection of manuscripts and printed matter belonging to Cesare Beccaria also arrived there: thus, what with foresight the Marchesa Antonietta Curioni de’ Civati had hoped for was fulfilled. This generous donation, of high cultural patronage, was facilitated by the Nogara brothers (in particular Giuseppe, Bernardino and Bartolomeo), relatives of Rachele Villa Pernice, who acted as mediators with Monsignor Achille Ratti, then Prefect of the Ambrosiana Library.
