OLD MASTERS

International

​A magazine of connoisseurship and collecting.
Six issues per year
​Printed in Milan

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"In sharp contrast to Genoa and Florence was Milan, the wealthiest capital in Europe, whose wealthy lord, the Visconti, had assumed the dignity and state of royalty.  Lord Bernabò was, as Chaucer called him, ‘God of delit’ and ‘scourge of Lumbardye’. The Visconti employed mercenary soldiers and kept their subjects at peace.  Milan had prospered and was a center of culture and civilization. Here Petrarch had resided from 1353 to 1361, encouraging the Visconti’s already flourishing interest in letters.  When Chaucer was there in 1378 the rule was shared by the brothers Bernabò and Galeazzo II.  Circumstances led Galeazzo to buld a separate capital at Pavia, twenty-two miles south of Milan...But rather than their political affairs, their palaces, parks or paved streets, it is the libraries of these men that are of interest...[For] these patrons of learning and culture, a spirit of liberality reigned...”
       --Robert A Pratt, “Chaucer and the Visconti Libraries”, ELH, 
Sepetember 1939.   Please see page 30 of Vol 1 No. 1 "Arms and the Men: The Art of Milanese Armaioli"