Lo specchio del cambiamento. Per un profilo prosopografico dei soci dall'avvio della Società del Giardino alla Restaurazione

Through the analysis of vast previously unpublished documentation, the essay portrays the peculiar traits of the profound evolution undergone by the Società del Giardino in the first fifty years of its activity. In addition to highlighting the factors that influenced the significant expansion of the membership in the period between the Empire of Joseph II of Habsburg and the third decade of the nineteenth century, the essay offers a detailed prosopographical reconstruction of its adherents, placing emphasis on their socio-professional background and, where possible, on their geographical origin and the roles they held during the progressive growth of the Club. The analysis conducted on the personalities who belonged to the Società del Giardino during the historical period examined further allows us to reflect on the process that favored the progressive introduction of recreational purposes capable of better corresponding to the nascent bourgeois taste, to identify the aspects that allowed the Club to obtain growing visibility in the complex framework of Milanese sociability, as well as to grasp, at the same time, the motivations that led the Club to initiate close contacts with government institutions and to establish relationships with other forms of association present in the Italian and European panorama.