Tra Milano e Roma. Il cardinale Alessandrino e alcuni appunti sulla committenza dei porporati lombardi nel primo Rinascimento

This essay presents the first findings of current ongoing research on the patronage of the fifteen cardinals from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries who hailed from Lombardy. Particular attention to Milanese Giovanni Antonio Sangiorgi (about 1444-25 March 1509) will be discussed. He became titular of the basilica of Sts Nereo and Achilleo on 20 September 1493 and was usually referred to as the Cardinale Alessandrino (“the cardinal of Alessandria”) because of his Piedmontese bishopry. Analyzing his patronage allows us to discuss not only the crucial role played by the higher clergy in the artistic and cultural exchange between Rome and Milan, but also, and most importantly, the fifteenth-century debate on the appropriate forms and conditions that characterized, or should have characterized, the patronage of a cardinal. This issue was at the center of an animated discussion throughout the entire Quattrocento and was first publicly addressed and answered in 1509, thanks to the publication of the De cardinalatu of Paolo Cortesi, a handbook of the perfect cardinal.