Nella Milano secentesca degli affari : tra Mediterraneo e "Oltremonte"

In the business world of seventeenth-century Milan: between the Mediterranean and “Oltremonte”. The essay is part of a research initiative undertaken recently by historians that deals with seventeenth-century Milanese economy, that is to say, the study of the high-profile tertiary sector which was active in the international market: merchants, bankers and money-changers. It analyzes important aspects of the professional activities of foreign businessmen engaged in business and financial intermediation in seventeenth-century Milan, whose skills in managing business and social relationships enabled their descendants to occupy prominent positions in the Public Administration and to obtain titles of nobility. The documents which regard the protagonists of this study also made it possible to contribute to an area of studies heretofore unconcerned with Spanish Milan, the study of lifestyles. The final section of the essay is therefore devoted to a reflection on the lifestyles of two components of the same family branch, but members of different classes: a shopkeeper and a marquis who was born a merchant and later ennobled.