ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book includes both biographical accounts as well as a full discussion of Cesare Gonzaga’s Galleria di Marmo as well as Gerolamo Garimberto’s antiquarium in the Gaddi Palace in Rome. It contains transcriptions of Cesare Gonzaga’s correspondence files and it includes not only letters written by or to Gerolamo Garimberto but also a certain number of letters addressed to or by other agents. The book divides into four parts: Text, Catalogue raisonné of the correspondence files, supporting documents for the Gonzaga and for the Garimberto collections. The documentation for the Garimberto and the Gonzaga collections is remarkably well preserved. It consists of inventories, printed and manuscript descriptions, and a corpus of more than one hundred letters. An important segment of the Guastalla court papers, acquired by Giuseppe Campori in the nineteenth century, was bequeathed to the Biblioteca Estense in Modena.
