Giulia Beccaria

Alessandro Manzoni’s mother was the daughter of the famous Enlightenment jurist Cesare Beccaria, and enjoyed a busy social life in the cultured salons of Meulan and Auteuil, near Paris, where she met the leading writers and artists of the day. Her father and intellectuals such as Pietro Verri had taught her to think and act freely, and to assert her strong personality. In Milan, she had a relationship with the youngest of the Verri brothers, Giovanni, but agreed to marry the well-off Pietro Manzoni for economic reasons, although he was rather melancholy by nature and many years her senior. When Alessandro was born in 1785, she took little to do with him: he was sent first to a wet-nurse, then spent his school years at various boarding schools. Giulia soon became bored with her dull life with Pietro Manzoni, and after leaving him went to live in Paris with her new partner, the wealthy nobleman Carlo Imbonati, who introduced her to the Parisian social scene, where she developed contacts and friendships (including Fauriel) that later helped her son. When Imbonati died in 1805, the sorrowing Giulia had his body taken to Brusuglio, where he had a villa that he had left to her. She left immediately afterwards, leaving behind Milanese society’s awkwardness over her “scandalous” relationship with Imbonati. Her son Alessandro accompanied her to Paris, where he wrote the Carme for Imbonati as comfort for his bereaved mother, with whom he had newly reunited. An intense and complex relationship ensued, almost in compensation for her years of absence (which left Alessandro scarred with various neuroses). From that moment onwards, Giulia “managed” her son’s life, choosing Henriette as his wife (and her daughter-in-law). She also took a close interest in her son’s religious conversion (as indicated in the letters to Degola and Tosi). For many years, at least until her son’s second marriage, Giulia took charge of the large Manzoni family, in which was “Maman” for everyone.