«L’edizione è magnifica, in bel carattere incisa». Un esemplare festival book a stampa del tardo Cinquecento per l’ingresso trionfale del vescovo Morosini a Brescia

The paper deals with the festival book entitled "Il sontuoso apparato fatto dalla magnifica città di Brescia nel felice ritorno dell’Illu.[stre] et Reverendiss.[imo] Vescovo suo il Cardinale Morosini...", published in Brescia in 1591 to celebrate the triumphal entry of the bishop cardinal Giovan Francesco Morosini (1590, June 10th). The book, printed in-folio by Vincenzo Sabbio and endowed by fourteen valuable engravings (the frontispiece and thirteen images of the ephemeral arches, respectively executed by Giacomo Franco and Leone Pallavicino), gives an accurate and richly illustrated record of the public feast organized as a roman triumph and, though internationally wellknown, it was never systematically studied. Through the critical analysis of its contents and its engravings, the research shades a first light on the characters of this book and its publishing plan as well on the ceremony, deepening the project and the development of the event and the six ephemeral, greatly decorated arches that were built, precisely described and illustrated, and thus untangling quite unexpected relations with the north-European imperial festival culture. The paper analyses the local cultural context that promoted the celebration and the book, connecting them to the lively, updated academic activity that throve in Brescia in the late sixteenth century and to the leading role played by the authors, two of the most erudite Brescian scholars, the noble Alfonso Capriolo and the priest Publio Fontana. Through the accurate images and descriptions contained in the book it is examined and reconstructed the design of the ephemeral architectural devices as well as the triumphal itinerary, clarifying the task assumed by the public Brescian architect Giulio Todeschini and his equipe – formed by the renowned Brescian artists Tommaso Bona, Pietro Marone and Pietro Maria Bagnadore – and investigating the language they adopted in relation to the wider late-Renaissance architectural culture.