Dall’Idea al Teatro: Bartolomeo Zucchi, Girolamo Ghilini e la Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano

The essay focuses on Girolamo Ghilini's Teatro degli huomini illustri and identifies its source of inspiration in Bartolomeo Zucchi's Idea del segretario. This work is not only an epistolary anthology for secretaries, but a gallery of biographies that was a model for Ghilini. The two authors were cousins, linked by many social and cultural relationships and they participated in the European-wide network that characterised the creation of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, as is shown by the analysis of the correspondence and works under examination.