Clelia Grillo Borromeo (1684-1777) Rilievo in... Lot n° 28

cm 38 The work depicts the Genoese noblewoman Clelia Grillo, who married Count Benedetto Borromeo on March 8th 1707. An erudite and unconventional woman, she founded a cultural salon called "Accademia Cloelia Vigilantium" in her Milan home. Her unconventional conduct brought her into conflict with the Borromeo family and her anti-Austrian positions caused her retaliations and measures such as exile by the Empress Maria Teresa of Austria, revoked only in 1749. On her return to Milan, she was welcomed by a festive crowd of supporters and friends who had a commemorative medal struck in her honour with her effigy on one side and Minerva holding out her hand to Genoa with the motto "Gloria Genuensium" on the other. In the last part of her life, when she reopened her Milanese salon, she had various vicissitudes due to her health and her eccentric life; for example, she was very fond of gambling, for which she incurred huge debts. Clelia Grillo died in Milan in August 1777 and in 1920, as a partial recognition of her political and cultural daring, a descendant of the Borromeo family had a plaque placed in her cenotaph in the collegiate church of S. Maria Podone that reads "...the agitations and anxieties of politics she knew and proudly suffered...".