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| Bartolomeo Pinelli Bravi of Don Rodrigo threatening the priest Don Abbondio (scene from I Promessi Sposi) 1830 lithograph British Museum |
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| Francesco Gonin Don Rodrigo (character from I Promessi Sposi) 1840 wood-engraving private collection |
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| Francesco Gonin Lucia, Agnese and Renzo (scene from I Promessi Sposi) 1840 wood-engraving private collection |
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| Alessandro Balduino Renzo and the lawyer Azzeccagarbugli (scene from I Promessi Sposi) ca. 1865-70 etching and drypoint Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Bartolomeo Pinelli Fra' Cristoforo and a Beggar Woman (scene from I Promessi Sposi) 1830 lithograph British Museum |
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| Giuseppe Pensabene Agnese, Lucia, Fra' Cristoforo and Renzo (scene from I Promessi Sposi) 1861 oil on canvas Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Palermo |
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| Bartolomeo Pinelli Fra' Cristoforo, Lucia, Agnese and Renzo (scene from I Promessi Sposi) 1830 lithograph British Museum |
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| Nicola Consoni The Nun of Monza (Sister Gertrude) (character from I Promessi Sposi) 1861 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Francesco Gonin The Kidnapping of Lucia (scene from I Promessi Sposi) 1840 wood-engraving private collection |
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| Michelangelo Grigoletti Portrait of Nibbio (bravo of l'Innominato) (character from I Promessi Sposi) ca. 1830 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Francesco Hayez Portrait of l'Innominato (character from I Promessi Sposi) 1845 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Grégoire Huret Federico Borromeo, Cardinal-Archbishop of Milan (historical character appearing in I Promessi Sposi) ca. 1630 engraving Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Thomas William Luson after Alessandro Guardassoni Conversion of l'Innominato by Cardinal Borromeo (scene from I Promessi Sposi) 1862 wood-engraving Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Gaetano Previati The Monatti (plague workers collecting a corpse) (scene from I Promessi Sposi) ca. 1895-99 watercolor and gouache on paper Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Agostino Lauro Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni (author of I Promessi Sposi) ca. 1830 engraving Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) published the complete version of his novel I Promessi Sposi in 1827, setting it in and around Milan during the year 1628, a year when famine followed by plague afflicted the region, then under the control of the Spanish crown. The city in Manzoni's day, two centuries later, was still under foreign subjugation, though the imperial master-power had shifted by then from Spain to Austria. By the time Italian political unification and autonomy came about in the early 1860s, Manzoni's book had become established as the most famous and admired novel in the country, a status it still retains. Commentators often point to parallels with Manzoni's contemporary Walter Scott, and particularly with his Ivanhoe of 1819. Manzoni read a French translation of Ivanhoe shortly before composing his own historical prose-romance (a genre previously unknown in Italy). Like Scott's book, I Promessi Sposi presents a feudal aristocracy of almost universal corruption and depravity, preying upon common folk who are by contrast suffused with honesty, bravery, chastity, and piety. Yet there is only disappointment for the reader whose interest in 17th-century Italy is centered on the inexhaustible marvels of 17th-century Italian art. At no point in any of the palaces, mansions, churches, monasteries, convents or bourgeois dwellings – not to mention peasant cottages – that provide settings for the novel is there mention made of a single work of art. Not one.