Ferruccio Quintavalle, father of my great-grandfather Umberto Quintavalle, was a history teacher in several Italian high schools, especially in Milan. An anti-clerical and a convinced Mazzinian, he left several important publications, including a monumental Storia dell’unità italiana (1814-1924), published in 1926, and other important works on the Risorgimento and the First World War. When he died in February 1953, the ‘Corriere della Sera’ dedicated a fund to the ‘noble figure of scholar, scholar and teacher that several generations of Milanese people remember with admiration and affection (…)’.
In addition to the ‘official’ portrait of Professor Quintavalle, two beautiful photographic portraits kept in the Archive remind us of his father and grandfather: in the first one Ferruccio is with his son Umberto and one of his dogs in the park of Villa del Dosso, just after the war; in the second one he is in Florence in 1942, with his great-granddaughter Ida, sister of my grandmother Luisa Quintavalle, as they admire the Cappellone degli Spagnoli in the church of Santa Maria Novella.
Bibliographic references:
Prof. Ferruccio Quintavalle passed away at the age of ninety, ‘Corriere della Sera – Corriere d’informazione’, 10 – 11 February 1953.
