Profile

An art expert, consultant, and entrepreneur, she was the daughter of Guido Venosta and Luisa Quintavalle. She was first married to Bernardo Caprotti and later to Aldo Bassetti. From her first marriage she had two children, Giuseppe and Violetta.

Read 34 articles about Giorgina Venosta

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Silvia Tofanelli in memory of Lina Sotis

The story of Silvia and Filippo, who made the whole of Milan dream: Silvia Tofanelli, charming, full of suitors, met Filippo Rusca, the most straganzo of the ganzi days. They fell in love, they took each other, they abandoned the others, they made the Italian salons talk, they got married. They were a happy couple. He passed away, this is how she remembers him. We who lived them as the most beautiful of times.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

My mother’s friends, Giorgina Venosta: Lina Sotis and Silvia Tofanelli

The first photograph comes from a series taken at Lina's second bachelorette party, in November 1993, on the eve of her marriage to Marco Romano, an event that Sotis herself also recalled with nostalgia in an interview for 'il Giornale' in April 2015: 'Yes, it was nice. Readings, music, beautiful. There was Natalia Aspesi, Inge Feltrinelli, Rosellina Archinto, Stella Pende, Gioia Marchi Falck , Mita De Benedetti, Antonella Camerana, Giorgina Venosta...'.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Elba Island, Tenuta delle Ripalte, the lost paradise of childhood

Shortly before the Second World War, Umberto Quintavalle, vice-president of Magneti Marelli and my maternal great-grandfather, bought the marvellous Ripalte estate on the island of Elba and turned it into a place of delight, especially for hunting, but also for relatives and friends to stay. When great-grandfather Umberto died in 1959, the property passed to one of his daughters, my grandmother Luisa Quintavalle, who was married in her second marriage to Marquis Nicolò Theodoli. With her, summer periods at Ripalte are one of the most beautiful childhood memories.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Uncle Beppo Venosta: an original and unconventional personality

Original and revolutionary Uncle Beppo, my mother Giorgina's brother, was an original and revolutionary type, a great Carlo Marx-like beard and an active participant in Sixty-Eight and the '68ism' that followed. A journalist of great class, foreign correspondent from the Middle East for many years, an ironic and provocative person, he died of cancer, the disease that his father, grandfather Guido Venosta, had fought so long and so effectively with AIRC. Grandfather fortunately did not have to see him, having died the year before.

History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Caprotti and the company Ing. A. Morganti: the future in construction

The history of 'Impresa di costruzioni Ing. A. Morganti' (from 2012 'Morganti Impresa di Costruzioni S.p.A.'), is closely intertwined with the history of construction in Italy throughout the 20th century, giving life and completion to many major projects involving houses, roads, industries and, their speciality, prefabricated structures. For this reason above all they came into contact with the Caprotti family, first for the Albiatese textile factory, then for Esselunga, for which they built many supermarkets throughout the country and a large part of the structures of the Limito headquarters.

Collaborations / Projects Food and Retail History History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families People, Environment & Culture Press & Events

Giuseppe Caprotti: ‘From trolleys to history, the luck of living more lives’

What will we read about in your new book? ‘I tell another side of the family through two extraordinary explorers: my eponymous ancestor Giuseppe Caprotti, who lived thirty years in Yemen, and my great uncle Gianni Albertini, a skier and mountaineer who explored the North Pole’.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family: my baptism, 1961

Our lives as children are entrusted from birth to 'young ladies', experienced nannies who look after us like second mothers. I like the German Waltraud, the first one: At home we call her 'Schwester' and you can even recognise her in my christening photos. Once she has left her job in our family to return home to Germany, she will send us a souvenir photo in a police uniform, with a German shepherd at her side

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families Local History

Caprotti’s ‘extended family’ between Albiate and Milan

There is a long list of closely trusted people with whom the families of yesteryear surrounded themselves and filled their homes, people who called their employers by name ('scior Bernardo', 'sciora Bettina', 'scior Peppin'), knew more about their lives sometimes than themselves, and were always there at every important family event, with pride and sometimes even emotion.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families Local History

Around the Caprottis: the beloved villa in Albiate

Since the end of the 19th century, when the Caprotti family bought the villa, much of the family history passed through that house, and continues to do so. Many photographs recount it, many memories that have remained in the letters and in the souls of those who lived them, and bring back serene photos among the trees, the games in the courtyard, the animals that once were, even the old carriages that the family used for a long time, even after the advent of cars, and which still exist.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The joy of snow, always: for Milan-Cortina 2026

Since the 1920s at least, everyone in the family has been skiing, great-grandparents, fathers and grandchildren, boys and girls: from great-grandfather Umberto Quintavalle, who ended his life in a crevasse under the eyes of his grandmother Adele, to grandmother Luisa and her children, my mother Giorgina and uncle Beppo, from great-grandfather Giuseppe Venosta, President of the Sport Club Pirelli to grandfather Guido, from his brother Gigi Venosta, who in addition to skiing was also a national hockey player, to Gianni Albertini, husband of aunt Ida Quintavalle, who was also a masterful climber and Arctic explorer. And up to us, children of that passion that we still continue.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The ‘Rinascentine’: Giorgina Venosta, Donatella Brustio in Cerri, Adriana Botti in Monti, Rosellina Archinto

My mother, and almost all her closest friends, worked at La Rinascente, the oldest and most famous department store in Milan. They went in at a very young age, either as their first job after their studies or, like my mother Giorgina, making a living after separating from her husband (in her case my father, Bernardo Caprotti). They were trained by a very effective school: the employees were the 'rinascentini'...

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Inge Feltrinelli, Anna Nogara, Adriana Botti in Monti

My mother's friends, Giorgina, also became my affectionate 'protectors', as in the case of Inge Feltrinelli, who was one of the few people who did not abandon me when the worst years of my life arrived. Then Anna Nogara, actress and director, Roberto Olivetti's second wife and mother of his only daughter, who in her eighties still treads the boards. Finally Adriana Botti, later wife of Mario Monti, owner of the Longanesi publishing house

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta : “Ragazze del Forte, the most beautiful ladies of today”, by Lina Sotis, Sette, 5 July 2001

Lina Sotis, a journalist and writer, always present in Milanese salons, also a 'girl from the Forte' in the golden age, was a dear friend of my mother Giorgina Venosta, and in an article in July 2001 she painted a delightful portrait of my mother as a young man, complete with a small episode related to the actor Renato Salvatori, a protagonist of the great post-war period of Italian cinema, but first a lifeguard on the beaches of Forte dei Marmi, and madly in love with the 'seductive and shy' Giorgina Venosta.

History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta and Bernardo Caprotti’s friends: Giulia Maria Crespi, Indro Montanelli, Marisa Spaini Rivolta

If Mario and Vittorio Crespi were partners of my father Bernardo and Uncle Guido in the foundation of Esselunga, their niece Giulia Maria, for some fundamental years in the management of 'Corriere della Sera' and later founder of FAI-Fondo Ambiente Italiano and agricultural entrepreneur, was a friend of Bernardo's ex-wife, my mother Giorgina...

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Tomás Maldonado, artist and companion of Inge Feltrinelli

Tomás Maldonado (1922-2018), born in Buenos Aires, was a lecturer in Industrial Design in Architecture at the Milan Polytechnic, a chair he established in 1994. When he met Inge Feltrinelli, Giangiacomo's recently widowed wife, he moved from operational design to a more intellectual role. He lived with Inge for over forty years, dying just over two months after her

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Friends of Bernardo Caprotti and Giorgina Venosta: architect Vico Magistretti and publisher Rosellina Archinto

My father Bernardo wanted Vico Magistretti to design the Esselunga superstore in Pantigliate, which opened in 2001, where two years later the first of the 'Bar Atlantique' (now 'Bar Atlantic') opened, also designed by Magistretti, who renovated the food outlets that I had strongly desired since the first superstores. The great architect worked for my father, but he was also a close friend of my mother GiorginaOf mutual friends Rosellina Archinto, who animated Milan's cultural life for decades

History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Bernardo Caprotti’s and Giorgina Venosta’s friends: architect Mario Botta

Born in Mendrisio in 1943, he designed the shopping centre in Via Canova, Florence, for Esselunga. Mario Botta was at home in Monate, in the villa of my mother Giorgina and her husband Aldo Bassetti. When my grandmother Luisa Quintavalle died in 2009, she wrote an affectionate condolence card to my mother, with a sketch on the cover for the new Alpine church in Mogno, Switzerland, which was swept away by an avalanche in 1986.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Gae Aulenti, Ettore Sottsass, Vittorio Gregotti

My mother Giorgina, who from 1977 to 1991 was the representative in Milan of the auction house Christie's, in charge of liaising with all the experts in the various sectors, and then an art expert with her own company, Consulenza d'Arte, which she founded in 1992 with two other partners, could only move well in the environment where the great architect-designers gravitated, forging friendships that lasted a lifetime.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Pierluigi Cerri and Donatella Brustio in Cerri

Pierluigi Cerri, one of Italy's greatest architect-designers and winner of three Compasso d'Oro awards - the oldest and most prestigious design prize in the world - happily gravitated around the tables of the villa that my mother Giorgina and her second husband, Aldo Bassetti, owned on Lake Monate. Pierluigi had also married Donatella Brustio, a descendant of the family that was identified with La Rinascente for decades (she herself worked there from a very young age), and a close friend of my mother's. She was a very sweet woman and, like all Giorgina's friends, strong and resourceful. Her death in 2016 left a great void.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family and the animals: Giorgina Venosta on her honeymoon, 1958

Love for animals, and dogs in particular, has always been a constant in our family. Mum always had a little dog in her arms as soon as she could, as in this photograph, part of a series taken by my father Bernardo, which shows her on her honeymoon in France (they were married in November 1958) with a puppy on her lap. Because of this love of hers, one of the projects of the Guido Venosta Foundation, which I chair, supported the Fondazione Progetto Arca Onlus, which was able to buy a farmhouse in Baggio to turn it into a reception centre for homeless people with dogs, usually rejected by other institutions.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta catwalks for Emilio Pucci

"Giorgina has no money, and must live. Beautiful and with an elegant figure, she could not fail to be noticed: and an old, faded newspaper page still from 1964 shows her, full page spread, as a mannequin (this was how catwalk models were defined at the time, with an eloquent Frenchness). She is wearing a rich and resplendent dress, and the person who finishes 'adorning' her is Marquis Emilio Pucci, one of the founders of 'made in Italy' fashion and an absolute genius of creativity, who certainly did not choose his models at random'.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family: Giorgina Venosta with little Giuseppe in St. Moritz, 1964

The beauty of the mountains and the snow, as well as our passion for skiing (they used to put snowshoes in our hands as soon as we could walk on our own), were the stage for unforgettable family moments, like this shot with my mother Giorgina in St. Moritz in 1964. It was there, at the home of her father, Grandpa Guido, that we children were able to see her most often after the separation from our father.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family: Bernardo Caprotti and Giorgina’s wedding, November 1958. Grandmother Luisa with her mother

My mother is a little younger than Guido Caprotti, the second of the three brothers, and with her mother and brother she spends the summer in Forte dei Marmi, where the Caprotti family also spends their holidays. At Forte Giorgina meets Bernardo, who is twice her age but is intelligent, charming, with a wry and ready wit. She just wants to run away from home, and the idea of joining a family as apparently united as Bernardo's attracts her; he has decided that the time has come to settle down, and a young bride from Milan's upper industrial bourgeoisie suits him perfectly.

History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family and friends: Guido Vergani, journalist, friend of Claudio Caprotti and Giorgina, ca. 1990s.

On a trip to Tehran to meet the Shah of Persia [Rockefeller] stops off in Milan and, to seal the alliance with the Italian partners, goes with his wife Mary to visit them. A dinner at The Caprotti family's was also on the agenda, but the night before Guido Vergani, who was to become a famous journalist but at the time was not yet twenty and was a friend of Claudio Caprotti's, went to visit him, and in the excitement of the moment he opened the refrigerator and without anyone noticing he ate all the rolls that his grandmother Marianne had cooked for the occasion. The dinner is a success even without the rolls, but that episode will still anger Marianne many years later.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Silvia Tofanelli in memory of Lina Sotis

The story of Silvia and Filippo, who made the whole of Milan dream: Silvia Tofanelli, charming, full of suitors, met Filippo Rusca, the most straganzo of the ganzi days. They fell in love, they took each other, they abandoned the others, they made the Italian salons talk, they got married. They were a happy couple. He passed away, this is how she remembers him. We who lived them as the most beautiful of times.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

My mother’s friends, Giorgina Venosta: Lina Sotis and Silvia Tofanelli

The first photograph comes from a series taken at Lina's second bachelorette party, in November 1993, on the eve of her marriage to Marco Romano, an event that Sotis herself also recalled with nostalgia in an interview for 'il Giornale' in April 2015: 'Yes, it was nice. Readings, music, beautiful. There was Natalia Aspesi, Inge Feltrinelli, Rosellina Archinto, Stella Pende, Gioia Marchi Falck , Mita De Benedetti, Antonella Camerana, Giorgina Venosta...'.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Elba Island, Tenuta delle Ripalte, the lost paradise of childhood

Shortly before the Second World War, Umberto Quintavalle, vice-president of Magneti Marelli and my maternal great-grandfather, bought the marvellous Ripalte estate on the island of Elba and turned it into a place of delight, especially for hunting, but also for relatives and friends to stay. When great-grandfather Umberto died in 1959, the property passed to one of his daughters, my grandmother Luisa Quintavalle, who was married in her second marriage to Marquis Nicolò Theodoli. With her, summer periods at Ripalte are one of the most beautiful childhood memories.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Uncle Beppo Venosta: an original and unconventional personality

Original and revolutionary Uncle Beppo, my mother Giorgina's brother, was an original and revolutionary type, a great Carlo Marx-like beard and an active participant in Sixty-Eight and the '68ism' that followed. A journalist of great class, foreign correspondent from the Middle East for many years, an ironic and provocative person, he died of cancer, the disease that his father, grandfather Guido Venosta, had fought so long and so effectively with AIRC. Grandfather fortunately did not have to see him, having died the year before.

History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Caprotti and the company Ing. A. Morganti: the future in construction

The history of 'Impresa di costruzioni Ing. A. Morganti' (from 2012 'Morganti Impresa di Costruzioni S.p.A.'), is closely intertwined with the history of construction in Italy throughout the 20th century, giving life and completion to many major projects involving houses, roads, industries and, their speciality, prefabricated structures. For this reason above all they came into contact with the Caprotti family, first for the Albiatese textile factory, then for Esselunga, for which they built many supermarkets throughout the country and a large part of the structures of the Limito headquarters.

Collaborations / Projects Food and Retail History History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families People, Environment & Culture Press & Events

Giuseppe Caprotti: ‘From trolleys to history, the luck of living more lives’

What will we read about in your new book? ‘I tell another side of the family through two extraordinary explorers: my eponymous ancestor Giuseppe Caprotti, who lived thirty years in Yemen, and my great uncle Gianni Albertini, a skier and mountaineer who explored the North Pole’.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family: my baptism, 1961

Our lives as children are entrusted from birth to 'young ladies', experienced nannies who look after us like second mothers. I like the German Waltraud, the first one: At home we call her 'Schwester' and you can even recognise her in my christening photos. Once she has left her job in our family to return home to Germany, she will send us a souvenir photo in a police uniform, with a German shepherd at her side

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families Local History

Caprotti’s ‘extended family’ between Albiate and Milan

There is a long list of closely trusted people with whom the families of yesteryear surrounded themselves and filled their homes, people who called their employers by name ('scior Bernardo', 'sciora Bettina', 'scior Peppin'), knew more about their lives sometimes than themselves, and were always there at every important family event, with pride and sometimes even emotion.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families Local History

Around the Caprottis: the beloved villa in Albiate

Since the end of the 19th century, when the Caprotti family bought the villa, much of the family history passed through that house, and continues to do so. Many photographs recount it, many memories that have remained in the letters and in the souls of those who lived them, and bring back serene photos among the trees, the games in the courtyard, the animals that once were, even the old carriages that the family used for a long time, even after the advent of cars, and which still exist.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The joy of snow, always: for Milan-Cortina 2026

Since the 1920s at least, everyone in the family has been skiing, great-grandparents, fathers and grandchildren, boys and girls: from great-grandfather Umberto Quintavalle, who ended his life in a crevasse under the eyes of his grandmother Adele, to grandmother Luisa and her children, my mother Giorgina and uncle Beppo, from great-grandfather Giuseppe Venosta, President of the Sport Club Pirelli to grandfather Guido, from his brother Gigi Venosta, who in addition to skiing was also a national hockey player, to Gianni Albertini, husband of aunt Ida Quintavalle, who was also a masterful climber and Arctic explorer. And up to us, children of that passion that we still continue.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The ‘Rinascentine’: Giorgina Venosta, Donatella Brustio in Cerri, Adriana Botti in Monti, Rosellina Archinto

My mother, and almost all her closest friends, worked at La Rinascente, the oldest and most famous department store in Milan. They went in at a very young age, either as their first job after their studies or, like my mother Giorgina, making a living after separating from her husband (in her case my father, Bernardo Caprotti). They were trained by a very effective school: the employees were the 'rinascentini'...

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Inge Feltrinelli, Anna Nogara, Adriana Botti in Monti

My mother's friends, Giorgina, also became my affectionate 'protectors', as in the case of Inge Feltrinelli, who was one of the few people who did not abandon me when the worst years of my life arrived. Then Anna Nogara, actress and director, Roberto Olivetti's second wife and mother of his only daughter, who in her eighties still treads the boards. Finally Adriana Botti, later wife of Mario Monti, owner of the Longanesi publishing house

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta : “Ragazze del Forte, the most beautiful ladies of today”, by Lina Sotis, Sette, 5 July 2001

Lina Sotis, a journalist and writer, always present in Milanese salons, also a 'girl from the Forte' in the golden age, was a dear friend of my mother Giorgina Venosta, and in an article in July 2001 she painted a delightful portrait of my mother as a young man, complete with a small episode related to the actor Renato Salvatori, a protagonist of the great post-war period of Italian cinema, but first a lifeguard on the beaches of Forte dei Marmi, and madly in love with the 'seductive and shy' Giorgina Venosta.

History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta and Bernardo Caprotti’s friends: Giulia Maria Crespi, Indro Montanelli, Marisa Spaini Rivolta

If Mario and Vittorio Crespi were partners of my father Bernardo and Uncle Guido in the foundation of Esselunga, their niece Giulia Maria, for some fundamental years in the management of 'Corriere della Sera' and later founder of FAI-Fondo Ambiente Italiano and agricultural entrepreneur, was a friend of Bernardo's ex-wife, my mother Giorgina...

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Tomás Maldonado, artist and companion of Inge Feltrinelli

Tomás Maldonado (1922-2018), born in Buenos Aires, was a lecturer in Industrial Design in Architecture at the Milan Polytechnic, a chair he established in 1994. When he met Inge Feltrinelli, Giangiacomo's recently widowed wife, he moved from operational design to a more intellectual role. He lived with Inge for over forty years, dying just over two months after her

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Friends of Bernardo Caprotti and Giorgina Venosta: architect Vico Magistretti and publisher Rosellina Archinto

My father Bernardo wanted Vico Magistretti to design the Esselunga superstore in Pantigliate, which opened in 2001, where two years later the first of the 'Bar Atlantique' (now 'Bar Atlantic') opened, also designed by Magistretti, who renovated the food outlets that I had strongly desired since the first superstores. The great architect worked for my father, but he was also a close friend of my mother GiorginaOf mutual friends Rosellina Archinto, who animated Milan's cultural life for decades

History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Bernardo Caprotti’s and Giorgina Venosta’s friends: architect Mario Botta

Born in Mendrisio in 1943, he designed the shopping centre in Via Canova, Florence, for Esselunga. Mario Botta was at home in Monate, in the villa of my mother Giorgina and her husband Aldo Bassetti. When my grandmother Luisa Quintavalle died in 2009, she wrote an affectionate condolence card to my mother, with a sketch on the cover for the new Alpine church in Mogno, Switzerland, which was swept away by an avalanche in 1986.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Gae Aulenti, Ettore Sottsass, Vittorio Gregotti

My mother Giorgina, who from 1977 to 1991 was the representative in Milan of the auction house Christie's, in charge of liaising with all the experts in the various sectors, and then an art expert with her own company, Consulenza d'Arte, which she founded in 1992 with two other partners, could only move well in the environment where the great architect-designers gravitated, forging friendships that lasted a lifetime.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta’s friends: Pierluigi Cerri and Donatella Brustio in Cerri

Pierluigi Cerri, one of Italy's greatest architect-designers and winner of three Compasso d'Oro awards - the oldest and most prestigious design prize in the world - happily gravitated around the tables of the villa that my mother Giorgina and her second husband, Aldo Bassetti, owned on Lake Monate. Pierluigi had also married Donatella Brustio, a descendant of the family that was identified with La Rinascente for decades (she herself worked there from a very young age), and a close friend of my mother's. She was a very sweet woman and, like all Giorgina's friends, strong and resourceful. Her death in 2016 left a great void.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family and the animals: Giorgina Venosta on her honeymoon, 1958

Love for animals, and dogs in particular, has always been a constant in our family. Mum always had a little dog in her arms as soon as she could, as in this photograph, part of a series taken by my father Bernardo, which shows her on her honeymoon in France (they were married in November 1958) with a puppy on her lap. Because of this love of hers, one of the projects of the Guido Venosta Foundation, which I chair, supported the Fondazione Progetto Arca Onlus, which was able to buy a farmhouse in Baggio to turn it into a reception centre for homeless people with dogs, usually rejected by other institutions.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta catwalks for Emilio Pucci

"Giorgina has no money, and must live. Beautiful and with an elegant figure, she could not fail to be noticed: and an old, faded newspaper page still from 1964 shows her, full page spread, as a mannequin (this was how catwalk models were defined at the time, with an eloquent Frenchness). She is wearing a rich and resplendent dress, and the person who finishes 'adorning' her is Marquis Emilio Pucci, one of the founders of 'made in Italy' fashion and an absolute genius of creativity, who certainly did not choose his models at random'.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family: Giorgina Venosta with little Giuseppe in St. Moritz, 1964

The beauty of the mountains and the snow, as well as our passion for skiing (they used to put snowshoes in our hands as soon as we could walk on our own), were the stage for unforgettable family moments, like this shot with my mother Giorgina in St. Moritz in 1964. It was there, at the home of her father, Grandpa Guido, that we children were able to see her most often after the separation from our father.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family: Bernardo Caprotti and Giorgina’s wedding, November 1958. Grandmother Luisa with her mother

My mother is a little younger than Guido Caprotti, the second of the three brothers, and with her mother and brother she spends the summer in Forte dei Marmi, where the Caprotti family also spends their holidays. At Forte Giorgina meets Bernardo, who is twice her age but is intelligent, charming, with a wry and ready wit. She just wants to run away from home, and the idea of joining a family as apparently united as Bernardo's attracts her; he has decided that the time has come to settle down, and a young bride from Milan's upper industrial bourgeoisie suits him perfectly.

History of Esselunga History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family and friends: Guido Vergani, journalist, friend of Claudio Caprotti and Giorgina, ca. 1990s.

On a trip to Tehran to meet the Shah of Persia [Rockefeller] stops off in Milan and, to seal the alliance with the Italian partners, goes with his wife Mary to visit them. A dinner at The Caprotti family's was also on the agenda, but the night before Guido Vergani, who was to become a famous journalist but at the time was not yet twenty and was a friend of Claudio Caprotti's, went to visit him, and in the excitement of the moment he opened the refrigerator and without anyone noticing he ate all the rolls that his grandmother Marianne had cooked for the occasion. The dinner is a success even without the rolls, but that episode will still anger Marianne many years later.

Further Reading



Read 9 more articles

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta (1940 – 2021)

Giorgina Venosta (1940-2021) daughter of Guido Venosta and Luisa Quintavalle. She married Bernardo Caprotti by whom she had me (1960) and Violetta (1962). She separated from him shortly afterwards, became a respected art expert and married Aldo Bassetti, with whom she also shared a commitment to the FGV, founded in memory of her father by his second wife, Carlo Venosta.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

My summers in Lindos, with Guido Somarè, David Gilmour and the ‘Caprotti’ cat

In the 1960s and 1970s, my mother Giorgina was a companion of Guido Somarè, a talented painter with art in his blood for several generations, and she had been going with him to Lindos, a place on the island of Rhodes, since at least 1966. Violetta and I first came to Lindos in 1969, after an interminable journey that had taken us across the Isthmus of Corinth by boat...

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family: Bernardo Caprotti and Giorgina’s wedding, November 1958, Uncle Claudio and Grandmother Marianne

"Grandma has a weakness: she is madly in love with her third son, my uncle Claudio. Some friends told me that Claudio was allowed to have breakfast and lunch in bed when he was in Albiate. Bernardo suffered from this unique relationship and I am convinced that jealousy between the two brothers was one of the causes of the quarrels that shook our family.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

Giorgina Venosta (1940 – 2021)

Giorgina Venosta (1940-2021) daughter of Guido Venosta and Luisa Quintavalle. She married Bernardo Caprotti by whom she had me (1960) and Violetta (1962). She separated from him shortly afterwards, became a respected art expert and married Aldo Bassetti, with whom she also shared a commitment to the FGV, founded in memory of her father by his second wife, Carlo Venosta.

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

My summers in Lindos, with Guido Somarè, David Gilmour and the ‘Caprotti’ cat

In the 1960s and 1970s, my mother Giorgina was a companion of Guido Somarè, a talented painter with art in his blood for several generations, and she had been going with him to Lindos, a place on the island of Rhodes, since at least 1966. Violetta and I first came to Lindos in 1969, after an interminable journey that had taken us across the Isthmus of Corinth by boat...

History of the Caprotti and Venosta families

The Caprotti family: Bernardo Caprotti and Giorgina’s wedding, November 1958, Uncle Claudio and Grandmother Marianne

"Grandma has a weakness: she is madly in love with her third son, my uncle Claudio. Some friends told me that Claudio was allowed to have breakfast and lunch in bed when he was in Albiate. Bernardo suffered from this unique relationship and I am convinced that jealousy between the two brothers was one of the causes of the quarrels that shook our family.