The painting by Giuseppe Molteni displayed in this room shows us a figure that we all know as the Nun of Monza, immortalised by Alessandro Manzoni in “The Betrothed”. In fact, the events of the novel are based on a real story, which took place between Milan and Monza in the period between the 16th and 17th centuries. Manzoni was familiar with this story, thanks to the Historiae Patriae, written by historian Giuseppe Ripamonti, who reported the terrible plague of 1630, and narrated events when the woman was still alive and exchanging letters with Cardinal Federico Borromeo.
In the actual story, the nun was a noblewoman called Marianna, born in Palazzo Marino, Milan, in 1575. Her mother was in fact Donna Virginia Marino; her father, Don Martino de Leyva, was a member of one of the most influential, respected families in the Spanish nobility, and owner of the fiefdom of Monza. To avoid the breakup of this inheritance, Marianna’s father forced her to take holy orders and in 1589, at just 14 years of age, she was sent to the monastery of Santa Margherita in Monza, where she took the name of Sister Virginia Maria.
Here she became the Mother Superior, with de facto feudal power over Monza, and the love story between Sister Virginia and Gian Paolo Osio, from a neighbouring palazzo, began inside the convent walls. The young lovers, aided by other nuns and some of the townsfolk, were able to remain together, in secret, for many years. During this time they had two children (the oldest one stillborn and a daughter, recognised by her father).
But their love story could not stay hidden forever, and in 1607, the threat of a lay sister to reveal the truth triggered a series of murders and violence that reached the ears of the Governor of Milan and Cardinal Federico Borromeo. Osio fled but his fate was sealed and he was betrayed and killed, but not before helping their accomplice nuns to escape, then trying to kill them. Sister Virginia was imprisoned in a monastery in Milan, where she was put on trial. Between interrogations and torture, they sentenced all those involved: the deeds of the trial – kept secret for many years – reveal the dramatic events in their entirety, through to the sentence. The Mother Superior, abandoned by her family, was sentenced to be closed in a minuscule cell with just a single small opening for food, air and a little light. These were hard years of atonement that in the end led Cardinal Federico to grant her a pardon and the possibility to leave her prison. Sister Virginia lived to a ripe old age for the time. She survived her inhuman imprisonment and the terrible plague of 1630, dying in 1650 in the Milanese convent in which she chose to end her days.