La signora Bononcini e i comici dell’Arte

On the basis of archival materials, including some unpublished, this essay reconstructs the essentially unknown figure of Margherita Balletti (Milan, c. 1680 – London, after 1738), wife of Giovanni Bononcini and exponent of an important family of Commedia dell’Arte performers active in the major piazzas of northern Italy and at the courts of central Europe from the mid-seventeenth century on. Margherita did not devote herself to the theatre, but cultivated painting instead. She followed her husband to Vienna, Rome, London, and Paris, but the marriage foundered in a sea of scandals and debts.