Bernardino Branca, interviewed by art historian Martina Mazzotta, presents his recent autobiographical book Villa Clara (Mimesis Edizioni, 2020).
The story of a large villa on the Lago Maggiore, in northern Italy, and of his international guests, the lives of the owners and of their servants, genius and folly, are intertwined with the memories and the rites of passage of a child through to adolescence.
Bernardino Branca achieved a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Modern and Medieval History from the University of Sussex and a Postgraduate Diploma in Financial Economics at SOAS, London. After a brief stint in the embattled family business in the 1980’s in Milan, he has been working for a few decades in the asset management industry across Europe; in 2014 he sold his firm and begun studying for an M. Phil in Philosophy at Università Cattolica in Milan. He has published his thesis ‘Edgar Wind Filosofo delle Immagini, la biografia intellettuale di un discepolo di Aby Warburg’, Mimesis Edizioni, Milan 2019, pp 374. In 2020 Bernardino has published ‘Villa Clara’ with Mimesis edizioni, pp.120. He is currently writing a PhD thesis on ‘Edgar Wind and the Renaissance’ at the University of Kent, and related articles for UK and Italian journals. He is married to the watercolour painter Andrea Sargeant and has three grown up children, but has’nt yet quite figured out where he is actually living.
Martina Mazzotta is an academic and curator specialised in philosophy and its relationship with the visual arts, music and science. She grew up in Milan surrounded by books and artworks and joined her parents in their Publishing House and Art Foundation for many years.
She has conceived and curated exhibitions and cultural projects in several museums, foundations, theatres and Biennials in Italy, Europe, India and in the USA. She is visiting fellow at the Warburg Institute in London and a member of the Warburg Institute Visionary Circle.