Raffaello Giolli ed Emilia Cimino Folliero, ovvero La disfatta dell’Ottocento dalle carte d’archivio del Museo del Risorgimento di Milano

This article aims to provide an analysis of the essay La disfatta dell’Ottocento by Raffaello Giolli (1889-1945), a book published posthumously by Einaudi in 1961. Thanks to an in-depth study of the work and its documentary apparatus, it was possible to reconstruct much of Giolli’s editorial and personal life in those years, focusing above all on the critical relationship the author had with the 19th century. Moreover, La disfatta is a work that is strongly connected with the life of Emilia Cimino Folliero (1854-1944), an unpublished personality addressed here for the first time in a scientific paper: Emilia was in fact a suffragette, a painter and a great friend of Rodin, who had a fruitful and intense friendship with Giolli during his long stay in Lombardy, creating the premises for a piece of writing called La figlia della rivoluzione, the true premise for the later La disfatta.