Keywords

• The brothers Riccardo and Bruto Annibaldi della Molara
• lived in the Seventeenth Century
• belonged to an ancient but impoverished family of the Roman nobility. While the first one was governor of several cities in the Papal States and later Bishop of Veroli
• the second one was a layman and served the Grand Duke of Tuscany
• the Cardinal Nerli iunior and the Gran Connestabile Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna. Thanks to many
• unpublished archival sources
• especially epistolary documents
• it is possible to reconstruct the careers
• the personal and family strategies
• and the mutual relations of the two personages. The novelty of the research is to make clear the emotional and career paths of "poor" aristocrats of the Baroque Italy
• who had to win the esteem and protection of rich and powerful lords. The historiographical ideas that have encouraged and accompanied this article are various
• especially coming from the current scientific debates about the family networks
• the generational relationships and the dialectic between patronage and ethic of service to the prince in Early Modern Italy