Heritage
I Cobenzl
I COBENZL.
UNA FAMIGLIA EUROPEA TRA POLITICA, ARTE E DIPLOMAZIA (1508-1823)
edited by Federico Vidic and Alessio Stasi
Face to face with Napoleon, Maria Theresa, Catherine of Russia, Saint Ignatius, Christina of Sweden, Ivan the Terrible, Frederick the Great. And with artists like Mozart, Da Ponte, Caucig, Meytens, David. They are the Cobenzls, an extraordinary family which, from 1500 to 1800, was the protagonist of one of the most surprising and at the same time unknown events of the upper Adriatic region. Starting from a small village on the Carso, San Daniele (today Štanjel), the Cobenzls will build their fortune from generation to generation in the service of the Habsburgs and with consistency and tenacity they will become famous throughout Europe in the fields of politics, diplomacy, philosophy and of art. The Muscovy Report (1576) by Giovanni Cobenzl (1530-1594), the result of an adventurous journey through the steppes and the ice, will be the basis of Western knowledge about Russia. Two centuries later, Giovanni Filippo Cobenzl (1741-1810) accompanied Emperor Joseph II in pre-revolutionary France, leaving a diary full of unpublished news. These are just two examples among the many that emerge from research that places regional history in its European context, overcoming linguistic and cultural barriers as the great Gorizia diplomats knew how to do.
In the volume promoted by the State Archive of Gorizia with the collaboration of the Palazzo Coronini Cronberg Foundation, thanks to the participation of thirty-two scholars from eight different countries, the history of this family re-emerges. His precious archive, preserved in Gorizia, was for the first time investigated in depth and in the light of the most recent historiographical approaches. Gorizia, Vienna, Ljubljana, Trieste, Brussels, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg are just some of the scenarios of this vast fresco that sees the legacy of the Cobenzl present in the Hermitage, the Royal Academy of Belgium, in castles such as Predjama to the caves of Postumia, in Slovenia and in Friuli, to conclude in Vienna, where Cobenzl will become the name of an entire suburb of the Austrian capital.