ARCONATI VISCONTI, GIUSEPPE. - Politician, born in Milan on 9 April 1797, died there on 11 March 1873. Of noble family, a student of philosophical and religious questions, he married his cousin Costanza Trotti, with whom he shared so profound a communion of feeling and action that their biographies are inseparable. Their salon soon became a centre of national propaganda of European importance. Conspirators with Confalonieri in the constitutional movement, they fled to Brussels (1821), where they had relations with French and Belgian scholars and patriots and with Italian exiles, especially Berchet, Sealvini, and Arrivabene. In Berlin they worked for Confalonieri’s release from the Spielberg. With the amnesty of Ferdinando I they went to Tuscany, then, after the Cinque giornate, to Milan, whence they took refuge in Piedmont (1850). Elected deputy after the annexation of Lombardy, A.V. belonged to the Right. He was appointed senator in 1865.
The A. were intimate friends of Manzoni and kept alive the belief in the harmony between the Church and liberty. Giuseppe was loved by Pellico as an exemplary “liberal of Christian temper.” The only time he spoke in the Senate was to express his reluctance regarding the conquest of Rome. No less fervent was Costanza, who also devoted herself to religious studies with Giobertian tendencies and who, in a certain sense, stood in opposition to the excesses of Belgioioso. In works of charity both gave an example of generosity and feeling.