‘Nelle varietà proprie della Città nostra’: Giovan Francesco Spinola’s "Instruttione famigliare" between Genoese identity and the Renaissance pedagogical tradition

In the realm of early modern educational thought, treatises generally known as institutiones have a central role in elaborating on the background of Renaissance pedagogy and in redesigning the pedagogical aims and priorities of a changing ruling class. In this framework, Giovan Francesco Spinola’s Instruttione famigliare (‘Family Education’, written around 1650) represents both a turning point and a variant profoundly connected with the needs and circumstances of the places in which the work was conceived. On the local side, the book gives evidence of a peculiar, one-of-a-kind ‘Genoese pedagogy’ and carries the mark of the uncertainty and troubles of a declining republic still very proud of its manners and morals. From a more general perspective, the treatise stands as the most convincing testimony of the progressive dismissal of the educational model based on Humanism and the liberal arts.