Giuliano Paratico

Who is Giuliano Paratico?

Giuliano Paratico was a musician living in Brescia, Northern Italy. He was born around the year 1550 and died around 1616. He was a notary by profession but also an accomplished musician.

His instrument of choice was the chitarrone, and according to contemporaries had a sweet voice. He published 2 books about his compositions, with the printer Marchetti of Brescia. They are extremely rare today. They were mainly for three voices songs. He was a close friend of Angelo Grillo Spinola, prelate, poet, friend and confessor of Torquato Tasso. The letters of Grillo make still an interesting reading today. Grillo was instrumental in organizing the arrival of the first group of Japanese Jesuit students in the West, perhaps through his cousin Carlo Spinola s.j. who designed the church of San Paolo in Macao, only the stone facade remains today but it is the simbol of the former Portuguese colony. He later died as a martyr at Nagasaki.

The Paratico family appears in the Golden Book of Nobility of Brescia at the beginning of the 16th century, but it seems that they were expelled later on, perhaps because, following the Spanish fashion, being a Noble means that they could not have a real profession. Even the profession of magistrate was not accepted. According to the book by Giuseppe Pelli Bencivenni "Memorie per servire alla Vita di Dante Alighieri" 1823, the author of the Comedy was a guest in the house of the Paratico family in Brescia.