The 1563 Foundation for Art and Culture of the Compagnia di San Paolo presented the volume in Turin Philanthropy and credit. Atlas of accounting documents, from the Compagnia to the San Paolo Banking Institute of Turin (XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries) by Claudio Bermond and Fausto Piola Caselli, with the collaboration of Anna Cantaluppi. The Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation has always been an example of the very close link between philanthropy and credit and the 1563 Foundation, with its research and with the tools for consulting the archival heritage, made available to the community, intends with this initiative to highlight the continuity of intentions and the historical depth of the actions that the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation, today as yesterday, puts in place for the social, economic and cultural development of its community of reference.
The genesis of Philanthropy and Credit, the authors explain, is inextricably linked to mission of the 1563 Foundation, instrumental body of the Compagnia di San Paolo, which among its main tasks has precisely the conservation and cultural enhancement of the Historical Archive of the Turin institute, a heritage that embraces four and a half centuries of history of the body, articulated in over two linear kilometers of documentation. In particular, theAtlas is one of the outcomes of project of Brand Heritage, to which the 1563 Foundation works to protect the documentary heritage of the history of the Compagnia di San Paolo with the aim of bringing out and enhancing the history of the institution, linking it to its contemporary objectives and missions.
Starting from the study of the papers of the Compagnia's historical archive, made up largely of accounting sources, the volume therefore offers a significant selection of one hundred administrative documents, commented by the authors from a technical and content point of view. Through the collation of documents, a structure of the ancient Compagnia di San Paolo emerged predominantly oriented in the modern age to charity, with the presence within it - among the many charitable institutions - of a "pawnshop" dedicated to the small free loan of money against pledge of objects for personal and family use. The pawnshop first became a sort of savings bank, which collected and protected small deposits, and then, from 1932, after having absorbed Riccardo Gualino's Banca Agricola Italiana, a public-law credit institution.
Then in the 60s it changed its name to Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino, supporting the significant industrial development of the north-west of the country, without however ever neglecting its traditional welfare functions. However, we all remember recent history: the merger with IMI and then, in 2007, the creation of the Intesa Sanpaolo group, which today is the leading bank in the country in terms of customers and capitalisation, and among the very first in Europe.
