📆 27th October 2023
🕜 06:30 PM
📌 Teatro all'Antica
The National Toson d'oro Award of Vespasiano Gonzaga is a Rotarian award for career, established by the Rotary Club Casalmaggiore-Viadana-Sabbioneta under the patronage of the Municipality of Sabbioneta.
The Rotary Club Casalmaggiore-Viadana-Sabbioneta decided to give life to this national award in the year 2011-2012, with the intent to be inspired symbolically by the ancient virtues of Vespasiano Gonzaga, founder of Sabbioneta, since 2008 included together in Mantua in the Unesco World Heritage List. The award ceremony takes place in the Teatro all'Antica, a late Renaissance jewel designed by the Vicenza architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, and consists in the delivery of a copy of the Toson d'oro attributed by Philip II of Spain to Vespasiano Gonzaga, jewel found during the restoration of the church of the Kornati, where the burial monument and the duke’s tomb are preserved.
The Rotary Club Casalmaggiore-Viadana-Sabbioneta takes advantage of the reproduction right of the original jewel, now preserved in the parish museum of Sabbioneta, granted in 1991 to the association by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage for the important merits achieved in its discovery by the member Luigi Monici, former mayor of the city and sponsor of restoration work.
The National Toson d'oro Award of Vespasiano Gonzaga intends to reward those who have "exceptionally honored society without limits of age, nationality, sex, rank, profession and political or religious affiliation". The quotation is taken from the regulation that, in providing for its Rotarian, Sabbionetane, lay and extensive peculiarities in its assignment, wants to clearly distinguish the prize from the famous knighthood granted by the Order of the Golden Fleece, of which he recognizes the very high historical and moral values connected with his ancient foundation as an aristocratic equestrian order defender of Catholicism.