Studio per edizioni scelte Spes publisher

Founded in 1974 by Paola Barocchi in collaboration with her family, S.P.E.S. pursued a programme that Giorgio Zampa described in a 1976 article in Il Giornale as "bold and generous, intelligent and extremely useful". Refined facsimile editions of rare or unpublished works and important historical and artistic texts were offered at relatively affordable prices with a strategy that combined a dimension of supreme craftsmanship with scholarly rigour and precise, never banal cultural orientations. These were choices that did not result from aesthetic considerations, the quality of the figurative evidence or the refinement of the specimens, but were driven by a critical need to contextualise the sources and enhance their cultural value.

The publishing house, which had specialised in art historical and musical editions, was dissolved in 2014 at the instigation of its founder. This marked the end of a publishing adventure that had been sustained thanks to Paola Barocchi's courageous and consistent decisions, commitment and self-sacrifice. By entrusting the brand to the Memofonte Foundation, she expressed the hope that in better times it would be possible to continue the activity. And it was precisely in Memofonte, also a "studio", no longer "for selected editions" but "for the computerised processing of historical and artistic sources", that Paola Barocchi, always a vigilant interpreter of cultural reality, had pursued and developed the intention of disseminating and making accessible sources and research: no longer on paper but in digital form.