The Dellamano Coat of Arms

The Dellamano family has a coat of arms of red and gold; in the first section there is a band of silver with a hand, natural-looking, in the second a black eagle. From the works of Count Ginanni "The Art of Coats of Arms" and from the Heraldic Encyclopedia by Grollalanza, the following heraldic meanings of the parts of the coat of arms are indicated:

RED; Red represents fire among the elements, ruby among precious stones and stands for love of God and of your neighbor, modesty, bloodshed, desire of revenge, courage, valor, nobility and power.
GOLD; Gold is the noblest of the two metals in the coat of arms. In tournaments it meant wealth, love, honor; in the flags, desire for victory. It stands for faith, justice, knowledge, constancy, power, chivalry, gentility, longevity, eternity.
BAND; It is a "fease" of first quality. In heraldry, the "fease" represents the fillets by which kings were crowned or the bandages for honorable wounds. The silver "fease" stands for illustrious ancestry, prudence, greatness.
HAND; An open hand stands for generosity.

EAGLE; It is the king of birds, Jupiter's companion, custodian of lightning. It was and still is the symbol of ability, of victory, of force and of soverign power.

This coat of arms of the Dellamano family belongs to the so-called "agalmoniche" or open (clear) coat of arms, i.e. those which bespeak the name of the family through design or images.

Taken from the Heraldic Archives; Vallardi, Milano

A friend who lives in Varenna, Italy sent me this picture from a heraldry book. It is a bas-relief from a 10th-century wall in Bellano, Italy. This is a carving of a hand and appears to be the original symbol of the Dellamano family, though the name was "i Magni", "De Maniis", "Le Mane" or "De La Mano". Bellano is just north of Perledo on the shore of Lake Como.
	I have since met Daniele Cassinelli who lives in Dervio, a little town just north of Bellano on Lake Como. Daniele's paternal great-grandmother was Pasqualina Dellamano. Daniele's father Angelo was kind enough to search for this engraved hand, and found it in Bellano in a private garden. The owner allowed him to take this photo, where the hand resides just behind her lemon trees!
In 2021, Luca Dellamano from the UK told me of a book that had come out in 2020. The book is "La Sala Stemmata di Casa Serponti nella Villa Cipressi di Varenna" by Vittorio Mezzera. It had another version of the Dellamano coat of arms on its cover! The book is named "La Sala Stemmata di Casa Serponti nella Villa Cipressi di Varenna" by Vittorio Mezzera. This image also appears on page 39 and is used here with permission of the author. The author indicates that this is similar to the coat of arms for the Magni family. The title of this book translates roughly to "The Room of Coats of Arms in the Serponti House in the Villa Cipressi in Varenna. Villa Cipressi is now a hotel in Varenna on the shore of Lake Como. In the hotel is a room where guests can have breakfast and along the top edge of the walls there are old paintings of several coast of arms belonging to the local nobility of the 15th century.

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