Lombard painting from Romanticism to Scapigliatura on display at Novara Castle

From October 22, 2022 to March 12, 2023, the Castello Visconteo Sforzesco in Novara will host the exhibition Milano. Da Romantica a Scapigliata, curated by Elisabetta Chiodini assisted by a Scientific Committee including Niccolò D’Agati, Fernando Mazzocca, Sergio Rebora; conceived and produced by the Municipality of Novara, Fondazione Castello and Mets Percorsi d’Arte with the patronage of the Piedmont Region, European Commission, Province of Novara, Municipality of Milan. Main Sponsor Banco BPM. Through more than seventy masterpieces made by the major protagonists of nineteenth-century figurative culture active in Milan, the exhibition aims to illustrate the changes that took place in the Lombard capital between the1910s and the early 1880s: turbulent decades during which Milan witnessed the fall of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, the establishment of the Lombardy-Venetia Kingdom and the second Austrian domination, the first popular uprisings and the wars of independence that would lead to liberation in 1859.

The exhibition is divided into eight sections that will trace the evolution of Lombard painting from Romanticism to Scapigliatura, the cultural movement born in Milan in the 1860s that involved poets, writers, musicians and artists, united by a deep impatience with the conventions of society and bourgeois culture.

The audience is greeted by a masterpiece inspired by a popular narrative work: I Lambertazzi e i Geremei by Defendente Sacchi (1796-1840). Signed by Francesco Hayez (1791-1882) is in fact Imelda de Lambertazzi executed in 1853 for the Monza collector Giovanni Masciaga. A story of love and death set in the Bologna of the struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the tragic story of Imelda and her Bonifacio had been the subject of poetic works even before the publication of Sacchi’s novel, and Hayez had tackled the fortunate subject as early as the 1920s, first for the publisher Gian Marco Artaria of Mannheim (1822), then for Francesco Crivelli (1829).

The first section of the exhibition is devoted to “urban painting,” a term coined in 1829 by Defendente Sacchi to qualify the new genre of perspective views elaborated and brought to success between the second and third decades of the 19th century by the Alexandrian painter Giovanni Migliara (1785-1837). Through the works exhibited in this section, we aim to illustrate theevolution of the urban landscape in the Romantic era, starting precisely from some of Migliara’s paintings such as the Veduta di Piazza del Duomo in Milano, 1828, from the Fondazione Cariplo Collection and the Veduta dell’interno del I.R. Palazzo del Governo, 1834. This is followed by works by Giuseppe Elena (1801-1867) such as Veduta di Piazza della Vetra in Milano, 1833, from the Collection of Fondazione Cariplo and by Luigi Premazzi (1814-1891), as well as Luigi Bisi (1814-1886), already acclaimed heir of the late Migliara since the very early 1940s. Also on display are numerous works by Giuseppe Canella (1788-1847), the first true avant-garde alternative to Migliara’s strictly perspective painting, spectacular Milanese tranches de vie such as View of the Naviglio Canal Taken on the Bridge of San Marco, 1834, from the Fondazione Cariplo Collection, and by Angelo Inganni (1807-1880) represented by important masterpieces including The View of Piazza del Duomo with the Figini Covering, executed in 1839 for theEmperor Ferdinand I of Austria, and The Column of San Martiniano al Verziere with falling snow, from 1845, one of Inganni’s very first snowfalls. Works belonging to public and private collections, which accompany the visitor on an evocative journey through time among the streets, the squares, along the Navigli, precisely in the years that saw the beginning of their transformation into the places we know and frequent, as in the case of Piazza del Duomo, the Corsia dei Servi-the current Corso Vittorio Emanuele-, Piazza San Babila, Piazza della Scala and the Verziere.

The second section is dedicated to the protagonists of the Milanese history of those years. Thus, “set portraits” and genre scenes executed by Giuseppe Molteni (1800-1867), a multifaceted figure, painter, restorer, worldly portraitist of international fame and at the same time a sincere painter of the life of the people, are exhibited. Present again is Francesco Hayez, renewer not only of the historical genre but also of portraiture, to whom Molteni had issued a challenge precisely in the field of portraiture. Among the works on display by the two great artists: Molteni’s recently rediscovered Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni, and the Portrait of Countess Teresa Zumali Marsili with her son Giuseppe, an extraordinary secular maternity, one of the pinnacles of Hayez’s portraiture exhibited at Brera in 1833, owned by the Azienda Socio sanitaria territoriale di Lodi, on loan to Intesa Sanpaolo. This is followed by works by Carlo Arienti (1801-1873) represented by Ritratto del conte Carlo Alfonso Schiaffinati in abito da cacciatore (1834) and by Giovanni Carnovali, better known as il Piccio (1804-1874), an author engaged since the first half the 1940s in a highly personal research around the expressive potential of color, a fundamental figure for an early liberation of Lombard painting from what had been the undisputed primacy of classicist drawing. Space is also given to the brothers Domenico (1815-1878) and Gerolamo Induno (1825-1890), men and painters of very different temperaments, but both admirable narrators of their own time, a time told mostly through the story of the humble, a story that traveled parallel to History, in this room represented respectively by L’offerta, presented at Brera in 1846, and Scioperatella, from 1851.

Entirely dedicated to the Five Days of Milan and the crucial episodes that led to the temporary liberation of Milan from Austrian rule in March 1848 is the third section. Among the artists featured is Carlo Bossoli (1815-1884), a vedutista of extraordinary sensitivity who achieved international fame precisely through paintings commemorating the wars of independence, such as Carlo Alberto at the balcony of Palazzo Greppi, from the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan, works executed mostly in tempera, the painter’s favorite medium throughout his career; Carlo Canella (1800-1879), Giuseppe’s brother, with Porta Tosa in Milano (on March 22, 1848), 1848-1850, from the Intesa Sanpaolo Collection; and again Baldassare Verazzi (1819-1886), featured in the exhibition with what is considered his masterpiece: Episodio delle cinque giornate, Combattimento presso Palazzo Litta, from the Museo del Risorgimento in Milan.

We then move on to the fourth section devoted to the works of the Milanese brothers Domenico and Gerolamo Induno, among the major protagonists of the figurative scene of those decades. A careful selection of their major works depicts the humble domestic interiors of the common people of Milan in those years and, in a simple but accurate way, tells their story, their daily lives, the dramas and difficulties of those extremely difficult times, their small joys. These include the famous Bread and Tears, by Domenico Induno, displayed in the 1854 edition that was owned by Francesco Hayez.

The fifth section displays some works by authors who were fundamental in the renewal of pictorial language: Eleuterio Pagliano (1826-1903) with Il libro di preghiere, 1857-1858, and Giuseppe Bertini (1825-1898), with Ophelia, 1860-1870, both from the Musei Civici di Varese; the aforementioned Piccio, present with Ritratto di Gina Caccia, 1862; Federico Faruffini (1833-1869), with the splendid oil Toletta antica, circa 1865, together with Pagliano among the first Lombard artists to update their painting on the most advanced Neapolitan one, focused on color and light, trends approached by Faruffini in the mid-1950s during a long stay in Rome during which the painter knew and frequented Domenico Morelli (1823-1901), Bernardo Celentano (1835-1863) and Saverio Altamura (1822-1897). And again the Milanese Filippo Carcano (1840-1914), talented and rebellious pupil of Hayez, engaged from the very early 1960s in the elaboration of a new language that could be suitable to communicate in a modern sense the “real” as in the magnificent Giardino con effetto di sole, circa 1867-1868.

The sixth section hosts works by Giuseppe Barbaglia (1841-1910), Vespasiano Bignami (1841-1929) with Viale delle balie o Nei vecchi giardini, 1877, from the Banco BPM Collection, and Mosè Bianchi (1840-1904) with three scenes of daily life. Young artists who saw with enthusiasm the experiments of Filippo Carcano, in open rupture with the academic tradition.

The exhibition continues with some significant works painted during the 1860s by Tranquillo Cremona (1837-1878) and Daniele Ranzoni (1843-1889), before the elaboration of the scapigliato language that would characterize the works of their artistic maturity artistic maturity; Cremona’s include Amaro calice, 1865, from the Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art in Piacenza; Ritratto di Alberto Pisani Dossi, 1867, from the Casa Museo Pisani Dossi in Corbetta; and Ritratto di Nicola Massa Gazzino, c. 1867-1869, from the Musei Civici in Pavia. By Ranzoni is the Portrait of his sister Virginia, circa 1863-1864, from the Paolo and Adele Giannoni Gallery of Modern Art in Novara, and the Portrait of Donna Maria Padulli in Greppi, circa 1869.

Finally, the last section houses some of the major Scapigliati masterpieces executed from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. These include Melodia and In ascolto, extraordinary canvases executed en pendant by Cremona between 1874 and 1878 on a commission from the industrialist Andrea Ponti; Visita al collegio, again by Cremona, referable to 1877-1878; and some of the most intense portraits executed by Ranzoni, such as Ritratto della signora Luigia Pisani Dossi, exhibited at Brera in 1880, the splendid Giovinetta inglese, c. 1886, and Ritratto di Antonietta Tzikos di Saint Leger, first presented to the public in the spring of 1886, on the occasion of the exhibition organized for the inauguration of the new headquarters of the Società per le Belle Arti ed Esposizione Permanente. Also in the section are two fine sculptures in bronze and plaster by Giuseppe Grandi: La Pleureuse (1875-1878) and Beethoven the Youth (1874).

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Lombard painting from Romanticism to Scapigliatura on display at Novara Castle

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