Artist: Giuseppe Mascarini
Date: 1933
Museum: Ca’ Granda – Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico (Milan, Italy)
Technique: Oil
Giovanna Gargantini (1847-1932), was born in Paris (and for this she was called Jeannette) where her parents, fervent Risorgimento patriots, had fled to avoid the Austrian prison. His father, a banker, worked in the bank of the same name, founded by his uncle Cesare, as well as administering the substantial real estate of the family in Lombardy and in Romagna. Giovanna can return to settle in Milan after 1860, she marries Count Francesco dal Verme, to whom we owe the construction of the Milanese theater of the same name. A traveler in Europe and the East, she speaks several languages, is passionate about music, attends the cultured Milanese society and dedicates herself passionately to her favorite sport: horse riding. In her will she appoints her nephew, Count Carlo Archinto, assigning an immediate legacy of 100,000 liras in favor of the Ospedale Maggiore, plus other more conspicuous successive ones. The execution of the commemorative portrait is entrusted in succession to different painters: in the end she accepts Giuseppe Mascarini, a pupil at the Brera Academy of masters Filippo Carcano, Vespasiano Bignami and Giuseppe Mentessi, a well-known and refined portraitist, who performs a work that is placed at the height of his artistic maturity, in which he represents the benefactor in a simple outfit and attitude, but with the status symbol of numerous strings of pearls around his neck.
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