ARTE LOMBARDA - 2010 - 3

«Due Nostre Donne di varie grandezze» by Leonardo in Milan EDOARDO VILLATA In the drafts of two letters datable to 1508, to be sent to Charles d’Amboise and to Goffredo Carolo, Leonardo states that he had done «in assai buon porto» two «Nostre Donne» destined for the King of France; yet we know nothing of these works. They cannot be identified with any known Leonardesque work, but they must have existed. They must have been works of a relatively small format, connected with the inventions between 1505-1506, and they must have been known mainly in Lombardy. Perhaps there is a hypothetical model that corresponds to such characteristics: the one behind a certain number of Lombard Nativities of the second decade of the 16th Century, the best example of which is the one from the church of Santa Maria dei Canali in Tortona. Also, the model was still popular in the seventeenth century, thus very authoritative even if inaccessible today. We can find the oldest account of it in a drawing under the layer of paint in a Madonna at Brera, convincingly attributed to Fernando Yáñez de Almedina, a Spanish artist who was with Leonardo until 1506. This drawing shows an inclined female head, along the lines of very well-known examples such as Leonardo’s St. John the Baptist or Leda, and very similar to that of some Madonnas painted by Raphael in his Florentine years. Hence the hypothesis that such a prestigious model could only be the sketch for one of the «due Nostre Donne» which Leonardo himself mentions.

A Newly Discovered St. John the Baptist in the Desert from the Caravaggesque period of Giuseppe Vermiglio MAURO PAVESI The surveys for the cataloguing of the works of Milan’s Pinacoteca Ambrosiana brought to the discovery, among the most recent acquisitions, of a previously unknown St. John the Baptist by Giuseppe Vermiglio, which presents the same relaxed, calm pose of the painting of the same subject made by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and now part of the collection of Musei Capitolini in Rome. The artwork, never mentioned in the specific literature, came through a donation to its present location in 2007, with the attribution to an anonymous 17th- Century Emilian painter; a number of glaring stylistic and structural similarities undoubtedly confirm the attribution to Vermiglio. The derivation from that specific Caravaggio original, painted in 1601 for Ciriaco Mattei – and also known through a replica documented in the Pamphili collection since the late 17th Century – adds a new piece to the reconstruction of the Roman acquaintances in the Lombard artist’s early career, after the notorious traces of his relationship with the Barberini and Giustiniani families, as demonstrated, respectively, by the many replicas Vermiglio had taken from Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac in the Barberini collection, and by the Coronation of Thorns at Palazzo Altieri, derived from another painting by Merisi, formerly part of the noteworthy collection of Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani. The possible date of Vermiglio’s newly discovered painting should not be extremely late, given the obvious derivation from Caravaggio, which suggests a not quite distant impression from the direct view of Merisi’s masterpieces; nonetheless, a clear classicist reduction of the model and the normalization of its iconography – typical elements of Vermiglio’s late Milanese works – seem to suggest a date near his return to Lombardy (documented since 1621).

Patrons and the construction site. Archive information for Palazzo Cusani in Milan MARICA FORNI The essay focuses on the reading of previously unpublished documents on the historical uses of Palazzo Cusani, in an attempt to link the patronage of Abbot Gerolamo Cusani to Roman architect Giovanni Ruggeri, to define a clearer chronology of events and to put into context the projects and times of construction within the complex, erratic development of personal affair and patrimonial controversies among the components of the family. The 1707 post mortem inventory of the Abbot’s movables presents a “snapshot” of the building during its construction, allowing to identify the nucleus of its dwellings and to date the completion and assembling of the decorative structure of the well-known façade on Via Brera to the crucial period of the political overhaul which led to the submission of the State of Milan by the Habsburg. The ancient building was gradually eaten away by the new construction by Ruggeri, which extends from the individual block on Brera to the sides of the court by the two porches, jointed to the oldest nucleus of the palace, modified in the two phases of construction during the 1600s. The bipolarity of Roman and Viennese styles, recognizable in the modernity of the façade, appears to be well suited to the familiarity between the components of the family and both the restless workshop of architectural form of the late-baroque roman milieu – still able to influence Northern Italy – and the capital of the Austrian Empire, taking into account such slight, and yet important chronologic gap.

New Discoveries on Federico Ferrario in the Territory of Lecco GIOVANNA VIRGILIO The essay presents a series of new documents allowing to push back the beginning of Federico Ferrario’s activity. The career of this artist is usually structured in two distinct phases: the first (approximately 1750s and 1760s) characterized by a constant presence in the Milanese territory – with brief stays in Monza, Brianza, Orta, Lodi and even Piacenza –, the second (1760s- 1780s) by a frequent activity in the area around Bergamo. His earliest works, approximately dated 1752, were so far identified as those for the churches of San Filippo in Lodi and Sant’Angelo in Milan. Now, two previously unknown paintings in the parish church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Galbiate (Province of Lecco) push back the beginning of Ferrario’s career – which still presents some black spots, especially in the early stages – by a decade. The two pendants represent respectively, the Adoration of the Magi and the Last Supper, and they are already documented in 1742. The essay also introduces other artworks that could be attributed based on style to the Milanese painter, found in the territory comprised among Abbadia Lariana, Mandello del Lario and Lierna, on the East bank of the Lecco branch of Lake Como.

Giulio Aluisetti and the 19th-Century renovation of the Church of San Simpliciano in Milan SIMONA BORGONOVO Between 1839 and 1846, the basilica of San Simpliciano in Milan went through a period of deep rearrangement of its interior: architect Giulio Aluisetti operated a renovation that, while maintaining the Paleochristian structure, altered both the wall surface and the sculptural and pictorial decorations. In order to examine such a crucial turning point in the history of the basilica, the author meticulously wrote down documents from Milan’s Archivio Storico Civico and those, never previously published, from the City’s State Archive and the Parish Archive of San Simpliciano. The Archive of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Ambientali ed Architettonici of Milan was also a source, particularly regarding the 20th Century renovations. Such a vast exam, together with a reconsideration of the existing literature – among which the studies by Struffolino Krüger, allowed the author to trace the chronology of Aluisetti’s intervention, identifying the artists involved in the various stages of the project, and putting into context the architect’s drawings.

The funeral portrait of Gaston de Foix in the early 19th Century: preservation, study and collecting VITO ZANI A number of documents from Milan’s State Archive and Biblioteca Ambrosiana reveal two previously unknown historical events connected with the funeral portrait of Gaston de Foix, sculpted by Agostino Busti, a.k.a. Bambaia, between 1517 and 1521 for the unfinished monument of the renown French military commander, projected for the church of Santa Marta in Milan. If the dispersion of various parts of the monument – which was never assembled – had already started by the end of the 16th Century, the church still kept the portrait at the beginning of the 19th Century, before if was transferred to the Brera Academy in 1806 and consequently moved to its present location, the Museo d’Arte Antica at Castello Sforzesco. Thanks to the retrieved documents, we now come to know that a relocation of the artwork to the Biblioteca Ambrosiana was attempted in 1801, and that very few years later Count Alberico di Belgioioso d’Este tried to acquire it for his prominent collection. The article also presents an extremely important late-17th-early-18th- Century drawing retrieved by Francesco Repishti at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, portraying the arrangement of the funeral monument in the cloisters of the convent annexed to Santa Marta, commissioned by the nuns in 1674. Finally, some critical insight is given about two Renaissance sculptures formerly included in the Belgioioso collection.

Milan 1881. The instruments of representation: Architecture ordination arrangement FRANCESCA ZANELLA The analysis of the 2nd Italian Industrial Exhibition, held in Milan in 1881, constitutes an important case study for the comprehension of the role architectural project and arrangement in a crucial phase of transition for Italian culture. The architecture of the ‘palaces of industry’ has been studied before as a construction-site of modernity, of technological experimentation and of formation of the new language of United Italy. In this article, the author tries, through the testimony offered by the press and the official sources, but also through archived documents, to trace the planning strategies for the event, the different actors and the meaning behind the design of sites and the exhibiting techniques. The study allowed to figure out the times and ways of definition of the complex of buildings for the exhibition, the relationship between the classification issues and the organization of the areas, the dialogue between the stylistic choices of architect Ceruti and the cultural profile of his interlocutors in the Executive Committee, with particular focus on some highlights of the exhibition path, such as the Sala Pompeiana and the Rotonda della Ceramica.

Adolfo Venturi between collecting and scientific research: a milanese case EUGENIA BIANCHI The previously unpublished documentation found among the possessions of the heirs of a private collector gives a chance to analyze Adolfo Venturi’s position towards the international antique market and private collecting. During the considered period – the early decades of the 20th Century – artworks from discontinued institutions or dispersed collections formerly owned by the declining European aristocracy were involved in an intense movement towards America. The presence, among the found materials, of expert surveys signed by Venturi, each subsequently published on the periodical L’Arte and the more official Storia dell’arte italiana, generates further consideration on the relationship between the market, scientific research and criticism.

«A Power Station of Commanding Spirituality»: Marinetti, Ciliberti, Sartoris and Abstractism in Como ELENA DI RADDO The encounter between Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the local abstract painters on the banks of Lake Como constitutes an interesting episode in the history of Italian art, as it witnesses the heritage of the Futurist movement and the birth of a new tendency which, in the specific case of Como, was closely linked to architectural rationalism. The leader of Futurism hoped to find new life for his artistic movement in the innovative environment of the cultural milieu of Manlio Rho, Mario Radice, Carla Badiali and architects Giuseppe Terragni and Cesare Cattaneo, joined in the Thirties by a couple of noteworthy intellectuals, architect Alberto Sartoris and philosopher Franco Ciliberti. The essay analyzes the development of this relationship, showing that the abstract painters approached Marinetti not only in order to gain the favour of such an influential personality, but also as a reciprocal cultural enrichment. Moving from Marinetti’s initial presence in Como with the artists of “Second Futurism”, the essay describes his passionate participation to the city’s life, in defence of Antonio Sant’Elia’s architecture, and the strengthening of such bond in some relevant episodes, such as the formation – thanks to Ciliberti – of the Gruppo Futuristi Sant’Elia in 1941, which brought to the presence of the Como abstract painters at the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadriennale in the rooms of Futurism, organized by Marinetti.