Iconographic heritage

Bartolomeo Giuliano trained at the Accademia Albertina in Turin and participated in numerous exhibitions and shows in the following years. Contact with the milieu of the Lombard scapigliatura greatly influenced his painting style. The portrait of Gaetano Donizetti, certainly painted in his youth, shows us the figure of the composer standing beside a table with his hand resting on a sheet of music. His gaze and torso are turned to the observer's right. The neutral background allows the figure to emerge in the centre of the painting.

Carlo Gerosa trained at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts and specialised as a portrait painter, working mainly for high-ranking Milanese patrons.
The painting displayed in the library is a copy of the famous portrait of the composer that Francesco Hayez painted in 1870 based on a photograph. The composer, in a dark suit, is portrayed facing the viewer with his face turned to the left. In his right hand he is clutching a score entitled “Music of the Future”, and in his left hand he is holding his baton. The figure emerges from a neutral background that takes up many shades of grey, a typical feature of Hayez's portraits of the same period.

Giuseppe Barbaglia attended the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, later devoting himself to portraiture and interior decoration. The portrait of Giuseppe Verdi fits fully into the Scapigliatura current. Indeed, the sense of jaggedness and indeterminacy of the colour is typical, laid out without a clear contour line, which is created rather through contrast and blurring of tones. The dependency on photography, which creates that sense of blurring of the contours, is evident.
The refined pose of the great musician turns slightly to the observer's left: Giuseppe Verdi is 74 years old, at the height of his artistic career. His face is framed in a well-trimmed beard typical of the most famous portraits, iridescent with nuances of green that the painter reproposes in the thick hair. Glimpses of light illuminate it here and there at the base, almost confusing it and unifying it with the collar of the shirt. The dark jacket lends even more majesty to his figure and evident, despite the no longer bright colours, is the butterfly tie that protrudes like a divide between the collar of the lapel and the faint glow of the shirt underneath. Nothing should disturb the painting's economy: the second floor of the background is fairly evenly realised, also shaded like the male figure. The light, which illuminates the oval of the face here and there, comes from an external source and is placed to the right of the observer, creating a perfect combination of shading.
Although we do not know the year it was made, we can fortunately deduce it from a sentence on two lines that Barbaglia left in red at the bottom left of the painting and which reads: “taken from the real / the year Otello was given at La Scala / the first time”.
We also know the donor of the work, as his name appears on a plaque on the front of the frame: it is Napoleone Brianzi, a well-known and wealthy Milanese antiquarian.

Camillo Rapetti studied at the Brera Academy in Milan. After graduating he made several trips to Rome, Paris and London to perfect his art. He later opened his own studio in Milan, devoting himself to portraiture and room decoration. The portrait of Vincenzo Bellini presents us with the composer dressed according to the fashion of the time, leaning with his left arm against a keyboard instrument and with his gaze absorbed, pointing to the right of the observer. Once again, the neutral background allows the figure of the composer to stand out in the centre of the painting.