We continue into the next room, with its large “Annunciation” by Andrea Michieli, mannerist painter from Veneto. That concludes our journey into old paintings. From here, we take a dive into the 19th century, with the splendid painting of the “Nun of Monza” by Giuseppe Molteni, inspired by the pages of “The Betrothed”. It is a work with a genuine romantic flavour, with the young woman captured with an expression of pain, and tears running down her face.
Moving into the latter part of the 19th century, we meet the painters from Monza who gave rise to a very fruitful season for Lombard art in the period. Under Mosè Bianchi – Monza’s most important painter – the artists open a view onto the most important events in contemporary art, both at style level and in terms of content choice, in particular with inspiration from the new ideas arriving from France. It was Bianchi – represented here by the bronze portrait, created as a tribute to the painter, who died in 1904 – who shifted the attention from subjects with a romantic and literary feel to contemporary themes, where the protagonists are people captured during the simpler moments in daily life.
This line influences the production of Eugenio Spreafico, with a good deal of focus on the dimension of the work – in particular, feminine – and on a poetic view of Monza as it changes from rural village to an industrial city, renowned for its hat factories. We can admire his “Return from the spinning mill”, reminiscent of the famous “Fourth state”, shown in female terms but with a poetic, nostalgic tone, free from hints of social protests; on the wall opposite, “Pains. The Festival of the Dead” is displayed, a painting set near the old cemetery of San Gregorio, which no longer exists today. Spreafico is also responsible for the guardians of geese or turkeys moving across a background of the pre-Alps in the countryside around the city, paintings that can be seen on the panels to the right. Mosè Bianchi’s nephew, Emilio Borsa, is the painter of the charming view of a part of Monza that has since disappeared, with the large painting dedicated to the mill on the River Lambro, characterised by masterful use of light and colour.
As well as Borsa, Mosè had another artist nephew, Pompeo Mariani. Out of all the Monza artists, Pompeo was the most worldly and cosmopolitan, travelling to Egypt at the end of the 19th century in search of the exotic subjects that were quite fashionable at the time. The results of this journey are the many sketches and drawings that the artist used for finished paintings, such as the “View of the Nile near Cairo”.
Carlo Fossati, perhaps the least well-known of Monza’s painters in the period, was also a traveller. He left Italy for South America where he died very young. Before leaving, the painter completed the large piece entitled “Dragonflies”, that evokes a Piedmontese landscape and childhood games.
As you continue the visit, you will come to an area where you will see the “Desert” by Pompeo Mariani, a memory of his journey to Egypt, while on the wall over the stair, there is a large cartoon by Mosè Bianchi. This was created in preparation for the ceiling decoration in the Saletta Reale, the waiting room prepared at Monza’s railway station in the 1880s for the king and queen – Umberto I and Margherita of Savoy – who used the train to travel to Monza and their summer palace. Perhaps one of the last great fresco artists, Bianchi created a composition to celebrate the royal family, with symbols of the house of Savoy and a triumph of cherubs.

Insights

• The Lady of Monza