Eugenia Bianchi

The unpublished Saint Anthony of Padua with the Infant Jesus preserved in the oratory of the confreres adjacent to the parish church of Gerola Alta (Sondrio) updates the catalog of the Veronese painter Antonio Giarola called Cavalier Coppa with a late work, the only known with both the signature and the date (1659)...

Federico Panza (1637-1705) is a painter who has remained substantially on the margins of the critics, despite the fact that since the Sixties of the last century Edoardo Arslan underlined the originality and quality of the rare known works, capable of electing him one of the most interesting active Lombard painters in the moment of transition between baroque and rococo...

Andrea Pozzo in Giovanni Battista Barella’s letters to Livio Odescalchi: clarifications and new discoveries on the (failed) commissions for San Sebastiano in Milan and Turin’s Royal Palace The essay describes Andrea Pozzo’s early years in Rome (1681-1685), according to the information found in a number of letters written between December 10, 1681 and January 17, 1685 by Jesuit Giovanni Battista Barella, a resident of the San Fedele convent in Milan, and addressed to Livio Odescalchi, who had been convinced to settle in Rome by his father Carlo and his uncle Benedetto, Pope Innocent XI since 1676. These letters, kept in the Odescalchi Archive, currently part of the Archivio di Stato in Rome, are just a small portion of a vast and interesting correspondence – ranging between 1677 and 1686 and regretfully limited to incoming letters – offering a lively perspective on Milanese society of the time, a subject about which the recipient was particularly curious. The letters regarding Andrea Pozzo are focused on Barella’s attempt – prompted by the delegates of the Temple of San Sebastiano– to persuade the artist to move back to Milan and decorate the cupola of the church, as anticipated in a contract signed before the his departure in 1681. The Jesuit Father seeks help from Livio, whose influence, however, would eventually fail to convince the artist. The same unsuccessful result would later be obtained by other requests from the Jesuits of Turin and Vittorio Amedeo, Duke of Savoy, both aimed at persuading Pozzo to come to Turin, respectively to complete the decoration for the church of Santi Martiri and to work on one of the galleries of the Royal Palace.

The collection of Milanese Archbishop Benedetto Erba Odescalchi: condiserations on its client and its content, and a possible attribution EUGENIA BIANCHI The article analyzes the personality of Milanese Archbishop Benedetto Erba Odescalchi as a patron of the arts, focusing in particular on a series of portraits of canonized Archbishops of Milan – from St. Barnabas to St. Charles Borromeo – he commissioned after he was appointed to the Diocese of Milan in 1712, and subsequently donated to the Mensa Arcivescovile in 1737 (now at Milan, Museo Diocesano, fund of the Quadreria dell’Arcivescovado di Milano). A collection based on a single subject is distant from the criteria on which other similar assortments were gathered; the intention was to continue St Charles Borromeo’s work of defining a historically accountable tabula of canonized Archbishops of Milan, and establishing a convincing univocal iconography for each of them. As for the yet unsolved problem of attribution, a possible name is that of Milanese painter Francesco Fabbrica, whose attributed works show striking similarities. More specifically, the ovals with Mansuetus, Arsacius, Ausanus and Martinianus in the sacristy of Santo Stefano Maggiore in Milan (1707), and the canvases depicting The Madonna with St Bernardo Tolomei while handing the rule to St Frances of Rome and St Anne with the Child Virgin Mary and Sts Joachim and Francis of Paola, in the Milanese churches of San Vittore and Santa Maria del Paradiso respectively.