Setting of Giovanni Migliara (1785-1837), Church interior with historical scene

Circle of Giovanni Migliara (Alessandria, 1785 – Milan, 1837)
Church interior: the arrest of the nun of Monza
Oil on canvas, 79 x 61 cm – with frame 104 x 85 cm

The painting in question refers, by subject and definition, to a painter from the circle of Giovanni Migliara (1785 – 1837), a painter originally from Alessandria. His education was particular and eclectic. The son of a cabinetmaker, he worked in the workshop of the sculptor Luigi Zuccoli in Milan between 1801-02. In the same period he attended the Brera Academy and from 1804 he also worked as a set designer at Gaspare Galliari's studio. Some of his scenographic studies, preserved in the Pinacoteca of Alessandria or the Gallery of Modern Art in Turin, denote influences from Galliari, heir to the Juvarra tradition, to which he added picturesque features of neoclassical taste. In the same years he began to dedicate himself more and more to painting, creating small-format works. In 1812 he presented four views of Milan and two ideal compositions at the Brera exhibition which immediately achieved considerable success. His first production draws inspiration from the whims of Venetian taste of the eighteenth century. In 1813 he published a Treatise on Descriptive Geometry. From 1815 he was also interested in engraving, lithography and the practice of illustration. In 1817 he exhibited three works at the Paris Salon and presented a monastic interior for the first time in Brera, a subject that would meet with great success and which he would return to several times. Between the second and third decades of the nineteenth century it established itself in the cultural environment of romantic Milan, with a new genre consisting of the perspective representation of urban monuments and small-sized monumental interiors. A particularly appreciated painter, he refused the Brera chair in 1825 due to too many commitments and in 1833 he was appointed genre painter to the King of Sardinia. Migliara straddles neoclassicism and romanticism. In fact, his moderately neoclassical taste does not prevent him from anticipating romantic elements, creating an original and particular genre of painting in his works. These small paintings "to be looked at closely" guaranteed the artist right from the start the favor of critics and a cultured public who collected them as small precious objects, intended to furnish studios and cabinets. Migliara, in his works, loved to introduce some clues that allowed the public to identify the place represented, without giving up the insertion of details from the imagination. The refined luminous rendering of the painting contributes to conveying the impression of the environment, all played on the intense contrast between the large shadowed areas in the foreground and those hit by the sun's rays that filter through the round openings of the dome and above all from the lunette on the right . The highly refined miniaturistic technique, the elegant luminism and the subject that distinguish the work are drawn from the Flemish artistic tradition, mediated through more modern stylistic elements. One of his convent interiors is preserved at the Gallerie d'Italia in Milan, while a view of the Certosa cloister is preserved at the Santa Giulia Museum in Brescia.
The choice to represent a particular moment of action, the arrest of the nun from Monza, makes the canvas even more interesting. Marianna de Leyva (1575 – 1650), the nun of Monza, protagonist of a famous scandal at the beginning of the 1622th century was made famous by the betrothed of Alessandro Manzoni. She, motherless, was forced at the age of thirteen to enter the Monza monastery of Santa Margherita. Thanks also to the complicity of some nuns, following a clandestine relationship with Gian Paolo Osio, whose house overlooked the monastery gardens, she had two children. When a nun seemed intent on revealing everything about her, Hosius killed her, along with another witness. However, Cardinal Federico Borromeo launched an investigation which led to the nun's arrest and her confession. She was condemned to live in a walled cell, less than four meters square. In XNUMX, after fourteen years spent like this, Cardinal Borromeo granted her pardon; She returned as a nun, she chose to stay with the Converts of Santa Valeria, in Milan, where she had spent her sentence.

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