Michele Gordigiani (Florence 1835–1909) - Portrait

Michele Gordigiani (Florence 1835 – 1909) Oil painting on canvas, signed lower left Canvas size: 40x50cm, frame size: 75x65cm Florence, May 29, 1835 - Florence, October 7, 1909 Born into a wealthy family in Florence, where he trained at a young age with the sculptor Lorenzo Bartolini, the painter Luigi Mussini (from 1845), and finally at the Academy of Fine Arts with Giuseppe Bezzuoli (from 1850). From this point onwards, he developed his predisposition for portraiture, on which he would base his career. He debuted with two portraits in 1854 at the Exhibition of Fine Arts in Florence. From the following year he frequented the Caffè Michelangiolo, becoming friends with the future "Macchiaioli" to whom he would always remain linked, without however sharing the painting by "patches". Of this period, Self-portrait (1856, Florence, Uffizi Gallery) and Portrait of Cesare Bartolena (1858), here in the Museum, already show the attention to the rendering of physiognomies and details. The victory at the Ricasoli Competition in 1859 and the Portraits of Camillo Benso di Cavour (1860) and Vittorio Emanuele II (1861) (both Turin, National Museum of the Risorgimento), the latter exhibited at the I National Exhibition of Florence in 1861, decreed his success as an official portrait painter. From this moment on, he worked in Italy and abroad to immortalize rulers, nobles (such as the three Portraits of Countess Bastogi of 1895 in the Museum), bourgeois, and literati who appreciated his ability to capture the features and ennoble them, the great skill in the use of drawing and color and in the rendering of fabrics and jewels. He exhibited in Italy, but especially abroad, for example at the Universal Exhibitions of Vienna (1873) Paris (1878, 1889), Antwerp (1885). He died at the age of 74.