Alessandro Milesi

Alessandro Milesi (Venice 1856 – 1945), “The Market”, 1895. Oil on canvas, cm. 60 x 74. Signed “A. Milesi 1895” lower left. The beautiful painting depicts a city scene, set in a Venetian market square. Despite the figures being outdoors, the arrangement of the popular buildings, so grouped together, gives the viewer the impression of being in a kind of anthropomorphic basin, made of bricks, Gothic mullioned windows and pointed arches. The livid and impalpable light that envelops the scene suggests a gloomy morning; at the same time, the only impression of the sky is provided by its reflection in the puddles, which make the floor of the square shiny. The interest in the impressions of atmospheric phenomena on the urban landscape and its inhabitants is a common element not only in Milesi but also in his contemporaries. In the foreground, two women converse with each other: they wear the zendàle, a wide shawl with long fringes typical of Venetian commoners. BIOGRAPHY Alessandro Milesi was born in 1856 into a family of modest origins; his father Giovanni Maria was a wholesale grain merchant. After a brief course of study at the Cavanis brothers' charity school, Milesi was forced to work as a shop assistant for a tobacconist due to his father's illness. Guided by an early artistic vocation, in 1869 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, which he attended until the age of nineteen, achieving great results among his teachers, the professor of figure drawing Napoleone Nani, whose students also included the painters Giacomo Favretto and Luigi Nono. In 1873 Milesi followed his professor to Verona and thanks to his intercession he obtained the commission for some paintings and a fresco for the ceiling of a small church in Isola della Scala by the Marquis Pindemonte. A few years later he returned to Venice where he executed the Portrait of the Sick Father (1876) now in the Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa and the Portrait of the Mother (1878) currently in the International Gallery of Modern Art in Venice. He made his debut as a genre painter at the Promotrice of Turin in 1879 with the work Grandmother's Tale; three years later he participated in several exhibitions, including the Promotrice of Genoa, at the National Exhibition of Milan where he brought La venditrice di zucca and also in Milan, at the exhibition Il libro d’oro, with the work Un colpo di vento. In 1882 at the Promotrice of Venice he exhibited Xelo sta lu?, while the following year he exhibited at the International Exhibition of Munich Die Perlfasserin, then presented at Brera with the title Le perlaie. The impiraresse, that is, the pearl artisans, were a subject dear to many Venetian painters of the 19th century, since, like fishermen and gondoliers, they become a symbol of the traditions and local soul; the Anglo-Saxon market especially is very fascinated by the folkloristic Venetian scenes, as demonstrated by the purchase, by the English art dealer W. Dodeswell, of four paintings that Milesi presented at the Universal Exhibition of Aversa in 1885. The following year he married the sister of the painter Guglielmo Ciardi, Maria. At the National Exhibition of Venice in 1887 he presented a large canvas depicting some Venetian sailors, Vorla montar?, subsequently purchased for the private residence of the khedive of Egypt. In the following years he participated in exhibitions in London, Paris and Munich, where he obtained excellent commercial success. In 1892 he presented at the VI International Exhibition of Munich Des Barkenführers Imbiss, a work later brought also to the National Roman Exhibition of 1893, with the title La colazione del gondoliere, then purchased for the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. From 1895 Milesi participated in all the Venice Biennales until 1935: at the first he exhibited a winning work of a cash prize established by the Reggio baron Raimondo Franchetti, Fabbricatori di penitenze. In the same year he created Gli orfani del gondoliere now at the GAM of Venice. In 1934 he was commissioned to create an altarpiece dedicated to S. Teresa for the Venetian church of S. Maurizio, one of his rare works on a religious subject. To celebrate his brilliant career, the following year a personal exhibition was dedicated to him on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Biennale. Having retired from the scene, he died in 1945, in his hometown.