Giulio Vitali, 20th century, View of the Milan Cathedral

Giulio Vitali, 20th century View of the Milan Cathedral Oil on canvas, 48 x 68 cm With frame, 66 x 85 cm Signed G. Vitali lower left This view of the Milan Cathedral is taken from the current Via Agnello, located on the rear right side of the church going down Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, framing the square in front and the buildings along the back perimeter at an angle. The painter, specialized in this genre, draws inspiration from the city's veduta tradition, which had the Cathedral as one of its favorite subjects, as evidenced by the works of 19th-century artists who passed through or lived in Milan: from Carlo Canella to Luigi Bisi, passing through Giovanni Migliara and Angelo Inganni. The view is inspired by an etching made in 1791 by an illustrious Milanese engraver and painter: Domenico Aspari (1745-1831). Referring to the style of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, he excelled in the field of engraving, creating illustrations for essays and literary works but, above all, sixteen Views of Milan, including that of the Cathedral, now preserved at the Achille Bertarelli Civic Collection of Prints. Vitali gives light and warm colors to the structure conceived and engraved by Aspari, giving a precise rendering of the details thanks to the thin touches with which he sketches the small figures that populate the square. Focusing on the minutiae of the architectures, we note how the front facade of the Cathedral still appears incomplete, since it will only be completed in 1813 by Carlo Amati after a series of design changes and architects who succeeded each other starting from the seventeenth century, including Pellegrino Tibaldi, Lelio Buzzi, Luigi Cagnola and Leopoldo Pollack. Limited information is available to us regarding the activity of Vitali, operating in Northern Italy in the first half of the twentieth century: a series of Views of Venice is attributed to him, which fully show the lenticularism of his painting and his adherence to the dictates of vedutismo elaborated by famous Venetian and Lombard artists between the 18th and 19th centuries.