Brozzetti Antichità

Important painting signed by Emilio Gola (1851-1923) depicting female nudes, oil on canvas. Excellent state of preservation Measures h 260 x w 186 cm - 255 x 190 cm Private negotiation Emilio Gola Emilio Gola was born in Milan in 1851 to a family of noble origins. Encouraged by his parents to attend the faculty of engineering and, at the same time, to practice the art of painting, in 1873 he obtained a degree in industrial engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan. It is not known if he liked the idea of becoming an engineer from the beginning [...] We like to think that the distance between studying mathematical analysis and how to render the impalpability of lace on canvas was not so enormous for him. Painting is also rigor, calculation of probabilities, study, predisposition, application, determinacy. Not only fantasy and innate ability. And we like to believe that he dedicated himself to both things, studying and painting, with the same stubbornness. He had started painting as a teenager. His parents decided to entrust him, for a certain period, to the care of Sebastiano De Albertis. While still a boy, he was accompanied to Holland by his father. In the homeland of the Flemish he fell in love with Rembrandt, remaining impressed by the depth of his portraits. He would return to Holland several times, both with his parent and alone, and these trips certainly left a deep mark on his painting in the years from 1895 to 1900. The trips were not limited to Holland. We know that at the age of seventeen his father, Count Carlo, took him to Paris. The count accompanied his son on a long pilgrimage to the vast halls of Parisian museums and Emilio unconsciously absorbed all the novelty of the city and its most rebellious artists: the Impressionists. This was the first of a long series of stays in what was then the capital of Europe. He made his debut in 1879 when two of his works were hosted at the Annual Exhibition of Brera. Gola began, in Milan, to enjoy a discrete success. He painted important portraits on commission [...] and called the first models for his studies from life in the city studio in Via Guastalla. At the same time, in spring and summer, he worked at the "Buttero" in the house of Olgiate. Here he frequented the Villa Sommi Picenardi where he would portray Countess Sala Trotti Bentivoglio, sister of the musician Marco Sala. Much of the aristocratic society that spent the summer in that part of Brianza could be found at the Sala-Sommi Picenardi's. Gola was often on the guest list for lunch and, as the years passed, the link between the two families became increasingly intense. The work of a painter now occupied him daily: there were the portraits that were commissioned to be made, the works to be sent to exhibitions, and then there were the different subjects that now interested him: in addition to portraits, the Navigli of his Milan and the first landscapes of Brianza. The residence of Olgiate, at the "Buttero" was a very important place in Gola's life: the beauty of the sumptuous, but not excessive, house, the escape of the rooms, the very air of those rooms and then the lawn, the borders of flowers, the palm trees, the fountain ... the cypresses, the magnolia plant, the greenhouse, the avenue of hydrangeas, the entrance gate, the expanse of rose gardens and the hedge. All this has entered into some painting. And then around the beautiful countryside, the still uncontaminated villages, the laundresses, the simple people; and the ancestral homes of the other nobles, the evenings in these houses, the smells even: that of the furniture, the ceilings, the walls, the windows left open. In short, an entire world, enclosed between the "Campanon" and Montevecchia, the Adda river and the hills, has populated his thoughts and has become the protagonist of his painting. Gola had elected a room in the house as a studio: it was on the first floor, from the window frame the rows of mulberry trees interrupt the different greens of the different plants; some statues are glimpsed and in front there is the Buonmartino hill, while Montevecchia seems near or far depending on the time of day and whether there is fog or haze or blue sky. The count also had a studio in Mondonico, in the house of the silk merchant Silvio Sala and it seems that several painters gathered there [...]; but the base in Mondonico was more useful for landscapes. The "Buttero", on the other hand, was the workshop for portraits. Meanwhile the Self-portraits and then the Portrait of the mother and other relatives, including those of his wife Maria married in 1904 and his little son Carlo. Then a whole theory of characters who went there to pose. And always the studio peeps inside the paintings, Gola presents us now a corner, now a wall, now a window ... In his studies he often hosted artist friends. Emilio's mother, Mrs. Leopolda recounts that the Scapigliati often met at the "Buttero" and in the Sommi Picenardi house. It seems instead that he met more willingly with the painters in the studio of Mondonico: Donato Frisia, Aldo Carpi and Riccardo Brambilla used to come there. In Mondonico, towards the end of the century, his obsession with the "valloncelli" and the surrounding countryside began, an obsession that would never leave him. Next to the "valloncelli" in his paintings are Mondonico under the snow, the small bridges that cross the Molgora stream, some glimpses of the house, young women, especially laundresses, rarely animals. The most fascinating thing about the paintings made between Mondonico and the hills around there is the way in which the human presence, always feminine, is situated within them. Gola had discovered, long before great artists like Morlotti, that man is, in his essence, part of the landscape. Morlotti, also irresistibly attracted by that land, used to say of Gola: "He is a good painter". And it is believable that in this statement there was yes the recognition of a value, but above all a sense of similarity, of identity not in the methods of painting, certainly, but in the material treated. We know that he was defined as an amateur, while he himself liked to consider himself an isolated. He had no students, nor assistants, he did not make school in short, even if we will say of his admirers and of those, like Frisia, who are partly indebted to him. 

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