Portrait of Alessandro Armelloni

Angelo Alessandro Armelloni (1869-1938), son of a grocer from Soresina (Cremona), who came to Milan in search of work, lived his first years poorly; then he finds employment in the Pirelli company, until after a few years he resigns to become a commercial traveler for the Bertarelli chemical products company (three brothers, Ambrogio, Luigi, Tommaso, all three benefactors of the Maggiore Hospital). The example of his three employers encourages him to allocate all his substances to the hospital in the will, which he entrusts the portrait commission to Roberto Aloi, to whom he asks anyway, after completing several modifications: "we need to envisage the floor, attenuate the shadows of the feet, the picture behind the figure must be specified ". The painting is an interesting example of Aloi's realism: the figure of the benefactor is isolated in a substantially neutral space, without unnecessary accessories, in a dimension of solitude that alludes not so much to his state of mind but is a universal metaphor for the human condition.