Portrait of Clelia De Simoni Nobili

Clelia De Simoni (1854-1940), born in Bologna from Carabinieri captain, who often changes residence for reasons of service, finally arrives in Milan, where she marries the wine industrialist Luigi Nobili, who in turn is a benefactor of the Maggiore Hospital. In his will she appoints her adopted daughter Chiara Dorfles Gallignani, with many legates for charitable and welfare agencies and institutions in Milan and Stresa (this town on Lake Maggiore was linked because she spent the summer there) and, imitating her husband, allocates the sum of 100,000 lire at the hospital, sending in her own "family" portrait by Giuseppe Palanti. She had also asked for the replacement of her husband's painting, carried out on behalf of the hospital by Cesarina Mottironi, of which she had remained unsatisfied, with another portrait, which she had specially executed by Giuseppe Palanti, who had used a photo . Also this one by Clelia probably was not performed from life, but taking as a model a photo in which she was much younger. Palanti does not seem interested in trying to capture the woman character and to define her psychologically as to exalt his refined beauty and somewhat mysterious femininity through the importance given to the sumptuous dress and the mundane and graceful pose of the figure.