Portrait of Count Aldo Annoni

This painting was purchased in 1951 through the good offices of Stefano Jacini, president of the Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde, from the children of Count Carlo Cicogna Mozzoni (1867–1928). He had inherited the work from his father, Gian Pietro Cicogna Mozzoni (1839–1917), who was nominated by Aldo Annoni (Padua, 1831 – Ello, 1900) heir of the Cuggiono property, where the family had built the villa that bears their name at the beginning of the 19th century. A year after Annoni’s death, Count Mozzoni commissioned this portrait from the painter Cesare Tallone, which was probably to be hung in the villa at Cuggiono. The purchase of this work can be explained by the role the sitter had played at the bank for around twenty years. He was a lawyer with liberal ideas, a senator of the Kingdom of Italy from 1876 and was president of the Cassa di Risparmio delle Provincie Lombarde from 1881 to 1900, when he was also president of the Commissione Centrale di Beneficenza. The painting was restored when it was purchased, because it had been damaged during its various moves, and initially it went to the branch at Cuggiono and was subsequently hung in the meeting room of the Executive Committee. In 1952 another important painting by Tallone, the Portrait of Ellade Crespi Colombo, entered the collection of the Ospedale Maggiore in Milan. The two works were executed at the same time, but in this portrait in the Cariplo Collection Tallone has painted Aldo Annoni from a photograph, a method widely used during that period. Despite this, the figure is still very true to life, the features and natural pose are those of a living presence, looking towards the left and sitting against a backdrop with a plant motif. This element returns in other works, since Tallone uses it in his Milanese studio in Corso Garibaldi as a background when the bourgeoisie, aristocrats and intellectuals came to him to have their portraits painted. He used the same backdrop when his daughters, who were his favourite models, posed for him, the little Irene, in the painting exhibited in Venice in 1897 (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna), and Teresa, portrayed dressed as an oldalisque by Emilio Sommariva, a photographer and painter known at the Brera Academy and like Tallone a partner in the Famiglia Artistica.