Portrait of Edoardo Luraschi

Edoardo Luraschi (1848-1935), son of a large family (there are 9 of them among brothers and sisters), of pastry chefs (his widowed mother sends the business forward to support the family until three of her children taken it over), he studies theology in the Milan Seminary, where he approaches the Latin classics, which will be the passion of a life. Become a valued representative of essences for perfumes and medicines, he puts aside a conspicuous patrimony. In his will he appoints his grandchildren, assigning his home in Via Visconti di Modrone to the Ospedale Maggiore. The commission of the portrait is entrusted to ldda Scifoni, daughter of the Roman painter Anatolio and grandson of Ida, also a painter, who in this painting adheres to a completely traditional iconography, immune from more innovative pictorial languages. The benefactor is represented in the modest living room of his home, next to the fireplace, intent on reading.