Portrait of Emma Polacco Weill Schott Cortella

This portrait is not commissioned by the Ospedale Maggiore, but comes with the inheritance of the benefactor in 1934, at the end of the long legal dispute that the Ca 'Granda must sustain to get hold of it. Emma Polacco names in his will his universal heir Benito Mussolini, foreseeing a conspicuous legacy in favor of the hospital, in addition to his own portrait executed by Sebastiano De Albertis. When Emma Polacco dies in 1927, a subsequent will appears in which there is no mention of the donation to the Ca 'Granda. A litigation then opens, which ends seven years later with a transaction, so that the hospital receives half the sum allocated and the portrait. Free from the canons of hospital iconography, being a private client, De Albertis, in the period of his greatest success as a portraitist, depicts a young Emma Polacco with a sideways look, with ribbons and rouches protruding from the neck and sleeves painted with delicate skill, in an elegant high school portrait atmosphere of the late nineteenth century, including loose roses, damask upholstery and gilded console.