Portrait of Giovanni Battista Morosini

This portrait, which is signed and dated 1854, was commissioned by Morosini’s daughter (see inv. 1095) and shown at the Brera exhibition in 1859. The painter himself considered this as one of his most successful portraits, “both in likeness and workmanship”, and the elderly man, dressed in informal chamber attire, is indeed portrayed with great realism. Less sympathetic to the Risorgimento cause than his wife, Morosini handed over to the Austrian police the papers that the Polish patriot Tadeusz Kos´ciuszko (whose heart was kept as a relic by Zeltner) had left to Morosini Zeltner, in exchange for the promise of the title of Count, which was however never granted by the Austrian authorities.