Portrait of Giuseppe Magrini

Giuseppe Magrini (1857-1926), holder of the cello chair at the Milan Conservatory, first cello in the Teatro alla Scala orchestra for twenty years, performer and composer, does not directly benefit the Ospedale Maggiore. The harpist daughter Valentina, alive, in memory of her father, donates 100,000 lire to the Casa di Riposo (Retirement Home) "Giuseppe Verdi", 50,000 at the Milan Conservatory for the establishment of a scholarship named after him and a house in Bergamo at Ospedale Maggiore. Giuseppe Magrini, who comes from a wealthy Milanese family, studied first at the Milan Conservatory and then at the Naples Conservatory where he graduated. He marries a "colleague", Emilia Verri, harpist, who will then be the daughter's teacher. He has great success, he knows the big names of the music of the time and he also has a successful activity as a composer. The commisioning of the portrait is entrusted to Augusto Colombo, who personally knew the musician, to whom he was bound by a profound friendship and which satisfied the taste and needs of the Artistic Commission of the Picture Gallery, for which he carried out 13 other portraits. The painter gives us a very realistic and lively image of the musician, sitting on a stool, his eyes fixed on the score, with the beloved cello between his legs, while performing a "pizzicato". The immediacy of the representation draws on the personal, intimate knowledge of the character (and not only on the iconographic source, a beautiful photo, of which he has) that returns him not only resembles in appearance, but "read" also "inside" . In a very simple garment, Magrini is granted the bohemian inspiration of the hat on his head and of the bow tie. The figure, the clothing, the objects are painted with simplicity and naturalness and the character, thanks also to the low-angle and close-up framing, and which makes use of a series of foreshortened plans has a great prominence and "occupies the scene ", with a vitality that is often not present in hospital portraiture. In the colors declined in shades of brown stands out, also for the contrast with the dark background of the jacket of the musician, the golden and warm color of the instrument. The lectern has the shape of the classic antiphonaries of the cloistered classrooms. Perhaps a symbol of the sacredness of music for the depicted character?