Portrait of Giuseppina Cazzani

Giuseppina Cazzani, born in 1865, was the daughter of a textile merchant, after the death of her parents she moved with her brother who at first continues the family business, then she open a well-established tailoring. After his death he lives alone in his welcoming Milanese house, full of paintings. She has a special fondness for Segantini. Still alive, in 1938, she gave the Ospedael Maggiore a beautiful villa in Cornigliano Ligure (Genoa), with large adjoining land, also for agricultural use, with the request for the granting of an annual annuity. On his explicit indication, the portrait commission is entrusted to Ernesto Pirovano, who depicts her, in a room of the apartment where she lived, with the paintings of her favorite painter. At the Picture Gallery of the Istituto dei Ciechi (Institute of the Blind in Milan), another portrait of the benefactor, also from Pirovano, is preserved, very similar to that of the hospital, but half-length.