Portrait of Luigi Pessina

Luigi Pessina (1832-1894), was a law graduate and son of a wealthy cloth merchant. After the death of his parents, his wife and his sister, heir to a large fortune, nominated Ospedale Maggiore as universal heir of more than half a million lire, with legacies in favor of the Institute of the Blind and the Ophthalmic Department, foreseen in the sister's will. The commission of the portrait is entrusted to Ernesto Fontana, who represents it according to a consolidated iconography, with the will in his hands in a well-defined bourgeois interior. He rests in the family tomb at the Monumental Cemetery.