Portrait of Luigi Redaelli ed Elvira Grisetti Redaelli

Elvira Grisetti, born in 1868, when her father Eugenio and her mother Angela De Bernardi died three months apart from each other in 1874, not bearing the pain of death by giving birth to the third nineteen-year-old daughter, after having lost two more adolescent children, only six years old remains the only survivor of the family. In 1933, now also a widow of her husband Luigi Radaelli, she assigned to the Maggiore Hospital the sum of 400,000 lire in memory of her parents, for whose portraits also suggests the names of the performers, Piero Gaudenzi and Augusto Colombo respectively. For his commemorative portrait, which he wants to be executed by Giuseppe Amisani, he asks for the husband to be included. Luigi Radaelli, last of six brothers, orphaned at 9, esteemed administrator of several large textile industries, volunteer fighter on the Piave line, nephew of Luigi Radaelli, editor of the famous "forty-year" edition of "I Promessi Sposi" therefore appears next to wife in the double portrait where the couple are represented in natural pose and in affectionate attitude, looking at the viewer, she with the small neck fox stole in vogue in those years, against the background of a summarily described mountain landscape. Characters and landscapes share the sober chromatic choice and the diffused light that permeates the picture.