Portrait of Pietro Moscati

Pietro Moscati (1739-1824) is an important figure; a doctor, researcher and politician. Son of Bernardino, also a doctor at Ca 'Granda, he graduated at a young age in Pavia, immediately carrying out the numerous tasks as medical director of the hospital entrusted to him with great professionalism. Of clear republican sympathies, he also suffered in his career the repercussions of Napoleon's policy, of which he had time to witness the collapse and consequent dissolution of the French Empire. Great scholar of anatomy, he recommended direct studies on corpses and not simply on academic texts, convinced advocate of the need for nurses for a training that was not only "in the field", but also theoretical, already attentive to the hygienic precautions to be taken in hospital, advocate of syphilis transmissibility, he is a distinguished specialist in obstetrics. Senator of the Kingdom of Italy, he obtained several honors, including those of Gran Dignitario della Corona Ferrea and Grand'Aquila of the Legion of Honor. He dealt with health reorganization not only in Italy, but also abroad: in Vienna, for example, he standardized the regulations of city hospitals. At his own expense he adapted the bell tower of the church of San Giovanni in Conca, only the crypt in Piazza Missori in Milan remains today. In his will he assigns a financial legacy and his instruments to the hospital. He donates his library to the Royal Institute of Arts and Sciences. The execution of the portrait was entrusted to Giuseppe Sogni, from Cremona, also a skilled fresco artist, who had a long collaboration with the Hospital: this is his first portrait for the Quadreria. The benefactor is represented with his face turned to the observer, in the act of writing probably the will, according to a classic iconography, with clearly visible decorations and Napoleonic honors (one distinguishes that of the Iron Crown); in the background two books (they are for reference, not for decoration, one even has a bookmark), a forceps and another device, perhaps related to his gas chemistry research. The inscription titling and given the picture "anticipates" the death of the count by one year: 1823 is actually the year of the drafting of the will.