Portrait of Pope Paul III Farnese

Alessandro Farnese (1468-1549), pontiff with the name of Paul III from 1534, donates the command and fief of San Donato to Sesto Calende (Varese) to the Ospedale Maggiore. In 1937 Alessandro Tamborini, archpriest of the church of San Tommaso in Milan, proposed that the portrait of the benefactor pope be made, but it was necessary to wait until 1949 when a Milanese industrialist, Dante Tomasini, took on the economic burden and commissioned it from Cesare Mallards. The painting is deliberately inspired by that of Jacopino del Conte preserved in Rome in the church of Santa Francesca Romana; however, it varies in the background, where the Roman ruins are replaced by a glimpse of Lake Maggiore, with an obvious allusion to the geographical location of the possessions donated by the pontiff.