Portrait of Adalgisa Gilardi Del Corno

In 1939 Adalgisa Gilardi Del Corno, who asked for the unknown, gave 60,000 lire to the Ospedale Maggiore, for the construction of the New Niguarda Hospital, reserving the usufruct. Born in 1868 in Rovenna (Como), she is the daughter of a garden designer who studied drawing at the Brera Academy and attended the floriculture school. Unfortunately the long illness of the father, and then the death, change the living conditions of the family and everyone, brothers and sisters, must work to live. Having arrived in Milan, she found a job as escort lady at a Milanese family, where she would remain her whole life, also earning a prize from the Opera Pia Predabissi for her loyalty. Only after a subsequent donation, still alive, in 1941, of a further 32,000 lire, she accept his donation to be made public and the consequent commission of the portrait, entrusted to Augusto Colombo; the artist, who had already successfully completed various works for the Quadreria Ospedaliera, skillfully solved the need for a half-figure cut by presenting the benefactor looking out a window; the composition gains in spontaneity and naturalness, and the bourgeois half-length portrait turns into a snapshot that easily captures a daily gesture; the representation of the face is expressive and realistic, thanks also to the execution from life. The colors are warm and lively and the flowers on the windowsill are perhaps an allusion to the profession of the father and to his life as a child and teenager.