Portrait of Cesare Fantelli

This is the first portrait made by Eleuterio Pagliano in 1877 of Cesare Fantelli (1818-1875), a wealthy wine merchant and benefactor of the Ospedale Maggiore. After the exhibition in 1879, the painting was contested because the excessive expressive realism seems to be inadequate to the respectable bourgeois position, now reached, by the subject: here Fantelli is represented in his cellar, in work clothes, with his sleeves rolled up, the earring at the left lobe, with half a litre of freshly tapped wine in one hand. The Mutual Association of Hosts and Tractors also officially protest; then, a second portrait was commissioned to Pagliano, in which the character is portrayed in a way more suited to the social role acquired.