Portrait of Angela De Bernardi Grisetti

Angela De Bernardi Grisetti (1830-1874) does not directly benefit the Ospedale Maggiore. Wife of Eugenio Grisetti, patriot of the Five Days of Milan, supporter of Mazzini and Garibaldi, goldsmith, miniaturist and chiseller, friend of many Milanese philanthropists, died in 1874, three months before his wife. The couple did not stand up to the death of the third daughter after having lost two other teenage boys. The only supersitite of the family, Elvira, is just six years old. In 1933, now a widow of Luigi Radaelli, Elvira Grisetti Redaelli destined 400,000 to the Ospedale Maggiore, suggesting the names of Piero Gaudenzi and Augusto Colombo as the authors of parents portraits. Wishing to recall also her husband Luigi, she asks he to be portrayed in the commemorative painting that the Hospital will dedicate to her, for the execution she proposes the painter Giuseppe Amisani. When Elvira Grisetti Radaelli sees the painting executed by Augusto Colombo she writes to the hospital so that the painter replaces the pink trimmings and buttons of the dress "as a real servant on stage" with an antique lace. Since the change is not made, the lady even proposes to commission at her own expense another portrait of Giuseppe Amisani, but this did not follow. In the portrait, Colombo emphasizes the figure of the deceased, placed at the center of the composition, but also seeks a careful social definition through the precise description of clothing and furnishings, which are not simply decorative or fillers, but qualifying attributes of her social status.