Portrait of Maurilio Salvoni

Maurilio Salvoni (1879-1933), son of the Provveditore for Studies of Rome Antonio, graduated in Chemistry in Rome, in Natural Sciences in Pavia and in Magisterium in Milan in 1909. The latter were the studies that most interested him, because from that moment he devoted himself full time to the activity of educator, directing according to modern pedagogical criteria elementary and maternal schools. He carried out his first activity as an innovative teacher in the private school that his mother, a teacher in turn, had set up in Via Manzoni, then spread his concepts also in numerous writings (which will then be collected by Giuseppe Lombardo Radice and appreciated by numerous cultural personalities of time), to then found, with the support of people of the caliber of Senator Treccani, Alberto Pirelli and Count Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone, his "School of education in spontaneous activity". Anticipator of more famous methods, such as that of Maria Montessori, she has a social vision of teaching, aimed above all at the most disadvantaged classes. In his will he assigned to the Maggiore Hospital the small building he owned in Loreto di Varese and a modest income from titles. The Ca 'Granda commissioned the portrait from Massimo Campigli. It is one of the rare portraits executed by the artist: he places the benefactor in front of the viewer, he represents him with a few essential traits, almost in the absence of setting and working the color, obtaining effects similar to a wall painting. Although the quality of the work was high and the artist's name was celebrated, the family is not exempt from asking for a change (the color of the dress, which is too clear "for the seriousness of the deceased who habitually wore black") and from expressing the modest judgment of "passabile" in relation to the physiognomic similarity.