228 - Daniele Ranzoni (1843–1889)

Daniele Ranzoni (1843–1889) Portrait of a Woman (Miss Tonazzi?), 1888 (on the front) Oil on canvas 60 x 45 cm Signature: “DRanzoni” on the front Date: “1888” on the front Other inscriptions: on the back of the stretcher, in pen, and on the back of the canvas on a label, authenticated by the artist’s grandson Daniele Ranzoni (1944) Distinguishing features: on the reverse, a shipping label; a label with an authentication by the artist’s grandson dated 1944; an exhibition label from the Galleria Pesaro, Milan; two labels from the Banca Popolare di Intra with inventory references Provenance: the artist’s heirs; Galleria Pesaro, Milan; Banca Popolare di Intra; Veneto Banca SpA in LCA Bibliography: A.-P. Quinsac, ed., “Daniele Ranzoni 1843–1889,” Milan, 1989, p. 95, no. 113 (ill.), p. 126, cat. 113 with the title; A.-P. Quinsac, “Daniele Ranzoni. Catalog Raisonné of Paintings and Drawings,” Milan, 1997, p. 215 (ill.), p. 217, cat. 313 Exhibitions: Daniele Ranzoni 1843–1889, Palazzo della Permanente, Milan, April 18–May 28, 1989 Condition. Support: 85% Condition. Surface: 80% (craquelure, retouching) For direct WhatsApp assistance before and during the live auction: +39 346 12 999 80 // Direct assistance via WhatsApp before and during the auction: +39 346 12 999 80 The son of a shoemaker from Intra, Daniele Ranzoni, thanks to the support of several benefactors from his hometown, trained at the academies of Milan and Turin. Upon returning to Intra in 1864, he became close with the international aristocracy residing on Lake Maggiore and founded the Circolo dell’Armonia, frequented by artists, musicians, and intellectuals. The villa of the Troubetzkoy princes in Ghiffa, with whom he forged close ties, became a gathering place for artists of the Milanese “scapigliatura” movement. His artistic exploration drew inspiration from late Romantic influences, Verismo filtered through photographic experiments, and his association with the cosmopolitan aristocracy. In this context, as noted by Annie-Paule Quinsac, his preference for portraiture should be understood: a genre that the artist revitalized by focusing solely on the human figure, which merges with the surrounding space through the use of loose brushstrokes in a style “decidedly opposed to academic ‘finiteness’” (Quinsac 1997, p. 48). It was precisely as a portraitist of the nobility and the new bourgeoisie that he made a name for himself in England, where he moved in 1877. Upon his return to Italy in 1880, however, he experienced a period of intense creativity, characterized by an increasingly concise artistic language, but at the same time he began to show signs of mental distress—partly due to the death of his friend Tranquillo Cremona—which led him to live in isolation during the last three years of his life as a guest at Caffè Verbano, a café on the shores of Lake Maggiore run by his cousin Manrico Tonazzi. It is precisely within the context of this later body of work—extremely sparse and featuring expressionist results “among the most shocking of the late nineteenth century” (Quinsac 1997, p. 26)—that the female portrait dated 1888 is situated, first published by Quinsac as a likely unpublished work of unknown provenance in the catalog of the Ranzoni monographic exhibition held in Milan in 1989 and later included by the same scholar in the artist’s general catalog published in 1997. The entry in the 1989 exhibition catalog tentatively identifies the young woman portrayed as one of Manrico Tonazzi’s daughters. Furthermore, the general catalog specifies that the authentication by his nephew Daniele Ranzoni (erroneously identified in the bibliography as Antonietta Ranzoni) indicates that the painting must have passed directly from the heirs to the Galleria Pesaro in Milan, as documented by the label affixed to the back of the canvas. Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto