Biography

Mosè Bianchi (1840-1904) is among the most important Italian painters of the 19th century. Beginning in the first half of the 1860s (while still a student at the Brera Academy), he was recognized as one of the most important artistic personalities on the national scene, thanks to his dynamic talent. By partaking in the Second War of Independence, he fully lived the Risorgimento ideals of his peers but it is above all on the cultural level that he finds himself as one of the protagonists of the Milanese Scapigliatura, interpreting in his paintings elements that skilfully reshape late-historic themes with the new ideals that they see in the naturalism and everyday city-life, the values, not solely artistic, of a united Italy. He crowned his formidable career in 1898 when he was appointed director of the Cignaroli Academy of Fine Arts in Verona, as well as professor of the Chair of painting; an assignment that he followed with great passion until December 1899, when he suffered a serious stroke. He died on March 15, 1904 in Monza, attended to by his wife Carolina Marignani (the couple had no children) and his nephew Pompeo Mariani.