Painting By Alessandro Milesi (venice 1856 – 1945), “the Market”

Alessandro Milesi (Venice 1856 – 1945), “The market”, 1895.
Oil on canvas, cm. 60 x 74.
Signed “A. Milesi 1895” lower left.

The beautiful painting depicts a city scene, set in a Venetian market square.

Although the figures are outdoors, the arrangement of the popular buildings, so grouped together, gives the viewer the impression of being in a sort of anthropomorphic basin, made of bricks, Gothic mullioned windows and pointed arches. The livid and impalpable light that envelops the scene suggests a gloomy morning; at the same time, the only impression of the sky is provided by its reflection in the puddles, which make the floor of the square shiny. The interest in the impressions of atmospheric phenomena on the urban landscape and its inhabitants is a common element not only in Milesi but also in his contemporaries.
In the foreground, two women are talking to each other: they are wearing the zendàle, a large shawl with long fringes typical of Venetian commoners.

BIOGRAPHY

Alessandro Milesi was born in 1856 to a family of modest origins; his father Giovanni Maria was a wholesale grain merchant. After a brief course of studies at the Cavanis brothers' charity school, Milesi was forced to work as a tobacconist's boy due to his father's illness. Guided by an early artistic vocation, in 1869 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, which he attended until he was nineteen, achieving great results among his teachers, the figure drawing professor Napoleone Nani, whose students included the painters Giacomo Favretto and Luigi Nono. In 1873 Milesi followed his professor to Verona and thanks to his intercession obtained the commission of some paintings and a fresco for the ceiling of a small church in Isola della Scala by the Pindemonte marquises.
A few years later he returned to Venice where he painted the Portrait of the Infirm Father (1876) now at the Museo Civico d Bassano del Grappa and the Portrait of the Mother (1878) currently at the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna in Venice. He made his debut as a genre painter at the Promotrice di Torino in 1879 with the work Racconto della nonna; three years later he took part in several exhibitions, including the Promotrice di Genova, the Esposizione nazionale di Milano where he brought La venditrice di zucca and again in Milan, at the exhibition Il libro d’oro, with the work Un colpo di vento.
In 1882 at the Promotrice di Venezia he exhibited Xelo sta lu?, while the following year he exhibited Die Perlfasserin at the International Exhibition in Munich, later presented at Brera with the title Le perlaie. The impiraresse, that is, the pearl artisans, were a subject dear to many Venetian painters of the 19th century, as, like fishermen and gondoliers, they became a symbol of the traditions and the local soul; the Anglo-Saxon market in particular was very fascinated by folkloristic Venetian scenes, as demonstrated by the purchase, by the English art dealer W. Dodeswell, of four paintings that Milesi presented at the Universal Exhibition of Aversa in 1885.
The following year he married the sister of the painter Guglielmo Ciardi, Maria.
At the National Exhibition of Venice in 1887 he presented a large canvas depicting some Venetian sailors, Vorla montar?, later purchased for the private residence of the Khedive of Egypt.
In the following years he participated in exhibitions in London, Paris and Munich, where he obtained excellent commercial successes. In 1892 he presented Des Barkenführers Imbiss at the VI International Exhibition of Munich, a work that was later also taken to the Roman National Exhibition of 1893, with the title La colazione del gondoliere, then purchased for the Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna in Rome. From 1895 Milesi participated in all the Venice Biennales until 1935: at the first he exhibited a work that later won a cash prize established by the baron of Reggio Raimondo Franchetti, Fabbricatori di penitenze. In the same year he created Gli orfani del gondoliere now at the GAM in Venice. In 1934 he was commissioned to create an altarpiece entitled S. Teresa for the Venetian church of S. Maurizio, one of the rare works with a religious subject. To celebrate his brilliant career, the following year a personal exhibition was dedicated to him on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Biennale. Having retired from the scene, he died in 1945, in his hometown.