Villa Carlotta
Via Statale, 5605 - 22016 Tremezzina
Tremezzo, Como
Tel. (0039) 0344 40405
segreteria@villacarlotta.it
Hours
10.00-16.00
(last ticket 3.30pm)
What's on
The garden is colored with autumn!
The medieval setting of Francesco Hayez's work, the rich pictorial range, the strong sentimental accent open to the new sensibility of Romanticism.
The Last Communion of Atala, painted by Pierre Jérôme Lordon in Paris in 1808, also falls under the banner of tragic love, drawing the subject from the novel Atala (1801) by the French writer François-René de Chateaubriand.
Sommariva also owned the large canvas depicting The Apothecary of a Cloister, painted by Giovanni Migliara in 1823. It is a painting inspired by 17th-century Dutch painting, from which derives the lenticular precision with which the painter describes the work of the pharmacist friars, lingering on every detail of the scene.
Shakespeare's story of the two lovers, one of the hallmarks of Romanticism, owes its successful popularization to Hayez. Thanks to numerous reproductions, but also to extraordinary critical acclaim, the painting has become a cult work of nineteenth-century Romanticism.
The canvas from Villa Carlotta, commissioned by Giovanni Battista Sommariva, was subjected to a complex analysis in 2015 to identify the techniques employed and the pigments used.
The rooms of Villa Carlotta are rich in references between literature and art history. Not far from Hayez's famous canvas, on our museum tour, is a lesser-known work with equally interesting literary echoes.
This is a canvas from 1808 by the French painter Pierre-Jérôme Lordon, which depicts a scene from the novel “Atala”, published by Chateaubriand seven years earlier.
Defined by critics as the “magician of painting”, Giovanni Migliara established himself from the early decades of the nineteenth century with a vast production of scenes of monastic life, urban views and small miniature landscapes, which won the admiration of the public at exhibitions.
Compared to this repertoire, The Apothecary in a Cloister of Villa Carlotta immediately stands out for its monumental format, which can be imagined as an express request by the client, Giovanni Battista Sommariva, who wished to ensure an extraordinary work.
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