Made for Giovanni Battista Sommariva, The Apothecary of a Cloister was presented at the Brera Exhibition of 1823, then destined by the client for his villa on Lake Como, being recorded a few years later in the 'guide' of the residence published by Davide Bertolotti:

A friar is reading Dioscorides. Another is busy extracting herbal juices over a fire. A third carries a tray with various vials of medicines. The stills and other utensils of the medical workshop are scattered beneath the solemn vaults of the cloister, supported by columns in the style of Brunelleschi.
Anyone who gazes intently at this painting feels a sense of calm and silence creep into their soul. They even believe they can breathe the fresh breezes that, in those warm hours, emanate from the botanical garden that appears there at the back of the painting.

John Migliara
Alexandria, 1785 – Milan, 1837
The apothecary of a cloister , 1823
Oil on canvas, 214 x 169 cm

Monastic subjects are recurring motifs in Giovanni Migliara's work. In these paintings, he inventively combines genre painting with interior views, embodying a new romantic sensibility imbued with religious influences.

In the case of the canvas preserved in the Villa Carlotta museum, the first detail to emerge is the exceptional nature of its format, unusually monumental in the artist's catalogue, measuring over two metres in height, and which can be imagined as an express request by Sommariva, eager to secure an extraordinary work.

The meticulous and patient restoration of the friars' tools and equipment, attentive to the rendering of the transparency of the glass and the sheen of the copper of the stills, reveals a knowledge of 17th- and 18th-century Dutch painting, which enjoyed renewed popularity at the beginning of the 19th century and was highly appreciated by Sommariva himself, who included numerous examples of it in his collection.

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