MORBELLI, Angelo

(b. 1853 Alessandria, d. 1919 Milano)

Italian painter. He received his first lessons in drawing in Alessandria, and in 1867 he travelled on a local study grant to Milan, where he was based for the rest of his life. He enrolled at the Accademia di Brera and from 1867 to 1876 studied drawing and painting there under Raffaele Casnedi (1822-1892) and Giuseppe Bertini (1825-1898), whose influence is seen in both the subject-matter and technique of his early works. These include perspectival views, anecdotal genre scenes and history paintings. In the Dying Goethe (1880; Alessandria, Pinacoteca Civica) the theatrical setting, enriched by a sophisticated execution and a well-modulated use of colour, derives from the teaching of Casnedi and Bertini, while the historic-romantic quality of this painting also recalls the style of Francesco Hayez.

In the years that followed, Morbelli began to concentrate more on themes such as labour and the life of the poor, influenced perhaps by Realist painters of the 1880s. Morbelli’s Return to the Stable (1882; private collection) shows him progressively adopting a lighter palette with bluish shadows and rougher, more fragmented brushwork.

High Day in the Trivulzio Hospice in Milan

This painting is one of a series of dramatic representations of the neglect of the elderly. It gives an unobstructed view of the cheerless communal room in a home for old men.

The painting was presented at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris.

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I Remember When I Was a Girl

In his later career, Morbelli concentrated on subjects of labour and life of the poor, frequently depicting the old people at the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, a retirement home in Milan founded in 1771 that housed more than eight hundred men and women by 1900. In order to carry out his work with the greatest possible authenticity, the artist obtained a room of his own there. The modest but clean setting of the women’s dining hall serves as the backdrop for a touching human story that is revealed to us through the work’s narrative title.

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