Portrait of Carlo Baizini – (Giuseppe Enzo Palanti) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Giuseppe Enzo Palanti

Date: 1935

Museum: Ca’ Granda – Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico (Milan, Italy)

Technique: Oil

Carlo Baizini (1871-1935), from Bergamo, born in a family of farmers, is able to graduate in Rome in medicine using scholarships; he returned to the Bergamo area and for six years the doctor was taken to Selvino. He then moved to Milan, where he worked in one of the most deprived areas of the city. Called up in war, he participates as a territorial medical officer. Deeply religious, he often offers himself as an accompanist to the sick in Lourdes. He dedicated his modest patrimony to the Ospedale Maggiore, with a legacy of 5000 lire for the renovation of the church of Nembro (Bergamo), a place where he had moved in the last years of his life. The commission of the portrait is entrusted to Giuseppe Palanti, who in March 1934 had asked the Artistic Commission of the Hospital to be able to paint the portrait of a living benefactor, which would allow him to show his pictorial ability better than when he had performed, years before , the portrait of Giuseppe Canzi, having as a model only a faded photograph. The need for direct contact with the person to be depicted shows that the artist was not enough to grasp the physical resemblance, but tried to understand the aspects of personality and character; and his success at the Milanese client shows how well he knew how to interpret the expectations of the bourgeoisie. In this portrait the benefactor has the brooding aspect of one who is aware of death now approaching, the bare room, the bowl with the spoon leaning against a stuffed chair, allusion to the frugality of meals, the crucifix in the center of the wall, everything evokes his life, spent in a modesty that borders on poverty, in the total service of the poor and guided by the light of faith.