ROOMS OF MICHELANGELO PITTATORE

There are two rooms dedicated to the work of Michelangelo Pittatore (1825 – 1903), Asti’s greatest artist and a pupil of Tommaso Minardi at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, where he returned from 1852 to 1858.

The rooms show his early works (including the small canvas of Allegory, painted in 1848), genre paintings like Il Trasteverino, of Nordic inspiration, religious subjects, and, lastly the group of portraits that are a true document of Asti middle classes after the Unification of Italy.

The portrait of the artist, dated 1874, is by the German painter Rudolf Lehmann. It was Pittatore’s friendship with the German painter, whom he met in Rome during his second stay there, that led him to reside in London from 1868 to 1872, arriving with a letter of introduction from Giuseppe Mazzini, who had contacts with the circle of

Italian rebels and leading members of the Jewish community.