The 19th century works constitute one of the most representative cores of the Musei Civici’s collections. It is a result of purchases, bequests and donations and bear witness to the vitality of a century that in the city was nourished by the presence of the Villa Reale, with its large park – itself an expression of 19th century culture and art – and the social life gravitating around the Court.
An industrially enterprising bourgeoisie helped create the economic conditions for the development of a local painting school that found in it a willing patronage, even if often delayed with respect to the rapid changes in taste and artistic trends then in progress.
Alongside the landscape paintings by Monza painters gravitating around Mosè Bianchi, who is present with a history painting, there are works that refer to other territorial contexts and other schools.
Sculpture is materialised by the works of three important Lombard masters who, moving between genre scenes and monumental portraits, held the Italian scene in the last quarter of the century and into the first decades of the following century.
01: Pompeo Mariani, Zelata, Storm in a rice paddy field. Oil on canvas, 1896
02: Giuseppe Grandi, Female bust (Messenger of love). Marble, 1866-68
03: Mosè Bianchi, After the duel. Oil on canvas, 1866
04: Pompeo Mariani, Sunset in the port of Genoa. Oil on cardboard, 1888-90
05: Guido Cinotti, Mountain snowy landscape . Oil on canvas, 1905-15