Ritratto di Achille Bertarelli

In this posthumous painting, Achille Bertarelli (Milan, 1863 – Rome, 1938) is depicted while dominating the vast hall that houses the thousands of prints he donated to the City of Milan in 1925.
The scene is set on the ground floor of the Cortile delle Armi of the Sforza Castle, the original home of the Institute, located not far from its current site.
Descended from a family of industrialists active in the production of sacred furnishings, Bertarelli was a collector and patron in the truest sense of the word. Throughout his life, he frequently donated parts of his valuable collections to the Museum of the Risorgimento and the Sforza Castle, contributing to the establishment of the Civic Cabinet of Prints, which took his name after his death in 1938.
The portrait, executed with a refined technique by the famous artist Giuseppe Amisani, was donated by the Bertarelli family in 1939 to adorn the environments he loved and frequented as a volunteer, in memory of “the one who, with enthusiastic passion, loved to classify himself as the oldest employee of the Municipality.”