Anna Maria Bassi was born in 1800 in Amsterdam to a noble Milanese family. Her father, Antonio Francesco Bassi, had moved from Milan to Amsterdam at the end of the eighteenth century to pursue his business; there he met Elisabeth Maria Charlé and they married in 1797. The young couple settled in Amsterdam where they remained until 1812 when they moved back to Milan. Whilst in Amsterdam they had four children: Paolo Luigi (1798–1855), Anna Maria, the creator of the present painting, Luigia Teresa (1803–1861), and Carlo Luigi (1807–1857).

The Bassi were members of the Milanese elite, and they held a prominent place in the cultural and political life of the city. From 1821 until 1846 Antonio Francesco Bassi owned a box at fashionable Teatro alla Scala, and in 1829, Francesco Hayez, the leading Italian painter of the Romantic era, painted a portrait of Elisabeth Charlé Bassi holding an engraving showing the visage of her husband (fig. 1). The couple’s eldest son, Paolo Luigi, took part at the uprising of the Cinque Giornate in 1848, and became mayor of Milan before the return of the Austrians; he was succeeded in this post by his brother-in-law, Gabrio Casati, another hero of the Cinque Giornate.

Though little is known of her career as an artist, Anna Maria Bassi grew up in this sophisticated milieu. It is possible that she trained with Francesco Hayez, with whom the family had a relationship, and which would account for her work as a portraitist. In fact, Anna Maria painted a portrait of Hayez in 1842 (fig. 2). It seems equally possible that she undertook some training under Giambattista Gigola, the most prominent miniature painter of the period. At the same time, it should be noted that miniature painting was a very popular amongst the Milanese upper classes, at both an amateur and at a professional level. Although Bassi never presented a work at the annual exhibition at the Accademia di Brera, her works were included both before and after her death in other exhibitions, such as the Mostra di miniature e ventagli held in 1908 at the Società Belle Arti in Milan, at which her large ivory panel reproducing Hayez’s Deposition was on display.

Soon after her death Antonio Caimi, himself an artist and a professor at the Accademia di Brera, mentions her amongst the most remarkable artists of the first half of the nineteenth century:

“Nè vuole essere dimenticata la testè defunta nobile Maria Lesperon–Bassi, la quale sebbene si limitasse al modesto officio di copista, pure meritò giusti encomi per aver saputo riprodurre su avorii di straordinaria con buon disegno, e con giusta e succosa intonazione, parecchie insigni opere di artisti antichi e viventi."

The present work is remarkable in a number of ways. Firstly, it is a notable document attesting to the lifestyle and status of the women of the upper classes in Europe in the decades following the Napoleonic era. Drawing, painting, and playing music were essential parts of the education of young women in this period, yet very few attained professional status or established publicly recognised reputations. It is perhaps interesting to note that having a professional career was easier for unmarried women, and the case of Clara Wieck Schumann is highly revealing in this regard. Bassi is not an exception; it was only in 1854, when she was in her fifties, that she married Antonio Lesperon, having already become a successful artist.

Secondly, the composition which the present painting takes as its model offers an insight into the artistic tastes of the mid nineteenth century. That work is a large panel, today in the Rothschild collection at Pregny-Cambésy (fig. 3). In the nineteenth century, the painting was generally ascribed to Leonardo (although some scholars had already advanced the idea of an attribution to Bernardino Luini) and it was perhaps of the most famous painting supposedly by Leonardo in a private collection. Its history can be traced to the seventeenth century when it is first mentioned in Palazzo Barberini in Rome; the painting remained in the Barberini collections until the end of the nineteenth century when Maffeo Barberini Colonna di Sciarra sold it for an outstanding sum to Edmond de Rothschild. An engraving after the painting by Giovanni Volpato was included in the famous Schola Italica Picturae by Gavin Hamilton (1773); there, the painting is attributed to Leonardo, and this publication significantly increased its fame. At the same time, the subject, which possessed a certain aura of mystery, contributed to its success. The Rothschild painting is now understood to depict Saints Martha and Mary Magdalene, the two sisters who greeted Christ before the Passion, but in the nineteenth century it was described as an allegory of modesty and vanity. Another version of the painting, with some variations, is today in the collection of the San Diego Museum of Art (on the two paintings, see C. Quattrin, Bernardino Luini, Turin, 2020, p. 416). The present painting on ivory by Bassi, housed in its original gilt bronze frame, denotes the nineteenth-century enthusiasm for works by the Old Masters, both as a matter of civic and national pride and as a point of departure for their own achievements in the arts.

Please also note that this panel is only available for purchase within the EU, or by a public institution outside of the EU.

Please also note that this panel is only available for purchase within the EU, or by a public institution outside of the EU.