The appointment at the end of May 2004 with the series "Unknown Brera" focuses on a canvas by the painter Luigi Miradori, also known as "il Genovesino".
[Unknown Brera. Genovesino revealed. A painter, a client, an enigma] The appointment at the end of May 2004 with the series “Unknown Brera” focuses on a canvas by the painter Luigi Miradori, also known as “il Genovesino”, of Ligurian origin but relocated in Cremona, where he conducted most of his activity in the 1640s and 1650s, until his death in 1656. The painting depicts St. Nicholas of Bari with his standard attributes – the bishop’s vestments, the bag with balls of gold offered as dowries, the children immersed in brine, the tempest departing toward the horizon – and a genuflecting worshipper at his feet, against the background of a view of the port of Genoa; above, two angels bear a sheet with an inscription indicating the nature of the work, a votive offering in thanks for salvation from a shipwreck (the saint is also the protector of seafarers), and the date 1654.
The canvas, which came to Brera in 1960 by donation of the Milanese antique dealers Emanuele and Franco Subert and kept in the storerooms since then, had not been studied in depth by historians. Only the profile of the work by Mina Gregori in the catalogue of the picture gallery (1989) prevented it from being completely overlooked.
Research conducted by Lia Bellingeri has made it possible to ascertain that the painting comes from Cremona, where it was described at the beginning of the 1700s as hanging in the church of San Vincenzo. The study has been able to trace the client portrayed by the painter, thanks to a play on words contained in the couplet of the inscription.
Milan, 2004