File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - Ferrari Arturo, Cortile quattrocentesco a Castiglioine Olona o Cortile antico.jpg

In a letter dated 30 March 1937, Edoardo Alfieri, undersecretary at the Ministry of the Press and Propaganda, urged the Marquis Giuseppe De Capitani d’Arzago, President of the Cassa di Risparmio, to buy Ancient Courtyard by Arturo Ferrari from the artist’s widow Teresa Ponti. The request was prompted both by recognition of the artistic merits of the painting, a good example of the work of Ferrari, who died in 1932, and by the difficult financial situation in which the family then found itself. Drawn-out negotiations between the savings bank and Ferrari’s widow finally reached their conclusion in the July of the same year with the sale of the large canvas for the considerable figure of 25,000 lire, as against the purchaser’s initial estimate of 16,000. This was an exceptional event in that the policy of the Cassa di Risparmio was to make purchases almost exclusively at the major exhibitions in support of the activities developed for charitable purposes.

The inclusion of the painting in the important commemorative exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the Società Permanente in 1934 partially justified the widow’s financial demands, which were at first in the neighbourhood of the exorbitant sum of 40,000 lire. This figure was also based on a singular episode mentioned in archival records and then described in detail many years later by Luigi Medici. In his Incontri di Anime (1957), the Milanese dialect author recalled Ferrari’s “intense joy” on being able to buy back “at a very high price” a painting sold many years earlier. While no mention is made of the name of the first owner or the title of the work, which the artist then placed in his studio, it can plausibly be identified as the one examined here.

This may also help to account for the major repainting carried out to conceal the military bugler in the foreground and removed during recent restoration work. After buying the painting back, Ferrari may well have retouched it himself to eliminate the figure and endow the scene with greater depth of perspective, as shown in a photograph of the work prior to its restoration reproduced in the monographic study of 1980 on the artist.

Dated 1895, the work addresses one of the artist’s best known and most popular subjects, namely a view of the ancient medieval courtyard of the Palazzo Branda Castiglioni in Castiglione Olona [1], a village built in the immediate vicinity of Varese about halfway through the 15th century by the cardinal Branda Castiglioni, a celebrated humanist and patron of the figurative arts.

It was with another view of this place, namely Ancient Castle (also known as Olden Times), that the painter achieved a resounding success with the award of the prize offered by the City of Milan on the occasion of the 3rd Esposizione Triennale di Brera. The painting, whose present location is unknown, is known from the reproduction published in the newspaper Il Secolo and can perhaps be identified as the Castle Gate awarded a silver medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1900.

Ferrari addressed the same subject repeatedly all through the 1890s and produced numerous variants, including The Courtyard of Palazzo Branda Castiglioni in Castiglione Olona (1899), which is identical to the Cariplo painting in one section, and Gate of the Erstwhile Palazzo Branda Castiglioni in Castiglione Olona, owned until 1895 by Francesco Ponti. The latter may have been a preparatory study for the prize-winning work of Milan and Paris, from which it differs only in the inclusion of the sentry in 18th-century uniform beside the arched entrance (both now in the Galleria d’arte Moderna, Milan [2]).

In building up his vast repertoire, Ferrari drew upon the academic tradition of history painting and the naturalistic, neo-eighteenth-century works of Mosè Bianchi, Pompeo Mariani and Eleuterio Pagliano, but developed his subjects in simplified formulas that found favour also with a broader public. The inclusion of figures in ancient dress in settings rigorously studied from life is also to be found in his first evocative monumental interiors, e.g. The Atrium of the Basilica of Sant’ Ambrogio in Milan (Piacenza, Ricci Oddi [3]), and in broad and spacious urban views like The Naviglio Canal in Viarenna (1894, private collection), and became a hallmark of Ferrari’s work. Drawing above all on the taste for costume and description of genre painting, the artist produced nostalgic historical evocations of many characteristic places that were still clearly recognizable but on the verge of disappearance, thus gaining the lasting favour of the general public.