File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - Magistretti Emilio, Quasi aurora consurgens.jpg

The huge canvas, signed and dated 1921, presents an evocative view of Milan Cathedral [1] in the light of dawn, a subject already addressed by Filippo Carcano in The Spires of the Cathedral, a work presented at the 1910 Venice Biennial (Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della città di Venezia [2]).

There are close similarities in terms of the photograph-like approach and atmospheric handling of light with The Rinascente in Flames (Impressions) (location unknown), a work in a singular elongated vertical format showing the cathedral hemmed in by the wings of the Palazzo Bocconi, the premises of the Milanese department store, during the fire of 1918. Both canvases document a turning point in the artist’s creative development, namely his abandonment of the academic perspective painting learnt from Luigi Bisi and practiced in fixed and repetitive formulas from 1880 until the early 20th century in works like The Rubens Tapestries on the Balcony of the Palazzo Sormani to Celebrate the Anniversary of the Five Days of Milan in 1880 (impression from life), The Façade of the Sanctuary of San Celso (location unknown), “Locus olim publicae Veneri damnatus” (Choir of the Church of the Incoronata in Lodi – study from life) (Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana).

This mature work is a precise and almost calligraphic perspective view of the edifice in smooth, transparent painting, taking advantage of the highly evocative golden light of dawn for anti-naturalistic purposes. This atmospheric image of somewhat facile impact belongs to the artist’s “official” oeuvre, characterized by repetitive and sometimes stereotyped results, in contrast with the coeval naturalistic work that he initiated in 1900 during the summers spent in Valsassina with his fellow painter Achille Formis.

The title of the canvas – a quotation from the Song of Songs (6, 10: “Who is she that rises like the dawn ...”) traditionally associated with the birth of Mary – is a reference to the Marian dedication of Milan Cathedral (Mariae Nascenti).

The Marian allusion may have been suggested by the artist’s brother Monsignor Marco Magistretti, an important figure in the Milanese Curia who helped the painter to obtain numerous ecclesiastical commissions for decorative work in the churches of Lombardy and portraits of leading prelates, including Portrait of Monsignor Luigi Nazari di Calabiana (1892). Portrait of Monsignor Paolo Ballerini (1894), and Portrait of Cardinal Andrea Carlo Ferrari (1921) (Milan, Quadreria dell’Arcivescovado). The work examined here may also have been commissioned, as it was precisely on 8 September 1921, coinciding with the commemoration of the birth of Our Lady, the Monsignor Achille Ratti, the future Pope Pius XI, made his solemn entrance into the cathedral as archbishop of Milan, and Marco Magistretti was appointed prefect of the Ambrosian Library on 20 November of the same year.