Portrait of Mrs. Luvoni
| Support Type: | Canvas |
| Paint Type: | Oil Paint |
| Current Location: | Its present location is not specified in available sources |
| Location History: | The documented history of the location of Portrait of Mrs. Luvoni goes back to 1934 when it was exhibited as La Signora Luvoni in the Mostra Internazionale del Ritratto del secolo XIX in the XIX Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d'Arte di Venezia. At the time of this exhibition the painting was in the possession of Anna Maria Turri Gallina of Milan, who had also acquired Ranzoni's La Signorina Cagnoli, which was next in the archival sequence (number 382 and 383). The connection between the Turri and the Gallina family adds a further layer of significance to the painting, since Anna Maria was a daughter of the lawyer and parliamentarian Giacinto Gallina, whose collection included paintings by the Scapigliatura movement; her father and brother, the stewardship of the works, ensured their preservation at least up to the early 1930s. It is almost certain that the sitter is Giuseppina Lorioli, the wife of Luigi Luvoni, an intimate acquaintance of Ranzoni's who was a Milanese engineer, painter and art collector whose portrait is also by Tranquillo Cremona, and is now in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan. It is very possible that the portrait was commissioned or given after the meeting of Ranzoni and Luigi Luvini at the Brera Academy where both the painter was a student of Cremona. Aside from the 1934 Biennale and the ownership of the Turri Gallina, there is no indication of where the painting is currently located, and Ranzoni's works are seldom found in public museums, offering the possibility that Portrait of Mrs. Luvoni was in private hands in Italy or that it passed through the art market without a public sale. |
When I look at Portrait of Mrs Luvoni, I don’t feel as though I am looking at a woman who has simply been painted. I feel as though I am looking at someone caught somewhere between presence and disappearance. She is physically occupying the centre of the canvas, yet psychologically she seems distant, almost withdrawn into herself. Her gaze does not completely meet mine; it feels as though she is looking through the viewer rather than at them. What interests me most is the way Ranzoni refuses to give her a definite boundary. Her body seems to dissolve into the surrounding darkness, particularly through the loose treatment of her dress. The white of the fabric is not clean or solid; it breaks into patches of grey, green, brown and light, making her appear as though she is slowly becoming part of the atmosphere around her. I read this dissolution as emotional rather than merely painterly. It makes me think about how a person can be physically present while becoming increasingly inaccessible to everyone around them. There is also something deeply melancholic about her stillness. Nothing dramatic is happening in the painting. She isn’t crying, smiling, posing theatrically or expressing some obvious emotion. And yet that absence of expression makes the painting feel even more intimate. To me, she seems to carry a kind of exhaustion that has gone beyond the need to be expressed. Her silence becomes the expression. I am particularly drawn to the contrast between her face and the rest of the painting. Her face is comparatively recognisable and delicate, while her clothing, hands and surroundings dissolve into fragmented brushstrokes. It almost feels as if the face is what memory has preserved, while everything else has begun to disappear. This makes the portrait feel less like a record of physical appearance and more like a memory of a person. The dark reddish-brown background also changes how I understand her. I don’t see it simply as a background anymore. It feels almost psychological a space made out of shadow, warmth and uncertainty. She seems to emerge from it and simultaneously return to it. There is beauty in that, but there is also something unsettling. For me, then, the painting is ultimately about the impossibility of completely possessing another person’s identity. A portrait is supposed to preserve someone to make them permanent but Ranzoni seems to do the opposite. The more I look at Mrs Luvoni, the less certain I become that I can actually reach her.