Student in Brera from 1884 to 1886, Giuseppe Pellizza tackles the problems of copying objects, still lifes, and finally the human figure from life. The student's attitude, which has been evident since 1885 in the frequent portraits of family members and in the self-portraits of his youth, develops during his formative years and remains a constant element of his mature poetics. The Portrait of Giovanni Cantù, dated 1895, shows a more consistent application of the pointillist technique, rigorously adopted both in the background and in the face of the man, a maternal uncle of the painter. From the apparent age of about sixty, the subject is framed in a half-length, frontally and on a dark background, soberly dressed with a brown jacket and waistcoat over a white shirt. His serious and impassive face is lit by dark and deep eyes that disperse the distant gaze, in subtle melancholy; the rosy complexion, naturalistically conceived by a thrill of superimposed touches, enriched in the shadow areas by a weave of blues and blues that bounce on the gray hair and mustache, emerges from the surrounding darkness built with myriads of horizontal strands that confront each other with diagonal and vertical ones in the dress.