The painting depicts the episode of Susanna and the Elders, reported in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament: two elderly people approach Susanna with perverse intentions, as she is about to bathe in the fountain in her garden and she rejects them. These, annoyed, threaten her saying that they will denounce her for adultery, dragging her to court. The woman resists the accusations and is then acquitted, thanks to the intervention of Daniele, who unmasks the two men.

Since the sixteenth century, Susanna's theme enjoys particular success, because, while referring to a sacred theme, it enhances the femininity and sensuality of the heroine.
The painting belongs to the Lombard school of the second half of the century. XVII and stylistically approaches the ways of Giuseppe Nuvolone (1619-1703), a member of the family of painters of Cremonese origin, active in Milan and Lombardy.

Location: room n. 1

The painting depicts the Allegory of Time Warner: A young and attractive girl (Beauty), portrayed while she is combing her hair braided with pearls (symbol of purity) in front of a mirror (symbol of vanity), turns, as if caught in the 'sudden, but at the same time pleased and smiling, towards an elderly, bearded man (Time) who seems to come suddenly behind him, handing her a rose, an allegory of life which, like that flower, is destined to wither.

The spread of this profane subject in the seventeenth century can be explained by observing the historical scenario in which Baroque art develops, which expresses the discomfort of a society in which everything became fleeting and changeable.
The work has been attributed to the circle of the Genoese painter Domenico Piola (1627-1703), who created a painting with the same subject, where the rendering of the slightly shaded complexions, the transitions from light to dark and the expression of the face are identical. weather.

Location: room n. 1

The subject of the still life with carpet has considerable diffusion in Northern Italy, from the middle of the 17th century, after being launched in Flanders at the beginning of the century.
The work Still life with carpet, by the Piacenza painter Antonio Gianlisi, takes up many stylistic features of the Flemish subject, which can be found in the fabrics, the production of which is typical of Flanders, but also in the fruits, symbols of the great maritime power of the Company of the Indies. At the same time, this painting recalls the still lifes of the Bergamo painter Evaristo Baschenis, in the way in which the pictorial composition of the objects inserted in scenes consisting of damask curtains and richly decorated carpets is laid out.

Gianlisi draws inspiration from these teachings for a personal reinterpretation and re-elaboration of the subject, using a palette of brighter colors, in which the details take on greater importance than the overall vision.
Another peculiarity of the artist is to make the drapery of the fabrics soft, very often decorated with gold and the workmanship of the fringes, rendered according to the smallest details, as in the contemporary Flemish still lifes.

Location: room n. 2

Pietro Antonio Luchini was a very important artist of the Lombard art scene of the nineteenth century with works belonging to the bourgeois portrait season. A significant example of this is the Portrait of Clementina Martelli Grillo with evident influences of French Romantic painting of the early nineteenth century.

Among the numerous trips abroad, which made him famous throughout Europe, we note the trip to Paris in 1832 during which he was a pupil of François Gérard, one of Napoleon Bonaparte's favorite artists for his celebratory portraits. Luchini was also the personal painter of the Pasha of Persia for whom he created fine works of commendation.

In this portrait the young woman is portrayed sitting on a nineteenth-century padded chair, dressed in a white silk dress with a wide neckline and in her hands gathered on her lap she holds roses. The work was donated by the Martelli Longhi heirs to the Municipality of Lecco in 1983 together with the Portrait of the notary Luigi Martelli, exhibited in the same room.

Location: room n. 3

Belonging to a family of artists and grandson of the scientist Antonio Stoppani, Giovanni Battista Todeschini can be considered the most important Lecco painter of the nineteenth century.
He enrolled at the Brera Academy, but completed his self-taught training by traveling a lot and studying the old masters.

Starting from the Eighties, his stylistic code is outlined, as an interpreter of landscapes of the territory of Lecco, his hometown, but also of Como and views of Liguria.
Around the middle of this decade, Todeschini began to devote himself assiduously to the portrait, with a series of preparatory studies and drawings: the Portrait of Antonio Stoppani (1891) and the Portrait of Lucia Stoppani (1889) his mother and sister of Stoppani are very famous. portrayed sitting in three quarters, with the left hand inside a sleeve, lying on the wide skirt of white fabric. The face is framed by a rich fur collar, which contrasts with the light color of the underlying lace.

The artist also experiments with the fresco technique, working with Giuseppe Mentessi, in the loggia of the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan.

Location: room 3

The work Porto di Lecco by Massimo Taparelli d'Azeglio influenced all the nineteenth-century naturalistic painting in Lecco. The Turinese statesman learned his love for rural views and their real-life copy from the Flemish landscape painter Martin Verstappen, of whom he was one of the very few pupils.
Del D'Azeglio are known several views of Lake Como, but this is perhaps the only representative of Lecco, a city that he must have known well, even after his marriage to a daughter of Manzoni, in 1831.

This work depicts the basin of the port of Lecco, at the foot of Mount San Martino, with large boats for transporting goods and many figures moving on the shore. The tones are warm with golden reflections typical of D'Azeglio's production.
The presence of boats and people working on the lake shore will often return to other views of the city of Lecco and its surroundings, such as in the Veduta di Malgrate da Lecco or in the Veduta di Lecco.

Location: room 5

Vincenzo Bianchi has acquired fame for having been the teacher of Carlo Pizzi, the most important 19th century landscape painter in Lecco.
Landscape painter and piano musician, he was able to illustrate the Lecco area with great sensitivity in his works.

In Veduta di Lecco da Valmadrera the basin of the lake of Lecco is depicted with the circle of mountains, the lake and, in the foreground, the coast of Valmadrera with a small church on the left (perhaps the Sanctuary of San Martino); in the center the promontory of Parè. The sequence of the mountains creates a series of wings that define the horizon; the blue sky with clouds and pink shades, the colors of the lake of the houses and the landscape with green and brown tones, are enveloped by the golden light of the sunset.

Location: room n. 5

Ruggero Panerai, a painter of humble origins, is part of the second generation of the Macchiaioli, to whom the themes and the painting technique refer.
From 1877 to 1881 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence where he was a pupil of Giovanni Fattori. It will be Fattori himself who introduced him to naturalistic landscape painting, with particular reference to the Tuscan Maremma. In addition to this subject, Panerai also combines military and animal themes, as well as some works with port or sea life scenes, arriving, in the last years of artistic production, to deal with mythological subjects and also dedicating himself to the illustration of books.

The work Soldati in attendance belongs to the artistic works dedicated to the war events of the last decades of the nineteenth century, and recalls the paintings of Fattori related to the battles of the Risorgimento.

Location: room n. 5

The work Monte Resegone belongs to the first stylistic phase of the pictorial production of the Lecco artist Carlo Pizzi, characterized by the use of a clear palette and a fluid brushstroke that renders, with great clarity, even the details.
The Resegone is illuminated here by the warm and pink light of the sunset, which also strikes the slopes covered by the green vegetation. On the slopes you can see some small houses, even if the whole view is dominated by the unspoiled nature of the mountain made famous by the nine-pointed “rocky ridge” that recalls the profile of a saw.

The Lecco mountains are among the favorite subjects of Pizzi, fascinated by their rocky, harsh and wild nature, and by the suggestive scenery of these mountains, “rising from the waters of the lake”, which frame the Manzoni city.

Location: room n. 5

Orlando Sora, originally from Fano, settled in Lecco in 1931, where he painted continuously, dedicating himself mainly to portraits, landscapes, sacred images for private clients and large cycles of frescoes for public ones. In 1951, in the church of Caleotto in Lecco, he created The day of Judgment, which was followed by the cycle at the Central Post Office in Lecco, the Via Crucis at the Chiesetta dei Piani d'Erna, to conclude with the large acrylic Il Teatro della vita, on the vault of the Society Theater.

The work My family (1933) belongs to the first production of Sora, in which the canons of the twentieth century lesson are found, personally reworked, in the description of the plastic forms and in the composition for floors. The large painting represents the artist's family in his studio, with his wife and little Vanna on his knees in the foreground. In the background the artist, intent on painting a work, which is a reflection of the present.

"A framework within a framework", a pictorial artifice often present in the history of art, declined here in an intimate and everyday atmosphere.
The painting was donated to the Municipality of Lecco by the artist's daughter, Giovanna Sora, in 2010, following the exhibition "Orlando Sora. Traits and portraits" held at Villa Manzoni and Torre Viscontea.

Location: room n. 6 - room entirely dedicated to the artist.

Raffaele De Grada is introduced to the art world by his father, painter and decorator.
Following the family's transfer to Switzerland, he attended the Dresden and Karlsruhe Academies. From 1919 he settled in Italy, where, two years later, he exhibited in Florence, deserving the attention of critics and the public. In 1926 he took part in the first exhibition of the Italian “Novecento” and in the second in 1929. This movement brought together the most famous Italian artists who looked at classical antiquity, purity and harmony of forms as models, also returning to traditional genres. De Grada favors the natural landscape, experimenting with new formal and expressive solutions, also aimed at the interpretation of moods, passing through the lessons of Corot and Cézanne.
The View of Lecco clearly shows the influence of the latter, in the scanning of the landscape in parallel planes, in the geometry of the composition and in the shapes of the houses, mountains and slopes, with very defined colors.
The work received the second prize at the IV Quinquennial Exhibition of Lecco, agricultural-industrial exhibitions of local products, which followed one another from the 1920s to the 1940s and which in 1937 also had an important section dedicated to the Lecco landscape.

Location: room 7

The artistic activity of Augusto Colombo is part of the stormy period following the First World War during which artists tried to return to the taste for simple things, where the human face and the landscape arouse a desire for study and research.
It was in this period that Colombo began to create some particular works, characterized by the centrality of the images and the care of chromatic pleasures. After a few trips to Florence, Rome and Paris, a preference for drawing and composition values can be observed in his art. In his works an attention to human architecture and an extremely essential language begins to stand out, which in reality communicates a more complex content.

In 1938 the painter created La laminatura and its related preparatory drawings, which were donated in 2000 to Si.MUL
The painting depicts one of the iron working phases, forging, a typical activity linked to the history and working traditions of the Lecco area. Men, with the expression of their fatigue, are the protagonists of the composition, crossed by the incandescent and sinuous line of iron. In the painting, aesthetic values thus merge with a profound human content, as in almost all of Augusto Colombo's art.

Location: room 7