Cesare Saccaggi

Cesare Saccaggi belonged to a generation of painters from Tortona, a small town in Piedmont, who worked around 1900 alongside Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, the painter of The Fourth Estate. The son of a tailor, he trained at the Albertina Academy in Turin and then exhibited widely, in Turin, Milan, Genoa, Florence and at the Venice Biennale, working in oil, pastel, tempera and watercolour. He was also an accomplished pianist.

His symbolist canvas La Vetta, The Summit, dates from around 1898. From 1900 to 1905 he worked in Paris, exhibited at the Salons and won a bronze medal at the Universal Exposition of 1900. There he became a fashionable designer of posters and calendars in the Art Nouveau manner and worked with Goupil, the Paris art dealers and print publishers. During the First World War he drew illustrated postcards, and he died in his native Tortona in 1934.