Giuseppe Tominz

Trieste in the 1830s was a free port, the Habsburg empire's gateway to the sea, full of newcomers who had made fortunes in shipping and trade. Greeks, Serbs, Germans and Englishmen lived side by side, and many of them wanted a portrait showing they belonged. Giuseppe Tominz, known in Slovenian as Jožef Tominc, became their painter. He worked in Trieste until 1855, painting merchant couples, whole families, and figures like Pasquale Revoltella, the businessman whose palace is now the city's art museum.

Tominz came from Gorizia, a border town where Italian and Slovenian were both spoken. Letters of recommendation from an Austrian archduchess took him to Rome in 1809, and at the Academy of Saint Luke, Rome's academy of painters, he won a silver medal in 1814. That training shows in the crisp drawing and cool colour of his portraits.

The Belvedere's portrait of Paolo Preinitsch, a haulage contractor from Carinthia who was nicknamed the Napoleon of the Road, dates from around 1835. It was long thought lost before it reappeared at auction in Vienna. After 1850 Tominz's eyesight began to fail, his son Augusto helped him in the studio, and he opened a photography studio to earn a living. He died nearly blind in 1866 in Gradišče, a village near Gorizia.