Interior of the Charterhouse of Pavia

Federico Moja made his name painting the insides of buildings, and here he takes on one of the most elaborate in Italy: the Certosa di Pavia, the great Carthusian monastery near Milan. He trained in Milan under Giovanni Migliara, a specialist in perspective views, and that schooling shows in the way the vaults and aisles recede with almost architectural exactness. He painted it in 1874. By then the new Italian state had cleared out the monks, suppressed the order and, a few years earlier, declared the building a national monument. Moja gave the canvas to the Accademia himself in 1880.