Portrait of Carlo Della Bianca

Elena Vigano ordered this small portrait in 1823, when the young man sitting for it was already close to death. Her father was Salvatore Vigano, the choreographer whose ballets had filled La Scala until he died two years before. Hayez painted it on a wooden panel 54 centimetres high. He normally worked on canvas, and at this scale the thing could be carried in one hand. Almost nothing is recorded about Carlo Della Bianca himself, not his trade, not his age, not what he died of. What is on the panel is the way Milanese Romantic circles liked to picture a young man of ideas, dark coat, dark hair, no books or instruments to explain him. The Brera lists the work among those not on display.