The Ivy

Cremona was working on this canvas in the spring of 1878 and had only just finished it when he died in Milan that June. It was commissioned by his friend, the composer Benedetto Junck, and it comes from the Scapigliatura, the bohemian circle of Milanese writers, musicians and painters that both men moved in. Friends from that circle sat for it. The man was modelled by Alfredo Catalani, the young composer who would later write the opera La Wally, and the woman by Lisetta Cagnoli, Cremona's sister-in-law. The museum's catalogue notes that he painted it without second thoughts, with no corrections under the soft, vaporous strokes. Some critics of the time wondered whether painting like this was a way of slipping away from the real world in front of the painter.