Ritratto di Giuseppe Verdi

This is the portrait of Verdi that ended up on postage stamps and schoolroom walls, and Boldini made it in a single sitting. In Paris in the spring of 1886, the composer, then 72 and the grand old man of Italian music, was in town while planning his late opera Otello. Boldini had tried a formal oil portrait and was unhappy with it, so on 9 April he sat Verdi down again and worked in pastel instead, finishing in a few hours. It shows just the head and shoulders, Verdi in a top hat and a soft white scarf, alert and informal, caught rather than posed. Boldini kept the pastel for years, showing it around Europe, and finally gave it to the national modern gallery in Rome in 1918.