PTM A/R ‘Two Socratic Scenes’ by Giovanni Battista Gigola

Room XX of the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, dedicated to Neoclassicism, sees the paintings by Andrea Appiani leave for the Musée National des Châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau that it usually hosts (the Madonna and Sleeping Child of c. 1790 and Juno’s Toilet of c. 1810) and that will be included in the important monographic exhibition Andrea Appiani (1754-1817). Le peintre de Napoléon en Italie (from 16 March at the Château de Bois-Préau), curated by Rémis Cariel.

The occasion has thus made it possible to bring to the public’s attention, until 9 January 2026, two works usually kept in storage, by an artist also linked to the Napoleonic court, the Brescian Giovanni Battista Gigola, appointed miniature portraitist of the Viceroy of Italy, Prince Eugene de Beauharnais.

The two sophisticated works of neoclassical taste by Giovanni Battista Gigola (1767-1841), protagonists of the exhibition and a unicum in the Brescian artist’s production, can be traced back to a fundamental moment in his artistic training, namely the stay he spent in Rome in the last decade of the 18th century. In the papal city Gigola met and frequented the most avant-garde circles and academies, where neoclassical poetics was being elaborated, and he received, thanks to his innate curiosity, the stimuli that were later fundamental for his original experiments.

Gigola’s degree of updating and insertion into the Roman environment is well documented by the episode dedicated to Agathon’s Banquet, with the scene of Alcibiades crowning Socrates, which is punctually derived from a magnificent drawing by Asmus Jacob Carstens (1754-1798) that the Brescian probably had the opportunity to admire in 1795, on the occasion of an exhibition of the German artist’s works, whose art, characterised by great visionary power, exerted a profitable influence on his contemporaries. Gigola’s work exhibited here, a faithful translation of the original graphic invention, is characterised by saturated colours and glazed tones that enhance the volumes of the figures. The artist matured an astonishing chromatic sensitivity also thanks to his knowledge of the debate on the ancient encaustic technique, which developed at the time in the Roman environment among artists, scholars and antiquarians.

At the same time as this miniature, Gigola produced a pendant of the same size in which he depicted, in a very similar composition and with the same stylistic imprint, a widely diffused classical subject: Socrates scolds Alcibiades caught in the gynaecium. The striking thematic and formal affinity between the two miniatures dedicated to Socratic subjects can be attributed to two alternative hypotheses: Gigola may have been inspired by another watercolour by Carstens that has been lost in the course of time, or, demonstrating his maturity at the end of his Roman sojourn, he may have attempted an original invention of his own, in any case inspired by the prototype to which he had already paid homage.

On this occasion, it was also possible to enhance the two works through restoration work by Licia Zorzella, Carla Valzelli and Elisabetta Mosconi, which involved the painted surfaces and antique frames. Restoring the full legibility of the subjects allows us to admire the technical expertise of Gigola, an undisputed master in the art of miniature painting.