Pietro Annigoni: Paris and Salzburg

St. Wolfgang Altarpiece by Michael Pacher

"In 1935 I had a very successful one-man show, my second, at the Galleria Botti. The critics mostly ignored it but people from all walks of life crowded into the gallery, and at the end nearly all the paintings and drawings had been sold, at prices far higher than I would have dreamed of asking. But that was not all. Included in the exhibition were several portraits of well-known men and women of Florence and these brought me commissions to paint more. Altogether my prospects looked rosy, so the idea of a trip to Paris immediately appealed to me.

Paris lived up to all its promises, and I and three of my friends lived every moment to the full. We walked backwards and forwards across the beautiful city to visit museums and galleries, passed hours in the cafés of Montmartre and Montparnasse, sketching and making caricatures all the while, and at night dined boisterously in some small restaurant before collapsing.  

Then it was on to Salzburg for the Mozart festival and worshipped along with the other tourists at the house where the composer was born and at the museum devoted to his memory. But for me the outstanding attraction was the fifteenth-century altarpiece in a little chapel, the celebrated 10-year work of art by Michael Pacher which I had admired in reproductions but which in reality stunned me with its beauty and perfection. I went to see it every day and stood for hours trying to absorb its every detail. 

I had been drawn to the great German and other North European masters, Dürer, Holbein, Memling, the elder Breughel, and, later, Rembrandt and Callot, very early in my career, and, oddly my friends thought, they meant more to me than the Italian masters, until Renzo Simi and Mario Parri opened my eyes to the tremendous vitality and power of the great Florentines. Not without nostalgia the Pacher altarpiece recalled those earlier loves."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)