Pietro Annigoni: The Witch

"La Strega (The Witch)
by Pietro Annigoni

"In 1959 I painted the portrait that came to be known as 'La Strega (The Witch)'. The model was an English girl, Patricia Rowlings, and was painted in Florence. She came to me first of all to sit for a pen-and-ink portrait commissioned by her father, a wealthy textile manufacturer. When that was done I asked her to sit again so that I could paint her for myself. She came to Florence twice, for two or three weeks each time, and sat for me every day at the same hour.

One day, when she was combing her hair during a break from posing, I told her that she looked like a witch, and I painted a little witch in the background of the portrait. So the picture got its title, the title under which it was exhibited the following year at the Royal Academy. 

What happened to it then was reported by William Hickey in the 'Daily Express':

'Textile magnate Mr. Louis Rawlings and his wife were hoping to buy the Annigoni portrait of their beautiful daughter, Patricia, which has been creating such a stir at the Royal Academy. Now they find that the picture has been sold for 5,000 pounds right from under their noses. The buyer? Thirty-year-old Mayfair company director, Mr. Adrian Jacobs, who lives a few doors from the Rawlings' town house in Grosvenor Street.

The picture is called 'La Strega - The Witch.' Mr. Jacobs told me last night: 'I sort of fell in love with the painting at the Royal Academy and thought it very good. Patricia Rawlings rang me as soon as she heard. I told her she had had the first opportunity of buying it, but that now I had bought it. I don't know why the family should be so upset about this because I know Mrs. Rawlings extremely well and she is not very concerned about it.'

At her home Mrs. Rawlings told me: 'We all feel very sore about this. We realise that it was Mr. Annigoni's property to do what he liked with, but we understood that we might have had an opportunity of acquiring it. Neither my daughter nor myself has ever heard of Mr. Jacobs. We just don't know him.'

Complicated. But there were more complications to follow. The sale at the Academy fell through when the money was not forthcoming, and the picture came back to me. Then I agreed to sell it to Patricia's parents for three thousand five hundred pounds, but once again it was returned to m when they decided they would prefer a smaller painting. When I made it clear that I was not going to paint a smaller picture, the Rawlings wanted the big picture again but quibbled about the price. Exasperated, I sold it to a doctor in Vicenza for two thousand pounds...and the picture remains in his beautiful, early Palladian Villa Godi-Malinverni near Vicenza where it is on show to the public with the rest of the doctor's art collection and where Patricia usually goes to see it when she is in Italy."

To be continued 

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