In January 2022 the antique dealer Francesco Cannucciari generously loaned to Banca TEMA – Terre Etrusche di Valdichiana e di Maremma, seven works by Pietro Aldi owned by him. Displayed here, they enrich the collection dedicated to the painter’s activity which has been assembled by the bank in the past

The custom of painting wooden palettes to exchange as gifts between artist friends or give to ladies was widespread in the late nineteenth century. Aldi, too, adhered to this fashion, dedicating a portrait on a palette to a young girl who recurs as a subject in drawings and paintings made

Three works sum up the entire artistic development of Pietro Aldi. Iphigenia Condemned to Sacrifice by Agamemnon is an early work, made when he was still a student in Siena, while the preparatory study for The Triumph of Judith, a canvas presented at the Vatican Exposition in 1888, and the

In 1878 Aldi took part in the Art Exposition in Rome with the painting of a subject from Dante, Buoso da Doara, traitor of his homeland Cremona, while begging is recognized by some of his fellow countrymen coming out of a church. The work was such a great success with

The many portraits painted by Pietro Aldi, which show his undisputed skill as a sensitive interpreter of the physical and psychological traits of his subjects, can be grouped into two types. One group contains works made on commission, perfectly finished, which portray relatives or authoritative personages of his time, like

For the decoration of the Risorgimento Room in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, assigned in 1883 to the artists who had studied under Luigi Mussini, Aldi was charged with illustrating the episodes of the meeting of Victor Emanuel, the day after he was proclaimed king, with the Austrian marshal Radetzky

At the annual exhibition of the Istituto di Belle Arti in Siena in 1871, Aldi presented a Study of Draperies, identified as the Still Life with Fur and Lute on display here because it shows objects that were used in the classroom at the institute, depicted in earlier studies by

The two Academies of the Nude present exercises done years apart. The first, dated 1873, was the winning entry in the Istituto di Belle Arti di Siena’s annual competition and seems to have been done following the Purist dictates of naturalism and sweetness proposed by the director Luigi Mussini and