This portrait, dated 1885, shows us the severe physiognomy of an elegant bourgeois gentleman who is showing off his wealth with his prominent watch chain and the gold ring on his left hand. The modern style of his clothing and hair and mustache contrast with the pose typical of a

We do not have any information about the identity of the young man portrayed by Aldi, perhaps a relative given the family resemblance. The style of his shirt with its starched collar and the soft bow at his neck echo the fashion of the early 1880s and suggest the likeness

The portrait follows examples by Aldi’s teacher Luigi Mussini both in the classical pose of the sitter, recalling Renaissance prototypes, and in the oval format, which Mussini used frequently in the 1870s. This work seems to have been done in the early 1880s because of its similarity in style to

The painting, dated 1885, portrays Father Leonardo Aldi, the painter’s uncle and the parish priest of Porto Santo Stefano, called by the townspeople “Prete Ruscetto” (“Prickly Priest,” after the name of the thorny plant Ruscus aculeatus, butcher’s broom) because of the fatherly slaps he handed out to the young boys

This strongly characterized portrait recalls the faces of the women in the painting of Sienese Women Working on the Fortifications in Preparation for a Siege, presented by Aldi in 1878 to the Società di Esecutori di Pie Disposizioni in Siena in order to obtain an extension of his Biringucci fellowship,

This intense portrait is one of the many studies made by Aldi for the painting The Triumph of Judith, presented in 1888 at the Vatican Exposition in honor of Pope Leo XIII. The clothing and physiognomy indicate that the subject is one of the Hebrews meditating on the final moment

Aldi portrays himself in profile, in civilian clothes, to include his own image in the mural of The Meeting at Teano he painted in 1886 in the Risorgimento Room of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. Next to his face is that of his beloved teacher, Luigi Mussini, and of Ettore