LA COLLEZIONE DI DIPINTI DI GIOVANNI TRECCANI DEGLI ALFIERI.

We know that Giovanni Treccani bought and offered to Italy the Borso d’Este Bible in 1923, he financed the 1929-1937 edition of the Enciclopedia Italiana and the 1953-1961 edition of the Storia di Milano but nobody knows his activity as collector of modern and antique pictures which begins about in 1923. The reconstruction of Treccani collection, now lost, has been based on the autobiography of Treccani himself: Nel cammino della mia vita (1960), printed in very few copies for his daughters and sons; on the article by Antonio Morassi issued in 1930-31 on the magazine “Dedalo” and on the recovery of the correspondence between Giovanni Treccani and Adolfo Venturi who has been consultant for Treccani to the purchases of antique art. In addition to these written sources I have put the photolibrary research of these authors in Venice and Rome, in that of the Milan Council Archivio Fotografico and in other Italian and foreign Photo Libraries. After the reconstruction of the collection I have studied each picture to catalogue them. To reconstruct the contest in which the collection was born, I have considered first the background of the Milan collectionism world in the first two decades of the twentieth century, especially that of industry people in relationship with Treccani, then I analyzed the presence of the pictures of Treccani in several exhibitions between the 20s and the 50s. The borrowings of works reflect the relationship between the collector with the art historians who organized some exhibitions and allow us to hypothesize the contest in which Treccani purchased some paintings. The personality who emerges in the 20s and the 30s beside Venturi, is Ugo Ojetti. The probable responsible for the entrance in the collection of Francesco Paolo Michetti paintings and Vincenzo Gemito drawings. In the 40s the work of Treccani is in Milan and is linked to the art historians who work in the city: Costantino Baroni, Gian Alberto dell’Acqua, Fernanda Wittgens. The exhibitions of this period, some publications and the contribution of these historians for the Storia di Milano testify to this relationship. The reconstruction of the Treccani collection also has taken account of the issues financed by the entrepreneur: the pages of Enciclopedia, of the Storia di Milano, and of the Enciclopedia del costume allow you to monitor the inputs of a number of paintings in the collection and to backdate the ownership of Treccani. Finally, the study has also allowed us to identify several new works, among which should be noted a study by Pelizza da Volpedo and a painting by Adolfo Feragutti Visconti and donated by the author to the collector.