Daniele Ranzoni (Intra 1843 - Intra 1889)

Daniele Ranzoni (Intra 1843–1889) moved from the Brera Academy in Milan, the scene of his early studies, to the Albertine Academy in Turin, before returning to the Brera in 1863. Thus, at the age of 20, Ranzoni had already had a variety of formative experiences in the two main cultural capitals of northern Italy.
He was attracted by Antonio Fontanese’s landscape painting, with its intense interweaving of realistic nature painting and emotional participation, and throughout Ranzoni’s career Fontanesi was a living presence. Significantly, Ranzoni also took part in the Milan Scapigliatura movement, which from the 1860s to the 1880s, with Emilio Praga, Carlo Dossi and Arrigo Boito, engaged in a special form of cultural and also political rebellion, patterned in a sense after Parisian bohemianism.
One of his favourite themes, taking after Fontanesi, was light and its vibrant intensity, which Ranzoni ultimately turned towards Impressionism. In addition to landscapes, his opus included a good number of elegant female portraits of the Lombard nobility.