Giovanni Migliara was born in 1785 in Alessandria of the cabinetmaker Pietro and probably carried out his apprenticeship with the sculptor Giuseppe Maria Bonzanigo in Turin; at the same time he attended courses of ornate and architecture at the Academy of Brera. He made his Tour of Italy, being fashinated by Rome and Venice. In 1804 he worked as a set designer, first at Carcano theatre and then at Alla Scala theatre, under the direction of Alessandro Sanquirico. From 1808 to 1810, because of a serious lung disease, he was forced to stop working as a scenographer, but his interest in the theatrical world remained, as shown by watercolor paintings and costumes inspired by medieval and oriental models for tragedies and ballets. Migliara turned to creation of small easel paintings, miniatures on silk underglass (called fixè) and on ivory. From the technical point of view, his production is various: oil and watercolor paintings, tempera and miniatures, etchings, lithographs and illustrations. Vagaries from Venetian eighteenth century (from Canaletto to Guardi) and glimpses from life of Mylan and Lombard territory will be two consistent themes in his production. He depicts views and interior of churches and monasteries with accentuated perspective angles and extraordinary contrasts of light, which is why critics call him “the new Newton”. Critic success and orders were increasing, counting exponents of Milan nobility and upper class, such as Gian Giacomo Trivulzio and Luigi Balsamo Crivelli. He became a member of the most important Art Academies of that time; from 1812 he received commissions by the king Carlo Alberto (who in 1883 elected him as his official genre painter), Maria Cristina of Savoy, the Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopoldo II, the Duchess of Parma Maria Luigia, the Archduke Ranieri Viceroy of Lombardy-Venetia and the Prince of Metternich. In 1831 he was awarded the Order of Civil Merit of Savoy, with the possibility of being received at court. In 1817 he exhibited three works at the Salon of Paris and presented at Brera his first monastic interior, a subject very repeated and requested. Between the second and the third decade of the nineteenth century, Migliara imposed himself in the lively and refined cultural climate of the Romantic Milan, with a new genre, made of perspective rapresentations of urban momuments and majestic interior, preferring Milan subjects reduced to small sizes. From 1818 he experimented with production of genre scenes in modern customes, according to a trend spread in France, coming from study of Flemish and Dutch painting of the seventeenth century, that gained him further expressions of approval of public and critics.
In 1823 he made a first updating travel in Tuscany and Emilia, followed by some stays in Verona and Venice; in 1828 he moved to Liguria. Many albums and notebooks testify the rich material collected from which perspective views from life and neomedieval inventions come, often enriched with genre scenes or historical and literary episodes of Romantic inspiration. From the Twenties of the nineteenth centur, contacts with Piedmont are attested. In 1823 the King Carlo Felice of Savoy bought for the castle of Govone a painting in Flemish style for which Migliara obtained as a gift a golden snuff box containing 30 Luigi coins. The Court of Madrid invited him in 1830 to illustrate one of the most important Spanish basilicas, but he refused in order to stay close to his family. In 1834 his production was enriched with themes taken from literary works by Dante Alighieri and W. Shakespeare, such as “The Count Ugolino” and “Romeo and Juliet”, which reflected, in the dramatic accentuation, typical instances of the Troubadour taste. Migliara died in Milan on 18 April 1837.
Although he lived in Milan, he never denied his Piedmontese citizenship. He refused a chair at Brera, but established his own school of which his daughter Teodolinda will also be part, together with the heir Luigi Bisi. According to the chronicle, the numerous awards obtained have never changed the jovial, frank and modest character of the artist, whose works can be admired in several national and foreign museums. The collection kept at the Gallery of Alessandria is impressive, completed by the rich legacy of his daughter Teodolinda, including nineteen albums of drawings and sketches, given in 1837 after the death of the artist.
THE CATHEDRAL OF ASTI PAINTED BY MIGLIARA
The view with male and female figures and a chariot shows the southern side of the Cathedral of Asti, with its impressive Gothic architecture, and the Pelletta Porch. The work, signed at the bottom right by Giovanni Migliara, depicts the Cathedral with a perspective taken from Gueston’s engraving, made to a design by Chapuy. The characteristic elements are the precision of the execution and the smooth painting, with a grazing lighting that takes inspiration from the Flemish tradition. The dating of the canvas at the beginning of the fourth decade is based on the presence of the painter in Piedmont, in Turin between 1829 and 1832, on the commission of watercolor paintings requested by Carlo Alberto of Savoia and on the views of Altacomba wanted by the Queen Maria Cristina. The presence of Migliara in Asti is also documented by his album about the travel in Piedmont and Savoy made in 1832; in this work the author shows attention to the political and cultural choices of the Savoy dynasty, both in terms of themes and graphic quality. After visiting Chambery, Modane and Susa, the artist also sketched the house of Vittorio Alfieri, the southern side of the Cathedral, the capitals of the church of St. Secondo and the interior of the Rotonda of St. Peter.
