Fashion
Foglio della Moda •
A history of costume at Palazzo Morando
Mosé Bianchi’s painted fashion: an exceptional collection on display
Fashionable painters. Eleuterio Pagliano (Casale Monferrato, Alessandria, 1826 – Milan 1903) My Studio, c. 1885 (GAM, Milan). Next to it, the bodice worn by the model, made of thick silk lampas (Palazzo Morando, courtesy)
All the most important fashion museums in the Western world – Kyoto’s, of course, being a case apart – originated from a core collection of antique garments or costumes (or, at times, excellent reproductions thereof, as is obviously stated), donated by the heirs of great painters or theatre practitioners, for whom these were tools of the trade. A few examples, in order of foundation: the Museo del Traje in Madrid, established following the donation in 1892 – initially to the Museo Arqueológico Nacional – by Marie Bonnat, widow of the painter Enrique Mélida y Alinari. In 1913, the Victoria and Albert Museum organised the exhibition ‘Old English Costumes’ to celebrate the donation of the Talbot Hughes Collection by Harrods, the first example of public-private collaboration in the fashion sector: seven hundred items, including one hundred and fifty garments, which – thanks in part to the painter’s own famous treatise on the significance of costume in art (‘Dress Design: An Account of Costume for Artists and Dressmakers, Illustrated by the Author from Old Examples”), would form the core of the museum’s fashion section, enriching an already significant collection of textiles and applied arts. In the same year, in Paris, the illustrator Maurice Leloir promoted, through the Société de l’Histoire du Costume, the scientific legitimisation of costume as a historical discipline, eventually donating his collections to the City of Paris, thereby establishing the original core of what is now the Palais Galliera. The Metropolitan’s collection, on the other hand, began as a philanthropic initiative, starting with a donation of books on costume by the Lewisohn sisters – after whom the library is still named – and later with actual garments, with the first exhibition organised in May 1937 with the aim of encouraging Seventh Avenue tailors to study the history of costume (The Museum of Costume Art would become part of the Met in 1946 and, two years later, Eleanor Lambert would launch the fundraising event now known as the MET Ball). However, although it is well known that all the great European painters of the nineteenth century – from Francesco Hayez to Mariano Fortuny y Marsal, right through to Paul Cézanne and, of course, Gustav Klimt – designed fabrics and possessed large quantities of them, along with garments and costumes, which they used to dress their models, this particular relationship between art and fashion, which was also the focus of the major exhibition of the same name held in 2023 at the San Domenico Museums in Forlì, has never before been explored directly and exclusively through the work of a single painter. This is the aim of the splendid exhibition “Abiti in scena. Mosé Bianchi and the Dream of the Eighteenth Century’, which opened two evenings ago as part of the Forum Cultura 2026 and runs until 13 June at the Morando Museum in Milan. It reveals to the general public how, much like all other major fashion museums, this one too draws on the legacy of a painter – indeed, one of the most important figures in the city’s history during the second half of the nineteenth century. Thanks to extensive research by the curator, Ilaria De Palma, curator in charge of Milan’s House Museums and Palazzo Morando itself, the garments that inspired Mosè Bianchi’s paintings are reunited with the works for which they were chosen – some of which come from Milan’s GAM – alongside other genre works by Eleuterio Pagliano, Giuseppe Bertini and Gerolamo Induno, who were themselves collectors of textile art. Bianchi’s, however, is the only collection of antique garments that belonged to an Italian painter to have been preserved in its entirety, as the curator explains in her essay (Dario Cimorelli Editore), from which we publish an abstract.
During the nineteenth century, whilst the middle classes were establishing themselves in Europe and a renewed interest in the history of bygone eras was taking hold, a particular form of collecting became widespread amongst artists: that of antique garments. While fabrics and garments had always been present in painters’ studios as tools for studying drapery and rendering fabrics realistically, it was above all with the rise of anecdotal and historicist genre painting that period costume came to play a central role. The narrative credibility of the painted scenes required strict adherence to the historical and social context, prompting artists to seek out, purchase and collect authentic garments: incidentally, those from the 18th century were more readily available on the antiques market. This practice gradually transformed the artists’ studios into veritable modern Wunderkammern, where not only garments but also accessories, musical instruments, weapons, furniture and works of art served as tools of the trade and, at the same time, as collectable items. With the decline of genre painting in the early 20th century, many of these textile collections were dispersed; some, however, managed to find their way into museum collections in a significant way, contributing to the emergence of the first fashion museums in Europe. (…) Like the textile collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the formation of the City of Milan’s costume and fashion collection has its roots in the final decades of the nineteenth century, within a cultural context strongly shaped by the debate on industrial art and the educational value of the applied arts – a debate in which even fabrics, garments, lace and embroidery were conceived as exemplary models intended to elevate the taste and training of artisans. Although the 1874 Historical Exhibition of Industrial Art failed to bring about the establishment of a fully-fledged museum as had been hoped, it played a decisive role in highlighting the importance of private collecting and in facilitating the inclusion of textile artefacts in the city’s cultural heritage. Between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, thanks to increasingly systematic donations and acquisitions, this heritage was progressively enriched with garments, accessories and textiles of great historical and artistic value. (…) A significant milestone in the growth of the textile section of Milan’s Civic Collections of Applied Art occurred in 1934, when Maria Caronni Lomazzi decided to put up for sale the collection of the painter Pompeo Mariani, which she herself had inherited from her mother, Marcellina Caronni, the artist’s wife. This collection originated largely from the collection of Mariani’s uncle, Mosè Bianchi, who was also a painter. (…) Although the then director of the Civic Museums, Giorgio Nicodemi, was unable to acquire the entire collection that had belonged to Mariani in one go, the purchase by the Municipality of Milan should nevertheless be seen as an effort to prevent its total dispersal – a fate that did, however, befall the collections of other contemporary artists. (…) In 1935, when the Milan Museum opened at Palazzo Sormani, the most valuable men’s and women’s garments from Mosè Bianchi’s collection were exhibited to illustrate the customs and traditions of the 18th century. (…) This collection should be interpreted both as a documentary source for Neo-Rococo painting—which was in vogue in Europe, and in France in particular—and as a repertoire of reusable objects with which to create multiple compositional variations for paintings on the same subject. Crucial to Bianchi’s artistic development was his stay in Paris in 1869, which enabled him to observe the working methods of artists such as Jean-Louis Meissonier and Mariano Fortuny y Marsal (father of Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, ed.) and to become acquainted with the circle gravitating around Adolphe Goupil. In France, he certainly came into contact with textile collections of great significance, such as those of Fortuny himself and of Albert Goupil, Adolphe’s son – emblematic examples of collecting that served the practice of painting. Similar experiences can also be found in Italy, where artist-antiquarians (and sometimes dealers) possessed collections comprising various objects of applied art, including costumes and textiles. One might think, for example, of the vast collection of Attilio Simonetti in Rome or that of Giuseppe Bertini, Bianchi’s teacher at the Brera Academy in Milan. Similarly, Eleuterio Pagliano’s collection of antiquities, housed in his studio in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, comprised antique furniture, textile artefacts (tapestries, fabrics, costumes) and musical instruments – all objects that subsequently appear in his paintings. Given how frequently they are depicted, it is reasonable to assume that Pagliano owned a green andrienne (or robe à la française), the one worn by the model in the paintings Estate di San Martino, Nel mio studio and Lezione di Geografia. Another 18th-century women’s gown in lighter shades – perhaps another example from her collection – appears in at least two paintings; it is depicted in the work known only through the prints Un inventario / La rivista dell’eredità and in one of the two Giocatrici di volano (whereas the opponent is dressed in the usual green andrienne). It is well known that other painters from the Milanese circle – including Eliseo Sala, Gerolamo Induno and Sebastiano De Albertis – also kept wardrobes of antique costumes in their studios, using them both as tools of the trade and, at the same time, as symbols of cultural prestige. The studio thus became a hybrid space, part artist’s studio, part private museum and part venue for social representation. Many artists, foremost among them Pagliano, developed their taste for antiquities partly thanks to their close ties with leading figures in the textile industry, such as the Mylius family and Francesco Ponti. Visiting their residences, which were effectively house-museums, provided the artists of the time with a fundamental visual repertoire.