Giuseppe Amisani
Italian, 1881-1941
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Giuseppe Amisani was an Italian portrait painter of the Belle Époque.
Amisani was born on 7 December 1881 in Piazza Mercato (now Piazza Giuseppe Amisani) in the comune of Mede di Lomellina, near Pavia in Lombardy, northern Italy. He studied at the technical institute of Pavia, where he failed the technical drawing course; he then studied at the Accademia di Brera in Milan under Cesare Tallone and Vespasiano Bignami. He won the Mylius prize of the Academy for his painting l'Eroe ("the hero") in 1908, and in 1911 or 1912 won the Fumagalli prize for figure-painting with his portrait of Lyda Borelli. From then on he concentrated almost exclusively on portrait-painting; his landscapes of the Italian Alps, of Rhodes and of Tunisia also attracted interest.
Amisani was internationally famous in his time. He spent several years in Argentina and Brazil, and travelled also to England, France, North Africa and to the United States.
He died in Portofino on 8 September 1941.
