DUGONI, Antonio - b. 1827 Cividale, d. 1874 Friuli

Italian painter, born in a poor family. He began his studies in 1841 in Udine, then he attended for four years the Academy in Venice where he was a pupil of Ludovico Lipparini, Michelangelo Grigoletti (1801-1870) and Odorico Politi (1785-1846).

In Venice he was the restorer of the collections of the Duchess of Berry. In his David (1847, Museum of Modern Art, Ca’Pesaro, Venice) classicism and academism blended, while in the Our Lady of Sorrows (1847-48 Church of San Pietro in Volti, Cividale) the influence of Grigoletti is evident, though without the immediacy and spontaneity of his teacher. In his later religious works Dugoni followed the tradition of early Tuscan Mannerists.

Though he was conventional and academic in religious paintings, he became a skilled portraitist executing numerous successful portraits for bourgeois clients.

Dugoni died at the age of 47, a victim of alcohol and madness. During the First World War many of his works were destroyed in Cividale.

Portrait of Vittorio Emanuele II

After being named King of Italy in 1861, Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy continued his efforts to reunite the entire peninsula under his national leadership. He achieved a major step toward this goal by incorporating the Veneto region in 1866, the year this official portrait was painted. It shows the bluff, but good-natured king with his characteristic, impressive moustache in full military uniform, standing next to a table with the map of the Italian boot. Behind him in the corner are the Italian tricolour and a tag with the name of the city of Trieste, which had just been joined to the young kingdom.