PREDA, AMBROGIO Melide on the Lago di Lugano. Oil... Lot 40

PREDA, AMBROGIO Melide on the Lago di Lugano. Oil on canvas, sig. u. dat. (18)79(?) u.r., 60x114 cm Ambrogio Preda studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan from 1853-1858 and directed his artistic focus to landscape painting. In 1859-1862 he participated in the Italian wars of unification together with his uncle, the painter Angelo Trezzini. After his desertion, he lived in Geneva from 1864-1866 and then in Davesco near Lugano. In the 1870s he took part in several exhibitions in Milan and Turin and was a regular exhibitor at the regular exhibitions of the Swiss Art Association. Ambrogio Preda became known mainly as a painter of landscapes and towns of Ticino and Lombardy. In the present painting Ambrogio Preda captured the view from Lake Lugano to the southern part of the small village of Melide. In the background, Monte San Salvatore rises on the left and Monte Brè on the right. On the promontory in the foreground, one can recognize, among other things, the tower of the parish church of Santi Quirico e Giulitta, the Santo Spirito hospital, the former Villa Galli ("La Romantica") and another splendid villa with light facades, no longer preserved, which must have once stood at about the height of the Hotel Riviera, built in 1910. On the right edge of the picture, the lake dam between Melide and Bissone, built in 1848, is also reproduced. http://www.dobiaschofsky.com/d106--10040.html