Pietro Annigoni

The book is the catalog of the exhibition held in Florence from October 15 th to January 6 th, 2013. It reproduces a mostly unpublished selection of about 150 portraits from the Fund Annigoni (Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze), from the Guelpa Foundation and from other public and private collections. The volume shows us the painter through his self-portraits and the various subjects he chose: professional artists, everyday life figures, landscapes and villas, saints, relatives, friends and even famous people. In fact, Pietro Annigoni rose to worldwide fame after realizing the portrait of Queen Elizabeth of England in 1954; from that year on, many famous personalities from all over the world began asking him to be immortalized. Since 1949, the Florentine painter spent long periods working in the UK, realizing the portraits of the Queen Mother, of the Duke of Edinburgh and of Princess Margaret, all acclaimed by public and critics. The catalog also contains many curiosities never seen before, including one of the sketches that the artist made for the study of the portrait of Pope John XXIII commissioned in 1962 by the magazine «Times», and a sketch for the portrait of President Lyndon Johnson, which appeared on the cover of the same magazine in April 1968. Texts by Sabrina Baldanza, Emanuele Barletti, Paola Caleri, Giuseppe Cardillo, Arabella Cifani, Thyge Christian Føns, Franco Monetti, Michela Morelli, Pekka Tarkka, Emanuela Torriani.