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Pietro Annigoni Pietro
Annigoni, the Italian artist who died in Florence aged 78, will be remembered in
this country for his two portraits of the Queen. The
first, shown at the Royal Academy in 1959, was an immensely popular success, and
hailed as a symbol of the Elizabethan Age.
It was a very romantic portrait, full of sparkle and confidence with just
a hint of melancholy at the loneliness of being Queen. The
second drew even bigger crowds when it was shown at the National Portrait
Gallery in 1970; the queues went round Trafalgar Square.
But it was not so well liked by the public.
It was thought too severe, and made the Queen look older than she was. Sir
Hugh Leggatt, who commissioned the portrait, said that Annigoni's wife had died
while he was painting it and that some of his own unhappiness may have crept
into it. The Queen liked it,
however, and many critics preferred it to the first. It
still has a place of honour in the Portrait Gallery and posterity will probably
give it the palm for its grandeur and dignity. Annigoni
also painted portraits of the Queen Mother, Prince Philip and Princess Margaret.
But he was hurt by criticism of his second portrait of the Queen, as well
as rebukes from her courtiers for reporting her conversation. He
was also famous for his portraits of Pope John XXIII and American Presidents
John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. When
he returned to Italy, he resumed a career that he had begun before the war,
painting religious frescoes in churches. He
once said "I get a little bored with human vanity.
I honestly prefer these old saints of mine." From
1968 to 1975 he covered the interior of an obscure church near Florence with
scenes from the life of Christ, perilously balanced like Michaelangelo in the
Sistine Chapel on some scaffolding, and more than once falling off. He
then turned to the rebuilt monastery of Monte Cassino and decorated it with
frescoes of the life of St Benedict, which he finished in 1981. He
is survived by his second wife, Rosello Segreto, more than 30 years his junior. |