Adorable delicate portico with two lithe female caryatids over the ionic capitals...Who built this, and for whom? My trusty "Milano" by the Touring Club Italiano has....More.........let me down. Not a peep about this lovely little building now occupied by the UniCredit bank, at least in my 1998 edition (and I'm loathe to buy another one--they're darn costly, but worth it--until I can be assured that some significant additions and improvements have been made).
By the looks of the portico and considering the work up and down via Manzoni at the time, it surely dates to the 19th century.
The area--though not the building, as is implied by the commemorative plaque--once sported the family home of Prospero Moisè Loria, the founder of Humaniter/Umanitaria, the philanthropist and businessman who founded a school in the late 19th century so his factory workers--fresh from the illiterate countryside--could pull themselves up by their own bootstraps...the school still thrives, and offers a head-spinning array of courses for fun and work-related self-improvement, all at a very reasonable price: http://www.humaniter.org/index.asp.
I snapped this picture with you in mind on the 29th of July, 2011, around 1-1:30 P.M.
For a (free) design for needlepoint and cross-stitch featuring one of the capitals, see my blog on needlepoint, Ars acupicturae stellae - Star's Needlepoint art: http://arsacupicturaestellae.blogspot.com/2012/01/milan-monday-beautiful-capital-from-via.html.
Enjoy!
1 comment:
Very interesting. I haven't done needlepoint in years. Maybe I should start again.
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