Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni

Francesco Hayez painted Portrait of Alessandro Manzoni around 1841, a definitive likeness of the greatest Italian writer of the nineteenth century — the author of I Promessi Sposi (1827), the novel that established the form and language of modern Italian literature. Hayez and Manzoni both inhabited the same Milanese intellectual world and shared the Risorgimento commitment to Italian cultural and political independence. The portrait captures Manzoni in his late fifties with the psychological concentration and quiet dignity appropriate to a man whose literary achievement had given the emerging Italian nation one of its founding cultural texts. Verdi mourned over Manzoni's body and set his Requiem in his memory.

Hayez renders Manzoni with dignified restraint and careful attention to the writer's distinctive features. The dark palette and the simple composition focus attention on the intellectual gravity of the sitter, creating a portrait worthy of Italy's most revered literary figure.