Giovanni Boldini (Ferrara 1842 - Paris 1931)
Oil on canvas, 1886

Painted by Boldini at his studio in Place Pigalle, Paris, in March 1886, after several sittings - at which Verdi's wife Giuseppina Strepponi and the conductor Emanuele Muzio were present - this portrait was done shortly before the one in pastels that was completed on 9 April 1886 (now in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Rome).

Verdi was in Paris at the time, working on Otello to a libretto by Arrigo Boito. When the opera was first performed at La Scala in Milan, on 5 February 1887, Boldini himself was present.

In 1893, after Verdi's great success with Falstaff, the painter donated the portrait to the Master, who had it displayed in his luxurious apartment at Palazzo Doria in Genoa.

Carlo Stragliati (Milan 1868 - 1925)
Oil on canvas, 1901

Stragliati was a sensitive, careful portrait artist who had done paintings of various opera personalities (the tenors De Marchi, Garbin, and Borgatti, for instance), and his fine qualities are also to be seen in this work, done probably on the spot at the Hà´tel de Milan on 27 January 1901, the day of Verdi's death (he had had a paralytic stroke on 21 January).

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