Music lesson - G. Ghedina (1825-1896)

Provenance : Château de Prépinson, Sologne

Important painting representing a music lesson, composed of a group of three elegantly dressed ladies, listening to a musician playing the lute and accompanied on vocals by a man hold a musical score in hand.

The artist’s genre scenes are distinguished by the softness of the eyes, the romanticism of the attitudes and the harmony of the tones used.

Biography :
Born in Cortina d’Ampezzo on March 1st, 1825, Giuseppe Ghedina started studying in 1838 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Pupil of Ludovico Lipparini, Michelangelo Grigoletti and Francesco Lazzari, he acquired a know-how for portraits. He settled in Rome then returned to Venice in 1852 and successfully followed the aesthetics course of the Academy. The same year, he won the gold medal in the competition with the painting Andrea Contarini forced to accept the Duchy of Venice (Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Depositi). In 1853, Ghedina returned to Cortina d’Ampezzo and received an order to make frescoes depicting the Virgin between the saints Rocco and Sebastiano and the Sermon of the Baptist in the parish church of Ss. Filippo and Giacomo. He subsequently carried out numerous commissions for churches and cathedrals, and also worked for individuals such as in Venice, in the palace of the Counts of Papadopoli.
In 1880, in Pieve di Cadore, he participated in the inauguration of the Monument to Titian, whose drawing of the pedestal he had sketched. Between 1880 and 1883, while continuing to work, he assumed the technical and administrative direction of the Cortina School of Art.
Between 1895 and 1896, he created his last work, the Virgin among the souls of purgatory placed at the entrance of the church of the Blessed Virgin della Salute in Cadin, outside the center of Cortina. He died in Cortina d’Ampezzo on May 12th, 1896.