LUISA SORMANI
ANDREANI VERRI

I met Luisa Sormani Andreani Verri in the early 1990s. I recall the generous welcome that she extended to me in her lovely home in Lurago d’Erba, where I had been invited to study a number of works of art belonging to the Verri family. I still have a postcard from Donna Luisa, to whom I had sent the results of my research.

She used to call me “a very likeable sledgehammer”, an image of which I am extremely fond. I had been hounding her for a long time, forcing her to open up her home even during the winter months so that I could complete my task.

That metaphor, which was spot on, was something of an oxymoron because it is actually very hard for a large sledgehammer to be likeable. It was more reminiscent of the years when Milan was the industrial capital in which Luisa Sormani had grown up.

Her sharp irony was a legacy of the biting style of the Academy of Fists chaired by her ancestor Pietro Verri, whose photograph she would have kept permanently on her bedside table had it been possible to do so. A grand lady, she was always amenable to requests from institutions and scholars alike, a quality she has clearly handed down to her children and grandchildren in view of their generous donation to Brera.