Emanuele Castelbarco Biography
Emanuele Castelbarco was born in Milan in 1884 and is known not only for his two "great" marriages and his social life, but also for his interest in the arts and for being a true patron of artists and cultural initiatives. He became famous for his first marriage to Ercolina, daughter of the industrialist Carlo Erba, a name still well known in the pharmaceutical sector today. From this marriage three children were born, but many years later the couple divorced due to a legal stratagem. After some time he married Wally, daughter of Arturo Toscanini and queen of the Milanese social scene of the early twentieth century. His first father-in-law, Carlo Erba, owned the Brera pharmacy in Milan in the mid-1800s (still existing at Via dei Fiori Oscuri 13 in Milan). After the union of Lombardy with Piedmont and other regions of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, Erba and other owners presented an urban planning and housing project to the Municipality of Milan. In the following two years, various streets with Risorgimento names were founded, including Via Marsala where Erba established the first chemical and pharmaceutical industry plant. His first project was "Bottega di Poesia", a modern art club that was a combination of an art gallery and a magazine, which unfortunately did not last long. However, this initiative managed to promote prestigious projects, closely linked to the name of Alberto Martini. This small circle of artists received numerous recognitions, including from important art critics of the time, such as Pica, the most authoritative art critic of the early twentieth century, who became secretary of the Venice Biennale in 1920. Emanuele Castelbarco, on the other hand, had great success by organizing the first exhibition of the Russian painter Tamara de Lempicka in the gallery in via Montenapoleone. From the art shop, Lempicka began a long and successful series of exhibitions in Europe and the United States and a very glamorous life as a star. In the winter of 2006-2007 the Municipality of Milan promoted a summary exhibition of the Russian painter at Palazzo Reale, also exhibiting paintings by other painters of the time. Two of these were the portrait that Alberto Martini made of Emanuele Castelbarco and a self-portrait of the count-patron-painter himself: a very ironic self-portrait, in a tailcoat sitting in an armchair, but there is no one in a jacket and tie.
