Napoleone Grady Biography
He was born on 26 September 1860 in Santa Cristina, near Pavia. In 1870 the family was already living in Milan, in Corso Concordia at no. 9, where Grady resided until 1925. He began his literary studies, then moved on to scientific ones in the Pavia clinics; It was his father, a veterinarian, who introduced him to the study of medicine, but Grady soon enrolled at the Brera Academy. Here he was first a student of Francesco Hayez, then of Giuseppe Bertini and Raffaele Casnedi, concluding his studies in 1880. He made his debut in May 1881 at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Milan with a landscape (Abandoned Place), a figure study (Pensa ) and three genre paintings (Beautiful Morning, In the Park and the eighteenth-century scene of Love's Meeting), all of unknown location (the last reproduced in the Exhibition catalogue, plate nos.). In 1885 he presented at the Brera Academy Exhibition the Portrait of Mr. Emilio Pizzi, the Portrait of the late Prince Antonio Barbiano Belgioioso d'Este, a Study from life (locations unknown) and He wanted to die like this (repr. in Lucilio, p. 834), one of his most famous paintings, in which a lady is languidly lying on a bed strewn with flowers.
