The work, which until now had been entrusted to the Andrea Beltrami Community in Turin, enriches the exhibition and joins the permanent collection of the house museum on indefinite loan, offering visitors the opportunity to admire a work of great historical and artistic significance, testimony to the cultural and devotional heritage linked to Valdocco.
Since 2020, the Don Bosco House Museum has been preserving and exhibiting other original works by Lorenzo Kirchmayr in oil on canvas, including portraits of Dominic Savio and Augustus Czartoryski. Recent research suggests that these paintings were originally displayed in the old sacristy of the Basilica of Mary Help of Christians, where they were part of a larger collection of paintings.
Lorenzo Kirchmayr attended the Accademia Albertina at the age of fifteen, under the guidance of masters such as Andrea Gastaldi (1826-1889) and Pier Celestino Gilardi (1837-1905). He established himself as a portrait artist and also devoted himself to painting sacred subjects, developing a personal style that combined Italian tradition with the European artistic influences of the time. His work is distinguished by its careful use of colour and light and attention to detail. Also noteworthy are his ecclesiastical and secular portraits based on photographs, with particular attention to the rendering of the subject's physical features, as was customary according to the canons of late Romantic portraiture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The arrival and exhibition of Andrea Beltrami's painting represent an important opportunity to value Salesian heritage, confirming the institution's commitment to the conservation, enjoyment, research and promotion of the artistic and cultural history linked to the Salesian Congregation.
Dr Ana Martín García, Ph.D.
