Florentine painter Giovanni Mochi between Italy and Chile (19th century). "An intelligent artist and a good man"

Abstract

The goal of this article is to contribute to the analysis, discussion and systematization of the Italian-Chilean nineteenth-century artistic relations, offering new information about the artistic career of Giovanni Mochi, Florentine painter whose activity is documented in Italy, France, and Chile during the 19th century. Specifically, through a historical contextualization of the years of his arrival in Chile (1876), we will focus on the analysis of two thesis: the first one will inform about Mochi's pictorial production in Florence, Rome and Paris; the second one revolves around the managerial activities developed in Chile. For this purpose, we processed information coming from documents of the Chilean Ministerio de Instrucción Pública, journalistic sources from Italy and Santiago, catalogues from exhibitions and shows celebrated in the three mentioned countries since 1851, first year of Mochi's activity as a painter.