Anna was a beautiful and lively girl, she had the grace and spontaneity of youth. She served as a waitress at the Maroni bar and with her presence she refined the place. It was 1942, in the midst of the world war, and the Maroni bar was the place which, a stone’s throw from the church of the Assunta, represented the meeting point of the Rivani’s beautiful bourgeoisie, intellectuals and artists. Among these was Luigi Pizzini, a painter renowned for his artistic career, which, even far from Riva, had led him to conquer the national spotlight. Among the subjects Pizzini loved there were also portraits. Anna’s fresh beauty struck him. He thus asked her to pose for a portrait that she painted, as mentioned, back in 1942.
Time passes. In 1979, in memory of the painter who had died two years ago, the Amici dell’Arte Group proposed an exhibition dedicated to him in Rocca. One of the strong pieces, so much so that it was used for the cover of the catalog and for the posters, was the “Portrait”. It is (was?) an oil painting, measuring 50 cm by 54 cm, staring at the beautiful face of Anna Bortolameotti. In the years following that distant 1942 Anna, married Vaccari, would operate as the owner of the “Due Mulini” pizzeria in Torbole.
On the occasion of the 1979 exhibition, one morning the two custodians of the Rocca, Walter Serafini and Marco Grottolo, discovered that two doors had been forced open and that the canvas deposited there waiting to be exhibited in the adjacent auditorium had “disappeared” from their office. . The thieves, in addition to the canvas, had stolen a typewriter and 65 thousand lire. The frame of the painting with the cardboard holding the missing canvas was then found outside the fortress. In addition to its monetary value, the painting had a sentimental value. It had in fact been donated by Pizzini himself to the Museum and was therefore a tribute to the city. The then mayor Mario Matteotti, a house painter in Rocca, stated: “It was a valuable painting. The girl portrayed was a typically Alto Garda beauty with that certain air of serenity and at the same time sadness”. The investigators’ hypothesis was that the theft was committed by someone who knew the location of the Museum’s premises. Perhaps it was a theft on commission given that it was not an easy task to sell such a well-known painting by Pizzini.
A leap in time brings us to the present day. A few months ago, a valuable anthological exhibition of Pizzini’s works was set up by the Mag, Museo Altro Garda. As Franco Albino, artist and former President of the Amici dell’Arte Group, pointed out at the time, the theft of such a significant work was a precedent to be kept in mind in some way as part of the history of the painter’s relationship with the city of Riva. The fact is, however, that it was not possible to recall this artistic and civil relationship in the forced absence of the portrait of the young woman. What happened to the portrait? On which wall of some apartment does the beautiful Anna live her eternal youth?
Vittorio Colombo
