Federico Moja

After attending the Brera Academy, Federico Moja specialized in perspective painting under the guidance of Giovanni Migliara, from whom he acquired the ability to elevate the genre of urban views of everyday life into timeless architectural records. The striking cropping of the present composition and emphasis on perspective blend his learnings from his teacher with his own aesthetic characterised by the dramatic juxtaposition of light and colour.

Bernedetto Bermani writes 'The school created by Migliara has in Moja one of those followers who have the power to detach themselves from the cold imitation of the great masters, to create their own style, daring, fertile, rich in effects and originality and which reveals an industrious imagination, which, respecting the laws of art, knows how to find unexpected implications. I will not tell you that Moja is perfect in design, exact in reproducing the most minute peculiarities of a building and of a monument... What I admire most in Moja is the splendor of the effects that he knows how to draw from art, whose boundaries appear so limited. The dazzling richness in the play of light, the comic or elegant or profound inspirations that reveal themselves from his sketches, make him an artist apart, since he was able to find an abundant source of ideas...' (Bernedetto Bermani in Album, Esposizione di belle arti in Milano, 1842, p. 78).