Sketch By Lodovico Pogliaghi For The Set Design Of The Opera “nerone”

Preliminary sketch by Lodovico Pogliaghi for the stage design of Arrigo Boito’s opera “Nerone,” staged in 1924 at La Scala in Milan. Pogliaghi, a renowned sculptor and decorator, depicts one of the Dioscuri, Castor, who was to serve as the backdrop for the scene in the third act. Pogliaghi embodied a rigorous academic language and a practice grounded in the direct study of works of classical antiquity. A stranger to the avant-garde movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he considered himself ideally a Renaissance artist "born in another century." His work invites reflection on the value of historical memory, highlighting how the ancient can still dialogue with the present and stimulate new interpretations. This drawing is part of the set design for Arrigo Boito's opera Nerone. It is a tragedy in four acts, first performed in 1924 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and subsequently revived at the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome (1944–1945) and at the Baths of Caracalla (1950). The development of Nerone was a long and complex process, on which Boito worked for approximately forty years, surrounding himself with a team of highly specialized collaborators. In this context, Pogliaghi's figure was crucial to the philological reconstruction of Roman antiquities.
For the stage design, Ludovico Pogliaghi created sets and costumes both in pencil and charcoal and in oil paintings. The overall corpus included 163 figurines, 118 of which were oil paintings, as well as 21 props depicting musical instruments, jewelry, weapons, and footwear. These preparatory sketches were conceived as 1:10 scale models, intended for the creation of papier-mâché plastic elements to be placed in the theatrical sets, which were subsequently reused in various editions of the show.