A prominent statesman and powerful right-hand man of Napoleon in Milan, Giovanni Battista Sommariva was the foremost patron and collector of the early nineteenth century between Italy and France, second only to the Emperor and his family. Seizing the opportunities of an age marked by rapid and radical transformation, by 1802—when his brief yet dazzling career at the highest levels of the Napoleonic administration came to an end—he had already amassed an immense fortune, which he skillfully employed to reinvent his image and establish himself as a shining example of modern patronage. Sommariva’s renown radiated from his Parisian residence, where Antonio Canova’s celebrated Magdalene stood out among masterpieces by Jacques-Louis David, Anne-Louis Girodet, Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, François Gérard, Angelica Kauffmann, and Andrea Appiani. Equally great, however, was the fame he owed to the refurbishment and display of one of the most celebrated ville di delizia, the villa he acquired from the Marquis Clerici at Tremezzo—now Villa Carlotta—which became his beloved retreat. With pride, he transformed it into a kind of sanctuary dedicated to sculpture, housing works by his adored Canova and exalting the glory of Bertel Thorvaldsen through the “marvelous bas-relief” depicting The Entry of Alexander the Great into Babylon, the artist’s supreme masterpiece. In painting, while he embraced the neoclassical ideality of Giuseppe Bossi and Jean-Baptiste Wicar, he also set against it the passion embodied in The Last Kiss of Juliet to Romeo, a moving masterpiece that projected the Tremezzo gallery into the Romantic imagination, making it a destination for travelers from all over Europe.