Primo Conti’s Justice of Heaven and Earth: Notes between Art and Law

Abstract

Among the paintings that decorate the spaces of the Court of Milan, there is a large, hitherto little-studied work from 1939 by the Tuscan painter Primo Conti: Justice of Heaven and Earth, which forms the backdrop to a courtroom. The singularity of the painting is constituted by the presence of numerous characters that symbolize and personify the history of legislation, such as Moses, Solon, Justinian, or Napoleon: the contemporaneity is represented by the presence of Benito Mussolini, symbolizing the process of codification that would end with the civil code of 1942. It was precisely the presence of the duke that triggered heated controversy during the fascist period, culminating in the censorship of the character depicted, which recently re-emerged after the painting’s restoration.