THE HISTORY OF THE HOUSE
The big house in Novate Milanese was built by the Testori brothers Giacomo and Edoardo, Giovanni’s father. The two brothers had founded F.lli Testori Filtri e Feltri in Saronno and, at the beginning of the century, they moved their business to Novate, where the family factory still operates today.
Between 1908 and 1909 Giacomo built the house where, after the war, he moved in with the brother Edoardo and his wife Lina Paracchi.
From their marriage was born Giovanni in 1923, the third of six brothers.
Around 1933 the expansion of the family pushed Edoardo and Giacomo to expand the villa by building the living room, the veranda and the rooms on the second floor.
Giovanni Testori lived in this house all his days except for a brief interlude in Milan between 1965 and 1970.
The house, now empty, hosted for years many paintings collected by Giovanni Testori.
What amazed the guests of the house was the quantity and the beauty of the paintings that covered its walls. Giovanni Testori was a great collector of ancient and modern paintings as required by his profession as an art critic.
When he was interested in a painter, Giovanni used to buy all his paintings that he could find from small antique dealers, junk dealers or furniture dealers. Some paintings remained in the house for many years and he parted with them only out of economic necessity, but most of them only stayed on the walls for a few years, just the time to be studied.