“Alone and without means . . . misery on all fronts . . . I saw hunger before my eyes . . . My master paid me not a penny. I worked to learn and for the glory. I lived more on poetry than on bread.”
“ . . . the one morning King Vittorio Emanuele II came up onto the scaffolding himself . . . Seeing me, he said hello and asked that I explain the subject of the painting: the master had not yet arrived. The King thanked me and with kind words encouraged me to study.”
In his memoir Tommaso Juglaris details the graphic hardship he experienced after his father returned to Moncalieri, leaving him behind in Turin. “Alone and without means at the age of fifteen,“ Juglaris recalls, “I sought and found out two small attic rooms in a new and not yet finished building… I took there a bed, a table, a few chairs, linens and some nick knacks. But how was I to make do? And what was I to do? At fifteen one knows nothing. Neither did I have a trade. I was incapable of any kind of job. I recommended myself to Providence, but that was not much help. I saw hunger before my eyes.”
According to a Juglaris family legend, the young Tommaso enlisted in the royal navy—something never mentioned by his later memoirs. Indeed, an early photograph of Juglaris in a sailor’s jersey underscores the likelihood of a naval stint, either as an act of desperation or outright rebellion against his father. However, Juglaris may have been underage and thus ineligible for service. Whatever exactly happened, he was not away from Turin for long. Back in the capital city, resuming art studies at the Academia Albertina, he struggled as much as ever.
Seeking out every possible job just to earn enough to survive as a student, Juglaris painted a fresco on a farmhouse wall even though—by his own admission—he did not really know how. Likewise, for a few coins he decorated the covers of school exercise books with the heroes of the Risorgimento, the political and social movement that was forging a unified Italy. In a similar vein, but on assignment with a satirical magazine, he drew caricatures of well-known political figures. All too often going without food to afford necessary art supplies, he fainted from hunger at an evening drawing class. To Juglaris’s immense embarrassment others mistook him as drunk. Amid such struggles, his attendance at the Accademia Albertina suffered. Pushed to his limits, he resolved to take another time-out from the Academy, continuing his education by other means.
Soon thereafter, Juglaris signed on as an apprentice to Paolo Emilio Morgari, a noted fresco painter and member of a distinguished artistic Turinese family. Under Morgari’s tutelage, Juglaris received no more pay than the most spartan room and board. Yet he gained invaluable practical lessons in the realms of decorative art and mural painting.
During his apprenticeship, Juglaris worked with Morgari and another well-known artist, Gaetano Lodi, on frescos for the ceilings and grand staircase of the royal palace in Turin. Alone in a palace corridor one morning, Juglaris had the chance to meet King Victor Emanuele II, who, displaying curiosity about the project underway, actually climbed the scaffolding to inspect the progress up close. “Seeing me,” Juglaris records in his memoirs, “he said hello and asked that I might explain the subject of the painting: the master had not yet arrived. The King thanked me and with kind words encouraged me to study.” For Juglaris it was a deeply stirring, inspirational encounter.
Obviously, as an apprentice, Juglaris had to paint according to schemas laid out by Morgari and others. But his imagination was already spurred by the prospect of a future time when it would be up to him to conceptualize and execute whatever scenes or decorations were commissioned. Equipped with a new-found self-confidence, backed by freshly acquired skills, Juglaris began seeking work beyond Morgari’s atelier in the paid employ of others, as well as venturing out on his own. He not only assisted with decorations and mural work for churches, civic buildings, and private mansions in the immediate vicinity of Turin, but also other northern Italian cities, including Florence, justly fabled for its Renaissance art and architecture.