This canvas depicts on a full-scale scale two little girls locked out of school: these are Maria and Centa Rossi, the daughters of the lady who was in charge of cleaning the painter's laundry. The work was exhibited at the Brera Academy in 1888 and marks the painter's turn toward a more markedly social interest in his artistic production. Truly remarkable is the psychological rendering: if for the little girl, being locked out of school and being able to skip classes is cause for joy, on the face of her older sister, now facing the first responsibilities of life, one can read the concern for the consequences that tardiness will entail.

Born in Barlassina to the seamstress Luigia Meroni and the Garibaldian and farrier Matteo Longoni, the fourth of twelve children, he lived a childhood complicated by the family's poor economic conditions, which forced Emilio to be sent to Milan to work as a garzone from an early age. Passionate about paintinghe attended nude and anatomy courses at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a student of Giuseppe Bertini and a fellow student of Giovanni Segantini, Giovanni Sottocornola and Ernesto Bazzaro. In 1880 he joined the Milanese Famiglia artistica and made his debut at the exhibitions of the Brera Promotrice with works in an academic style (Interno di una stalla, Studio dal vero and Paesaggio) that met with lukewarm approval; economic precariousness, therefore, forced Longoni to work as a decorator and upholsterer. After to a brief experience at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, where he attended the circle of Antonio Mancini, in 1882 his friend Segantini introduced him to the brothers Alberto and Vittore Grubicy, owners of an important art gallery active in the promotion of young artists; the two colleagues then started a period of artistic collaboration carried out in Brianza, between the lakes of Pusiano and Segrino, where they shared subjects and housing. The association ended badly in 1884. The following year he moved to Villa Ada, on Lake Maggiore, where he frequented the nucleus of scapigliati artists who gravitated to the Verbano area, such as Daniele Ranzoni, Leonardo Bazzaro and Luigi Conconi; in 1886 he returned to Milan and began his portrait work on commissions from aristocrats and bourgeoisie, such as bankers Lazzaro Donati and Giovanni Torelli, collector Giuseppe Treves and industrialist Pietro Curletti. Works with revolutionary content and denouncing social inequity date from this period, such as Piscinina (presented in 1891 at the First Brera Triennale and emphasizing the autobiographical theme of labor in the children of the people), Chiusi fuori scuola and L'oratore dello sciopero, paintings akin to the Divisionist technique established (and widely contested by critics) at the same Triennale with works by Arnaldo Ferraguti, Giovanni Sottocornola, Filippo Carcano, Segantini, Angelo Morbelli and Gaetano Previati. In 1900 he participated in the Brera Exposition with Sola!, purchased by Queen Margherita, while in 1904 he won a silver medal at the Saint-Louis Universal Exhibition with La voce del ruscello . In 1906 Curletti granted him a life annuity that freed him from financial worries, and, beginning in the 1910s, he abandoned social themes, developing a growing contact with nature and approaching Buddhism; he spent long periods of solitary work in mountain huts and pastures between the Bernina Massif and the Valtellina, where, in close contact with nature and the local inhabitants, he executed many paintings from life.These include Glacier, which in 1906 won the Principe Umberto prize rejected by Longoni, in controversy with academic commissions.After World War I he absented himself from the exhibition scene, limiting his production to commissions; in 1928 he married his partner Fiorenza de Gaspari, a teacher of Valtellina origin whom he had met at the home of the lawyer Majno. He died in his own studio on November 29, 1932, and was buried at Milan's Monumental Cemetery.

Pinacoteca Ambrosiana was established in 1618 by cardinal Federico Borromeo, when he donated his art collection to the Ambrosiana library, which was founded by him as well in 1607. The building was named after the patron saint of Milan, St. Ambrose.

It was the first museum in the world to be open to the public. The history of the Pinacoteca and the library goes hand in hand, as this was also the first library to be open to the public. The book collection includes prestigious volumes, among them Petrarch’s Virgil with illuminated manuscript by Simone Martini and Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus, donated in 1637 by Galeazzo Arconati.

In fact, cardinal’s plan was to display art with its symbology and evocative power to serve Christian values reaffirmed by the Council of Trent (1545-1563), which were threatened by the diffusion of the Protestant reformation.

The academy was added in 1637 and transferred to Brera in 1776. It was supposed to be an artistic school of painting, sculpture and architecture which would allow the students to learn from the great models of the history.

The building was designed by architect Fabio Mangone (1587-1629) and it is located in the city center. The space is expanded over 1500 square meters and divided into twenty-two rooms. The cardinal illustrated the works and the objects himself in his book in Latin, Museum (1625), which still today represents the main nucleus of the Pinacoteca.

Through commissions and purchases Federico Borromeo’s collection grew with the paintings of Lombard and Tuscan schools, among them works by Raphael, Correggio and Bernardino Luini and casts from Leone Leoni’s workshop, arriving to a total of 3000 artworks of which 300 are exhibited.

There are great masterpieces such as the Portrait of a Musician by Leonardo Da Vinci (1480), Madonna del Padiglione by Botticelli (1495), the cartoon for the School of Athens by Raphael (before 1510), the Holy Family with St. Anne and Young St. John by Bernardino Luini (1530) and the Rest on the Flight into Egypt by Jacopo Bassano (1547).

A great part of the collection is dedicated to landscape and to still life, because the Cardinal saw the nature as an important tool raising the human mind into the Divine. For this reason, Federico collected Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit and the miniature paintings by Jan Brueghel and Paul Brill.

After the cardinal’s death the collection was enriched with the donations of the artworks from 15th and 16th centuries, such as the frescoes by Bramantino and Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen’s marble self-portraits. Museo Settala, one of the first museums in Italy, founded by canonical Manfredo Settala (1600-1680), was joined to Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in 1751. The museum is a sort of science history museum with a variety of curiosities of all time.

During the period of growth, the museum required some structural and architectural changes as well, including the expansion of the exhibition halls between 1928 and 1931, which were decorated with 13th century miniature motifs of Ambrosian codes, and between 1932 and 1938 a new series of restorations was implemented under the guidance of Ambrogio Annoni. The renowned readjustment in 1963 was curated by architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni and the museum excursus was concluded with the current reorganization between 1990 and 1997.