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“Eravamo innamorati del vero.”
De Nittis, Toma, Netti, de Nigris, Apulian artists between Naples and Paris
Isabella Valente
The reasons for an exhibition
The wealth of exhibition events in the last years has reconfirmed the never-ending interest in nineteenth-century visual art, both by scholars and collectors. An interest that has never waned because, in the face of the anathema thrown by Roberto Longhi on nineteenth-century Italian painting, inexorably crushed under the weight of French Impressionism by twentieth-century critics, the exhibitions have resumed their course since the end of the 1980s, intensifying in the first twenty years of the 21st century, and demonstrating, with ever greater conviction, that it was anything but academic or ‘dusty’ painting. Since autumn 2023, the exhibitions that have followed one another have been many and contiguous. Museo dell’Ottocento Fondazione Di Persio-Pallotta in Pescara began with the exhibition dedicated to Antonio Mancini and Vincenzo Gemito, opened on 14 October .[1]
A few days after the inauguration, on November 4th, in Novara at Castello Visconteo Sforzesco Boldini, De Nittis et les italiens de Paris.[2] In the first quarter of 2024, two important exhibitions were inaugurated: the monographic De Nittis, pittore della vita moderna at Palazzo Reale in Milan [3]and the philosophical journey Napoli Ottocento. Dal sublime alla materia at Scuderie del Quirinale, [4] while in June Paris celebrated the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Impressionism at Musée d’Orsay with Paris 1874. Inventer l’ impressionnisme.[5] We must not forget the large exhibition dedicated to De Nittis overseas, at Phillips Collection in Washington between 2022 and 2023. [6]
The year 2025 also promises to be a harbinger of events, among those already open and those in preparation. All these exhibitions have highlighted a common focal point: the extraordinary importance of the nineteenth-century Neapolitan artistic school and the great fame it had in its time.
Today’s exhibition in Lecce fits into this long itinerary of events, strongly desired by Claudia Branca, director of the Must-Historical Museum of Lecce City.
The project, conceived by the writer, is dedicated to four artists from Apulia who lived through the most interesting years of the 19th century. The most famous Giuseppe De Nittis, born in Barletta in 1846, the youngest of the four, is followed by Gioacchino Toma, born in Galatina in 1836, Francesco Netti from Santeramo in Colle, where he was born in 1832, and Giuseppe de Nigris from Foggia, also born in 1832. Four artists trained in Naples and looked beyond Italy, mainly towards Paris, the capital of the arts and an increasingly international market. Four personalities who fully succeeded in embodying the myth of modernity also in the personal affirmation of their identity as artists. Four different personalities who operated in the climate of artistic reform, united in a single vision, that of a painting directed towards truth and reality.
The ideas of Filippo Palizzi and Domenico Morelli were the driving force behind the change in 19th-century Italian art, with which other paths, orientations and different, intersected directions.
With this exhibition we wanted to affirm the extraordinary modernity of the figurative culture of these Apulian artists and their international horizon. But above all we wanted to turn the spotlight back on at least two of them. If, in fact, the name of De Nittis is more than celebrated, and that of Francesco Netti has recently been object of observation, [7]we now want to renew the attention on Gioacchino Toma, whose last personal exhibition dates back to 1995, [8]and on Giuseppe de Nigris, who, instead, is the subject of absolute novelty, although some of his works have passed through collective exhibitions of transversal or thematic slant and in sporadic market passages promoted by some auction houses.
Our four painters had moved to Naples in search of regular studies; all had attended the Real Istituto di Belle Arti, and all had welcomed the reform of veristic and realist painting according to the orientations of Palizzi and Morelli. But they were also united by their political faith, living that climate of unity that in Naples also profoundly marked the cultural and social change. With the exception of the youngest De Nittis, the other three participated, each in his own way, in the struggles that finally led to the Unification of the Country.
The greatness of the Neapolitan school in painting and sculpture of the nineteenth century is to be traced, therefore, in that legion of artists coming from the former provinces of the Two Sicilies Kingdom in an incessant transfer that is recorded throughout the century, and in the relationships woven with Paris, with institutions, merchants and collectors, which motivated a continuous coming and going between Naples and the French capital; with London and, finally, with other metropolises especially of Central Europe. Starting from the early nineteenth century, Apulia was a land prodigal of painters and sculptors, who, having arrived in Naples, constituted a good part of the formative and reformative artistic fabric of this city.[9]
This volume, in addition to illustrating the works chosen to represent the four Apulian artists on display, provides an interesting study dedicated by Massimo Guastella to the painter Giuseppe Forcignanò from Gallipoli and the sculptor Francesco Giambaldi from Lecce, as a starting point for future reflections not only on the two artists, who moved their fate to Paris, but also on all those personalities who for various reasons, rightly or wrongly, are still in the shadows, sacrificed by modern studies.
The observation of the ‘true’ as a foundation for common research
«In compagnia del Rossano» wrote the Abruzzese painter Gennaro Della Monica (1836-1917), recalling a happy period shared at the foot of Vesuvius with some companions from the School of Resina, «I spent happy days in the Neapolitan countryside». «We were in love with the truth and it was enough for us to see a beautiful effect of light, a beautiful cloud, a beautiful twilight to be happy. Not hope or desire for honors, not for riches; our only hope was to capture the fleeting beauty of the truth and fix it on the canvas». [10]
These are the basic elements of the research of the painters of the Neapolitan school, which, in the aftermath of the Unification, had already experienced at least two strong changes in the direction of plein air and real life: the reform of landscape painting, of Pitloo, Gigante and of what was already called School of Posillipo in its time, and the realism of Palizzi. Gioacchino Toma also descends from Filippo’s painting.
We know about Toma’s tragic childhood events and the consequences of his political commitment, [11]
events that influenced his pictorial choices. Among the greatest artists of the Italian nineteenth century, Toma was a completely original author of an intimate realism, managing to condense a moment of intimate and delicate truth into the space of a fragment of daily life, capable of expressing a feeling, an idea, a thought, up to an entire ideology, without giving judgments or evaluations of any kind. Painting was for him a serious commitment from every point of view, outside schemes and fashions. Ezechiele Guardascione , painter and art critic, understood and loved him deeply. That «humble painter – writes Guardascione – who knew how to express without megalomania, without a chatty coloristic flow, without gladiatorial settings, without inflating, his true and powerful intimacy». [12]«Why Toma loved gray», Guardascione titles the first part of his examination of the painter’s activity, and specifies that: «Toma did not portray the sun. He loved Naples through the life of the humble and remained gray and simple in expression».[13] He was not interested in the festivals, the popular songs, the beauty of a city always full of pleasure, not «the alleys blazing with sun, the crowd, Piedigrottesque boats, the historical subjects, in short all the fashionable painting, he left it to others. He drew the essence from his life and the exteriority of color did not seduce him. He was a poet who melted, wrapped himself, felt the cold, the pain, the suffering of his particular environment; and he suffered these things like an illness and wanted to render them in every feature of his figuration, like a sign, like a furrow».[14]
Toma scrutinized the life around him with respect. La messa in casa, Le due madri, La guardia alla ruota dei trovatelli, La confessione in sagrestia are tranches de vie noted with careful observation, psychological penetration and, at times, with veiled complicity. Nor did he ever change, Guardascione writes again. «He was too much himself to let himself be taken by a color that was not his own: in gray he found himself . He understood the infinite shades, subjected them to his torment and made them the character of everything.»[15]
Certainly his peculiar feature was the extraordinary use of a single chromatic scale tending towards monochrome, that grey that Guardascione rightly considered as the true Toma ‘colour’ : «in Toma, grey was colour and not poverty, as many wanted to make people believe; it was colour precisely because it had all the beauties, all the meanings and all the sensibilities of the objects expressed; it was colour, because it knew how to render what it rendered». [16]Although critics did not always agree, in a world of colours and intense sparkle, which was the great novelty of Morelli and Morellians paintings – especially in the aftermath of the Catalan Mariano Fortuny’s stay in Portici in 1874, and the impact this had on Neapolitan artists –, Toma’s dull colour was an absolute novelty. In public exhibitions, the painter from Galatina always seemed out of context, and critics often attacked him for this. Through the use of browns, earths and ochres, through the masterful use of grey glazes, which soften the luminous tone, Toma managed to render on canvas the most difficult thing for any painter to achieve, the psychological truth of a scene observed from life. According to Morelli, this also happened when it came to the historical topic: Toma, in fact, managed to penetrate the intimacy of the invented subject recovered from history, as in Clemente VII nasconde i tesori della Chiesa o in Un rigoroso esame del Sant’Uffizio. The sensation of what was happening in that painted scene, left in suspension, the feelings of the characters in their diversity, in their simplicity or in their complexity, made Toma’s painting a true painting of states of mind. «Now if the gray of the corridors, if the white beds, if the small rooms – wrote Guardascione thinking of works like Il viatico dell’orfana (Rome, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art) –, if the soft airs were treated in their true essence, and had the beauty of transparency and opacity, they were works of color, because color, in its sensitivity and fusion of tone, had all the characteristics of finesse and truth for expression». [17]
That «nullification of colors», highlighted again by Guardascione in The Guardia alla ruota dei trovatelli, becomes the material consistency of the painting, capable of explaining by itself the meaning of the scene represented. And when the critic came to applaud the Confessione in Sagrestia, he noted how the two priests were «two living beings that are never forgotten, because the effect, the light of the church, the painted wood of the old choir were not enclosed in a more or less desired range, or cut or adjusted as in a frame. Here all that disappears. The sensation breaks through the canvas, enters the air of the old bituminous sacristy, as if into the air itself, as if into nature itself».[18]The scene, forced into a corner, forced one to watch and follow what was happening, to ask oneself questions about what those characters were saying to each other, to decode their feelings from their postures, their glances, their actions, a type of compositional-semantic construction that Toma had already experimented with in Clemente VII , all played out in the darkness of the environment.[19]
The pictorial layout, built through chiaroscuro superimpositions attentive to the study of bituminous colors, is found in most of Toma’s works up to the later ones. [20] Through this chromatic modality, set on a single background color from which tones and halftones descend, Toma managed to recreate the most intimate and collected atmospheres, capable of contributing to the narration. The rectangular format of the canvas also supported the unfolding of the story. Almost in a small procession the figures unfold in the sad scene of Il viatico dell’orfana, or in the more joyful one of L’onomastico della maestra of 1879 in Galleria dell’Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples. To this latter must be added the version from Giuseppe Guerriero collection in Rome ( fig. 1 ), a canvas that had not been seen since the 1954 retrospective. [21] Coming from Fiano collection, passed through Paolo Stramezzi and finally arrived in the ownership of Luigi Prada at the time of the exhibition, [22] the canvas has a softer ductus than the version from the Neapolitan Academy, characterised, as Emilio Cecchi recalls, by «a chromatic sweetness and a softness of impasto that, later, Toma replaced with a more disdainful style». [23]
The painting was sent to the “three centuries” exhibition organised in Naples in 1934, to the Italian 19th century exhibition in Lugano and to the exhibition of contemporary Italian art in Cairo in 1949.[24]
It then appeared at the exhibition of the historical Neapolitan portrait, set up at the Royal Palace in Naples in the autumn of 1954, coming from Luigi Prada collection and, in the same year, to the artist’s retrospective.
That ‘earthy’ effect, which is found in many of his choral scenes, is also found in his self-portraits. Of particular interest, with regard to this last type of painting, is Autoritratto from the private collection of Davide Andriani of Bari ( fig. 2 ), from Lino Pesaro Gallery, [25]which, compared to those in Capodimonte Museum and Uffizi Gallery, presents a younger face, allowing us to date it to the early Seventies.
The clear vision of the first still lifes, executed almost as a formal exercise, clashes with the pictorial elaboration based on the soft chiaroscuro effects, perhaps observing those of Gennaro Guglielmi, whose pupil he had been in the Neapolitan studio. The matrix for this type of composition, which were not negligible in Toma judging from the number of examples that can be documented, were the still lifes of seventeenth-century Naples, by various Recco, Ruoppolo, Forte, Belvedere, towards which, moreover, the pupils of the Real Istituto and other painters, such as Francesco Paolo Palizzi, were directed. The unpublished Natura morta with vegetables, onions, peppers, glass and bottle of wine, published here ( fig. 3 ), [26] shows a different maturity compared to the first ones from the 1950s and 1960s, presenting a softness of touch and a fusion of colours achieved only later, which lead to dating the work within the late 1970s.
Natura morta also interested Giuseppe de Nigris from Foggia, slightly older than Toma. Some of his compositions appear fully aligned with those of Toma , both in the compositional framework and in the linguistic style, as well as in the choice of elements to depict and their arrangement in space. A liberal, strongly inflamed by patriotic ardour, arrested for possession of weapons and subversive propaganda material, the cover of the exhibition La nazione was dedicated to de Nigris a few years ago. [27]
Following his enrolment at the Real Istituto di Belle Arti in December 1849, de Nigris began the artistic career that would lead him to never abandon Naples again, where he obtained constant critical recognition for the extremely high pictorial quality of his works, although he is still little known to scholars today. His stylistic language was the result of the influence determined on him by the artistic and political environment of post-unification Naples, sharing formal style and horizons in the first instance with Filippo Palizzi, Andrea Cefaly , with the painters orbiting around the studio in vico San Mattia, a true artistic hotbed of liberal youth, such as the Calabrian Achille Martelli, Antonio Migliaccio and the Avellino Michele Lenzi, as well as with Toma himself. The Neapolitan artists of this period were particularly skilled in rendering the concreteness of objects and materials, which they extracted from real life and inserted into their compositions. The poetry of small things, one might say, borrowed in the consistency of light and color from the attention paid to the Neapolitan painting of the seventeenth century that they were accustomed to copy during their formative years. «And here another quality of Neapolitan painting is revealed: an exquisite poetry released from the most realistic scenes. This direction, which marked the first moves of the modern Neapolitan school, is due to the impulse of the two greatest masters of the school», Palizzi and Morelli, wrote Luigi Chirtani in 1880.[28]«To Filippo Palizzi belongs the glory of having given the move; in the full predominance of the old schools he alone abandoned the rhetoric of the old practices, the conventions of drawing and color, escaped from the long academic road, jumped the hedges, threw himself into the countryside and studied the beasts, especially the donkey, interpreting their spirit with irresistible eloquence of the brush, while aiming above all to bring painting back to the good maxims of painting from life. After him came Domenico Morelli, one of the most elevated minds that contemporary art in Europe boasts».[29]
The world of small things, of small events of everyday life, but so rich in meaning, central to the universe of literature of the time, was the focus of de Nigris’s painting, which in this sense also understood the patriotic theme. And so the value of liberalism could be professed in a familiar scene such as Le impressioni di un quadro dated 1863 (private collection), [30] with a wounded Garibaldi depicted in the painting painted in the real painting, from which all the pedagogical potential so much discussed in the post-unification years exuded, or in the silent load of death, the outcome of the tragic episode of Mentana, with the bodies of Garibaldi’s killed and ferried in front of a pompous, fat prelate in Les merveilles du chassepot dated 1870 (Naples, Metropolitan City, cat . 46) , a masterpiece of political satire, which was channelled into the anticlerical trend much debated in Naples in the Sixties, which also included the various revolutionary priests of Toma. To understand the unity of this historical and pictorial moment and the stylistic coherence of the works of the different artists, one should look, for example, at the delicate representation of Domenico Romano, a painter from the same circle, very close to Toma and de Nigris, with his sad image I tristi effetti della guerra dated 1869 (Naples, Metropolitan City, fig. 4 ), [31]another fragment of intimate realism that condenses patriotic value, or at another Apulian, Luigi Scorrano (Lecce, 1849 – Urbino, 1924), who arrived in Naples for the same reasons as the others: having enrolled at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in 1869, and having immediately proved to be one of the best students, Scorrano was promoted the following year «to the 4th class of Drawing and Painting from life» , under the toutorage of Mancinelli and Morelli. [32] Like de Nigris, Scorrano also dedicated himself to the poetics of small things, to the world of the humble and of children, preferring the narration of the hearth, like that enchanting scene of domestic intimacy in the painting Un racconto ( fig. 4 ) , dated 1879, or the sunny and folkloristic one of Un battesimo a Cassino of 1881, paintings in which the eye gets lost in enjoying the smallest details (both owned by the Metropolitan City of Naples).
Returning to de Nigris, like all the artists of the Neapolitan school of this period, he also explored different thematic fields, including the neo-Pompeian genre which was heavily explored at the time. Starting from 1869, when he exhibited at the Promotrice the canvas I fanciulli pompejani , which in 1870 would become Piccoli gladiatori pompeiani at Mostra Nazionale di Parma; at Promotrice of 1871 it was the turn of Una pompeiana and in 1879 I Fanciulli pompeiani appeared again . [33]
Very recent is the acquisition of the sketch Ultimo giorno di Pompei ( fig. 5 ), [34]an oil on cardboard measuring 20×38 cm, to be linked to the painting sent to Universal Exhibition in Vienna in 1873. [35] The scene, until now completely unknown, shows a more intimate interpretation of the famous novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton The Last Days of Pompeii of 1834, far from any apocalyptic vision presented by the artists of the time: a Pompeian family, including the servants, prostrate in prayer before the altar of the lares of the house, illuminated by candlelight, in the shadow of the eruptive redness that licks the columns of the internal portico. The sketch, carried out using quick and synthetic stains, also clarifies de Nigris’s modus operandi and his knowledge of the stain.
Toma’s suspended world becomes in de Nigris a complete world, almost a finished and clearly intelligible document of truth. If in Toma everything is cadenced according to a regular metric of pauses and balances, in de Nigris the narration is conducted through an excess of actions and elements that induce to make everything explicit, almost a theatrical stage, for an immediate and unreserved understanding. Even the titles that the artist attributes to his scenes contribute to their meaning. L’ultima risorsa, Un medico in erba, La mano del ladro etc. are images taken from that minor realism that had interested the Palizzian reform in the mid-fifties, appreciated in Milan by the Indunos, in Emilia by Gaetano Chierici and by many others in Italy, that realism that Vittorio Imbriani and contemporary critics liked so much. It is to this realism that we can trace L’ultima messa by de Nigris ( cat . 49) , in two identical versions – proof of the technical virtuosity achieved by the painter – both made in 1877, an example of which can be seen in the old photograph showing the Italian Fine Arts room of the Universal Exhibition in Melbourne where the painting was placed ( fig. 6 ) . To testify to the accuracy of the truth represented – almost as if nothing should be mistaken for an invention of the artist – another old photograph is worth mentioning ( fig. 7 ) – which could also have served as a model for the painting – which immortalises the side portal of the Neapolitan church of San Giovanni a Carbonara, the main subject of the painting: on the wooden doors you can see the nailed cross and the heavy shroud that de Nigris reproduces with philological precision in his work.
The brilliant painting of L’ultima messa, as well as of many other compositions by de Nigris, led some critics to include de Nigris in that group of painters with a “sparkling” manner, such as Campriani, Di Chirico, Santoro, Netti and others, who had «this kaleidoscopic sparkle, this style of painting that makes the paintings seem as if they were mosaics made of precious stones». [36]
Angelo De Gubernatis , who judged him to be «an excellent colourist» and «well-tuned and correct in form», included him among the best watercolourists of the Neapolitan school.[37]
Between Naples and Paris
Although Richard Muther had also included Francesco Netti among the painters with a “sparkling manner”, he actually never was. Netti’s artistic career essentially took place between Naples and Santeramo in Colle, his hometown, with a couple of happy interludes in Paris and a trip to the East. Netti recently returned to the spotlight with the exhibition dedicated to him by the APS “Francesco Netti” of Santeramo in Colle in 2023. [38]Who was Francesco Netti, and what did he represent in the context of Neapolitan and Italian painting in the second half of the nineteenth century, was asked by Salvatore di Giacomo after the artist’s first retrospective in 1895: «I want to imagine him like this: first an ardent follower of the first ideals of the youth of Neapolitan art, chasing the almost severe images that the culture of that time placed before them; then an observer, an impressionist, an interrogator of all forms of pleasant truth; creator, at other times, and amiable poet of his creations, presented with that form, if not complete, elect and lively that his spirit suggested to him. Then […] this man who had known everything, understood everything, experienced everything, had his hair turn white: a less vibrant, less nervous, broader contemplation of life, induced him to represent almost thoughtfully, perhaps painfully, the unknown and misunderstood reality of certain silent and patient sufferings. The fine, sociable, witty artist had a sentimental basis and his last work was a work of piety». [39]Di Giacomo ‘s thoughts , in conclusion, went to his last painting, La messe , left unfinished ( cat . 44 ). A judgment so valid that it was recalled at the beginning by Christine Farese Sperken in her 1996 monograph, who rightly judged it a «true spiritual testament of the artist […] the point of arrival of a research aimed at depicting, far from any rhetoric, life and work in Murgia countryside».[40]
A fine intellectual, Netti’s pictorial work goes hand in hand with his critical and literary commitment. There is no doubt that the paintings of the last period, dedicated to the nature of Apulia and to work in the fields, are of great depth and interest, revealing a new, intimate and personal reflection on a slice of reality, far from the chaotic life of Naples or Paris. The standing reaper quenching his thirst from the large bucket is almost a monument to that rough region, little known to the Italy of his time; however, the painting does not reveal any positions of social or political controversy or anything other than what he sees and portrays as a silent observation. Netti is therefore far from both Teofilo Patini, who had caused controversy with L’Erede presented in Milan in 1881 and with the paintings Vanga e latte and Bestie da soma dated before 1886, which continued the social denunciation, and from Angelo Morbelli, who had finished his masterpiece For 80 Cents! in 1895, therefore almost at the same time as Le messe . The studies of the Apulian peasants at work or captured taking breaks from it ( Riposo in mietitura, cat. 43 ) allow us to bring back into play the works of Millet, which Netti certainly had the opportunity to see up close during his stays in Paris, and the relationship with photography. [41] They are proof of a scrupulous reading of nature and of what happens in relation to it, which also emerges from the sketches that are known, such as the quick and expert impression of Pinacoteca Metropolitana in Bari ( fig. 8 ) . [42] «To describe truthfully» without having direct knowledge of what one is talking about is «a very difficult thing», wrote Netti about the modern novel: «A novel is a true work of art. Art in saying things, art in presenting events, art in describing. Art always». The same thought was valid for painting, and «the more penetrating this study, the more impressive the novel is ». [43] Morelli had initially influenced the way of perceiving the truth. When he found himself describing, from the point of view of the critic, the rooms of the third Promotrice of 1864-1865, his reflection, starting from the pictorial execution and arriving at the consideration of photography, remains something proverbial, if only these two thoughts are clarified: «and even if an artist reproduced the truth like a mirror, the execution would still be something stronger [because], considered as the expression of a feeling applied to a deep meditation on the truth, the thing becomes more serious. […] Painting has no other language than execution. […] Execution is not strictly speaking truth: this concerns the probability of the subject, of the site, of the types, of the disposition of the figures, of the styles, etc. Execution is the impression that truth produces in us, it is the word that man reads in the great book of nature, and which varies according to the artistic temperament of individuals. […] execution is superior to photographic reproduction, and therefore photography, which stuns us with the impassive evidence of its reality, rarely moves us».[44]
His role as an art critic makes him, in a posteriori analysis of nineteenth-century Italian art criticism, one of the most modern thinkers regarding the artistic thing, the exhibition standards, the academic dimension, the gaze to the socio-political context of his time. Even in the examination of Italian art, in that attempt at the history and theory of art published posthumously in 1895, [45]one can note his sharp gaze and his unlimited knowledge of both the past and the present. When he writes, for example, that «exhibitions are not only a training ground , they are also a market », [46]he was consciously delineating the margins of a concrete Italian and European territory, which was completed in collecting, also highlighting its critical issues. In the same text he focuses on museums, another fundamental chapter, museums that Netti shows he knows well. An example of this is his evaluation of the “railway museums”, in which one passed from one century to another as if the rooms were railway stations, a thought that seems to reflect some ideas of modern museology.
Like Netti, who had attended Real Istituto di Belle Arti as a student in 1855, De Nittis also showed intolerance towards the educational system and some of the teachers. Among the most celebrated Italian painters in historiography, writing about De Nittis today is certainly not an easy thing, having to disentangle the great bibliographic mass that has intensified in recent years thanks to a succession of monographic or trans-thematic exhibitions that have seen him as an actor or co-actor, among which the monographic exhibition at Phillips Collection in Washington should be noted.[47]
Today’s exhibition brings together fifteen works, some well-known, others rarely seen, one even unpublished, with which we wanted to represent De Nittis’s career , which was brief but intense, so much so that it left a notable number of paintings and a long trail of fakes (even in his time).
«Dying at 38, when you think you have grabbed fortune by the hair, and when you still feel strong for glory and art is a hard thing», [48]wrote Diego Martelli, “hot off the press”, after the artist’s death on 23 August 1884. However, De Nittis did not live well with the conditions of moving abroad, both in Paris, where he arrived in search of fortune and where he was considered Italian, and in London, where he was considered French, while in Italy his impressionist painting, celebrating a metropolitan modernity that was still unknown, found it difficult to place itself among the various orientations and schools that could be seen at exhibitions. He left Naples with a love for the truth in his eyes, which essentially translated into a love for nature, coming from that happy and ‘pure’ experience that was Scuola di Resina. In Paris he found modern, frenetic, carefree life, the elegant society of an ever-rising bourgeoisie, the refined and fashionable woman, who became the subjects of a precise group of artists, with whom he shared the scene and life: Degas, Manet, Caillebotte and Tissot. He was always aligned with Manet, who was a constant point of reference for him, and with his friend Degas he also shared the origins of Neapolitan artistic culture, which led him to never lose contact with reality, always maintaining a sincere relationship, whereas many others, appreciated by Goupil and the market, had landed in the construction of a mannered painting. In my opinion, De Nittis’ artistic fortune today lies precisely in this peculiarity: the essential and sincere relationship with reality, which made him an exquisitely authentic painter. A relationship that is revived upon his return to Portici at the beginning of the Seventies, when he is taken by “love for the mountains”, Vesuvius, which will make him breathe again in the direction of a sincere relationship between two people with nature. In this return De Nittis had changed his approach, as the «modern disposition» matured in Paris, already noted by Causa, led him to elaborate «a way of making ‘macchia’» that was no longer the stable and essential one of the Tuscans nor the immersive one of Portici, but had become «an abbreviated, rapid, impasto touch, remaining in the dimensions of the ‘study’ or the sketch».[49]
It is more than likely that this renewed sense of nature is responsible for that «extraordinary versatility» in «passing from one theme to another, from one climate to another with such astonishing ease», but above all with the ability to identify «the exact tone», [50]which is found in the works created in Paris on his return and in his stays in London from 1874 onwards.
The only Italian exhibitor at the famous Impressionist exhibition, opened in 1874 at 35 Boulevard des Capucines , De Nittis exhibited five works there, including the Route en Italie , which corresponds to Strada campestre – Lungo l’Ofanto in Barletta Museum ( fig. 9 ), [51]one of the most beautiful and evocative paintings of the transition period between the initial view of reality of Neapolitan origin and the new dimension found in France by observing the results of Barbizon School.
Degas had pushed him to exhibit, Degas who was always his friend. And when he died suddenly, shortly after Degas wrote to Léontine: «every day I think of him […] near my room here is the engraving of his painting Che freddo! and every day I stand in front of it for a long time. […] He was happy and understood by the world. But not for a long time». [52]
Even for Degas, with the passing of his friend, a world made of joy and hilarity ended.
[1] Antonio Mancini Vincenzo Gemito 2023 .
[2] Boldini De Nittis 2023.
[3] De Nittis 2024.
[4] Napoli Ottocento 2024.
[5] Paris 2024.
[6] An Italian Impressionist 2022.
[7] Francesco Netti 2023.
[8]Set up in Spoleto, Naples and Lecce (Gioacchino Toma 1995); in more recent times, Toma can be found in the exhibition Artisti salentini dell’Otto e Novecento 2007.
[9]See, among the studies on the 19th century Neapolitan school, which have contemplated major and minor Apulian artists, at least Greco, Picone Petrusa , Valente 1993, and, among the specific ones, Farese Sperken 2015.
[10] Della Monica 1902, pp. 22-23.
[11]Compared to the arrest of 1857, already reported by Bojano 2017, p. 14, thanks to the reading of some unpublished documents, traced by the writer, it seems that Toma was still under surveillance by the Bourbon police in 1859 (ASNa , Ministry of Police, Cabinet Archive, n. 1516).
[12] Guardascione 1924, pp. 14-15.
[13]Ibid., p. 17.
[14] Ibidem .
[15]Ibid., pp. 17-18.
[16]Ibid., p. 19.
[17] Ibidem .
[18]Ibid., pp. 117-118.
[19]Ill. in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 49 n. 7.
[20]Only between 1882 and 1884 Toma attempted to open up his palette to greater luminosity and experiment with broken brushstrokes, evidently in light of the innovations arriving from France or in consideration of the results of Scuola di Resina, although in fact already concluded. This series of works includes various gardens in the sun, such as Villa Garzoni in San Giovanni a Teduccio from 1884 in Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, the sunny avenue in the view of San Giovanni a Teduccio from a private collection ( Gioacchino Toma 1995, pag. 89 n. 49) and the canvas in Capodimonte Museum I Funari di Torre del Greco from 1882.
[21] Gioacchino Toma 1954b, p. 34 n. 26, plate 36.
[22]On the back there is still the ancient cartouche with which the painting travelled to the exhibition.
[23]Cecchi 1933, p. 718.
[24] From the labels on the back of the frame, the work on all three occasions was owned by Paolo Stramezzi of Crema.
[25]On the edge of the frame, the old cartouche of Milanese Gallery is still present. The painting, published in La raccolta Fiano 1933, is also illustrated in Bojano 2027, p. 92.
[26]The painting, in Luigi Arganese di Bucciano collection, is an oil on canvas measuring 39.5 x 52 cm, signed GT on the bottom right.
[27] La Nazione Dipinta 2007.
[28] Chirtani 1880a, p. 143.
[29] Chirtani 1880b, p. 155.
[30]D. Sogliani, in La nazione dipinta 2007, pp. 171-172. The painting was exhibited at the third Promotrice of Naples in 1864 together with La Mano del Ladro.
[31]Exhibited during VI Promotrice of Naples in 1869 with the title Un Sacro Retaggio , Società Promotrice 1869, p. 18 no. 98.
[32]ASABAN, series: Alunni , subseries: Fascicoli personlai , no. 2299, ua 10. L. La Rocca, in L’altro Ottocento 2016, pp. 84-85.
[33]Please refer to the text by Rosa Esmeralda Partucci in this volume.
[34]Pandolfini, Auction no. 1353, Florence, 27 March 2025, lot no. 261.
[35]Where «it achieved real success […] and Società Promotrice, in Bologna, purchased it for the prize giving» (Vittori 1894, p. 195). In the Italian catalogue the work appears at no. 238, in the XXV group «Delle Arti Moderne e Recentissime» (Atti ufficiali 1873, p. 200).
[36]« Alceste Campriani, Giacomo di Chirico, Rubens Santoro, Federigo Cortese, Francesco Netti, Edoardo Toffano [ sic ], Giuseppe de Nigris – they all have theses kaleidoscopic Funkeln , this art of I would regret it , the den Pictures that Look out there is , as were yes Mosaic out to eat Steinen ” ( Muther 1894, p. 81).
[37]This is an important fact, since no watercolours by de Nigris are known. De Guberatis 1889, p. 329.
[38]Among the curators of Francesco Netti 2023 catalogue there are Ubaldo Fraccalvieri and Christine Farese Sperken, whom I thank for their collaboration on this exhibition.
[39]Salvador 1895.
[40]Farese Sperken 1996a, p. 9.
[41]Already in 1980 Farese Sperken placed a photograph next to the painting depicting a group of farmers taking a break: Francesco Netti 1980, p. 125.
[42]This is a small oil painting, measuring just 15.8 x 16.7 centimetres, purchased, together with La convalesecenza and Festa a Grez , by Bari art gallery in 1955, C. Farese Sperken , in La Pinacoteca Provinciale 2005, p. 41.
[43]Letter to his nephew (14 September 1889), in Farese Sperken 1996a, p. 145.
[44]Netti ed. 1938, p. 10.
[45]Net 1895.
[46]Ibid., p. 107.
[47] An Italian Impressionist 2022.
[48]Martelli ed. 1952, p. 124.
[49]Causa 1975, p. 20.
[50]Piceni, Monteverdi 1971, p. 15.
[51] Paris 2024, pp. 130, 266.
[52] Bénédite 1926, p. 22
Soft green, transparent mists and pale skies. The vision of Giuseppe De Nittis, à la poursuite de son rêve
Isabella Valente
“I will be a painter!”, the very young Peppino De Nittis stubbornly repeated to his older brother. «If I had said that I wanted to be a bricklayer or a stonecutter, Vincenzino’s indignation would not have been greater. I would have dishonoured my family». This is the incipit of the chapter dedicated to his arrival in Naples in the famous Taccuino of De Nittis. [1]
And he became a painter, with his own strength and personal ingenuity, going «wandering through the streets», getting canvases and colours as he could, while his artistic education «was forming by itself». [2] «Ce nom de M. Nittis, que la Gazette écrit pour la première fois, devra to be retenu », wrote Paul Lefort in 1878 in his dissertation on Italian painting at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. A name that should have been remembered, it was said when it first appeared at the Salon of 1872, next to the luminous Route de Brindisi , and which then, in 1878, « il est […] compté parmi les plus aimés et les plus populaires. M de Nittis a, d’ailleurs fait mieux que de tenir les promesses de ses débuts: il y a beau temps qu’il les a singulièrement élargies».[3] In 1878, therefore, success was his. He had succeeded. Having barely passed a quarter of a century of age, he had achieved celebrity in France, which was equivalent to conquering the international market.
But what was the path of the boy from Apulia who had arrived in Naples from Barletta, where he had enrolled at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in search of regular studies, from which however he decided to escape in 1863?
«What is certain, then, […] – writes Diego Martelli – [4] is this, that De Nittis belonged to a Neapolitan triad, composed by him, Marco De Gregorio and Adriano Cecioni, who went there as a pensioner from Tuscany; that this triad dared, first, to rise up against Morelli’s authority and autocracy , and that it was Adriano Cecioni who introduced Peppino De Nittis to us Florentines. It was then that we saw that young man, small, stocky, with a little beard and black hair, elegantly dressed and full of all the expansive arrogance of a 20-year-old southerner who doubted nothing; he had brought with him some studies of the plains made in his Apulia, among these a long dusty road, seen in perspective, which crosses an immense green silence – as Carducci would say – some small spots on the road, a glimpse of gravel hills, a well-chosen sky, a very fine and delicate workmanship, a grey and at the same time colourful intonation, and here is the dominant note of his research, and the miracle of the new verb».[5]
When De Nittis arrived in Florence in 1867 he brought with him the fruit of the experience of School of Resina, of which the triad mentioned by Martelli had been the primitive nerve. A research that was the consequence of a set of different and above all new orientations that had materialized in Naples. Martelli, in fact, reiterated that it was a “new painting” that “beat the Achilles of the Neapolitan school [i.e. Morelli] in his own country. Peppino De Nittis was liked, he was sincerely acclaimed, and he had confirmation from competent and rigorous judges of the power of his faculties”. [6]
The Florentine environment had therefore fervently greeted the work of De Nittis, as years before it had applauded the realist painting of Palizzi and the veristic one of Morelli. The most enthusiastic was Cecioni, who had highly appreciated De Nittis’ paintings exhibited at Promotrice of Naples in 1864, and who three years later, regarding the canvas Una traversata negli Appennini (Naples, Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte, cat . 4) , commented that «the success of this painting reached fanaticism». [7]
In this work, as in Casale nei dintorni di Napoli of the same museum ( cat . 3) , we can see an insistence by De Nittis on the details of everyday life, rendered almost with exegetic rigor, such as the industriousness of the peasants in the background, whose individual actions can be recognized, or the «famous De Nittis-style diligence », which made its first appearance in Traversata , remembered by Schettini with that «indefinable yellow». [8]
They were two passages seen and taken entirely from life, which led the critic Guido Guidi to judge that in De Nittis’ paintings «everything is fine and delicate, as the effect of nature always shows». [9] Casale nei dintorni di Napoli (fig. 1) was painted in 1866 in Calvizzano, in the interior of Naples, where De Nittis had carried out rigorous research from life. I believe that this canvas should be identified with the painting described by Cecioni [10] with the title Novembre , a “very fine little painting in terms of colour and design” «where a blue sky, serene, without the hint of the smallest cloud, like a sky cleared by the wind, forms half of the painting, where a horizon is clearly drawn», thanks to the clear and «cooled» air. Cecioni then noted «the little village […] at the bottom of the horizon», the carriage «full of people heading to the village», «in minimal proportion, because the carriage is placed in the distance», the pond in front, «on which two or three dry leaves are floating, while the other fallen leaves can be seen blunted by the wind at the edges and in the points where some beams that are on the other side of the pond rest on the ground». And then the bare “little trees” «as only De Nittis knew how to draw them, complete the melancholic aspect that the countryside has in that season even when the weather is beautiful as in that painting». The most interesting evaluation concerns the pictorial language: Cecioni notes, in fact, that everything was done with equal interest, «the fallen leaves, not executed by touch, but sought for shape and color like the beams, the trees and everything else. Everything is treated seriously and with equal love, because De Nittis was too convinced that in nature there is nothing more, nothing superfluous, nothing decorative; in nature there is no decoration, everything that is seen has its reason to be, nor can it be omitted from art without showing dullness of mind, and vulgarity of soul». This is a fundamental concept, which finds its roots in the thought of Filippo Palizzi and in the Neapolitan school of painting and sculpture of those years, reaffirmed by Stanislao Lista, who, let us not forget, had also opened the doors of sculpture to the truth. «A just whole can only be obtained from the quantity of its parts», concludes Cecioni, defining a principle that «had enthused De Nittis, had opened his mind, had inflamed him with love for nature and art. Art, art alone, we said, and at that moment for De Nittis there was nothing but art, everything was nothing outside of it».[11]
In the same article, written in third person, then reworked by Gustavo Uzielli for the volume published in 1905, [12] Cecioni also focuses on the Traversata negli Appennini. This second painting became the reference model, for De Nittis himself and for many painters, [13]of a long series of views based on a similar compositional structure, in which a long, almost interminable road unfolds, in perspective, in the middle of the countryside; a dusty or muddy road, depending on the weather conditions and the seasons . The accentuation of the atmospheric element – dust, wind, sun, rain, snow etc. – in some cases became almost an exercise in style, a competition of virtuosity much appreciated by collectors, as Goupil’s requests suggest.
These works by De Nittis concentrated the highest efforts of the research carried out by the small group of Portici, configured around Marco De Gregorio and his house-studio-commune, where the friends shared, for a fortunate period, life and ideas. In reality the original nucleus was larger than the triad that Martelli remembered. The so-called School of Resina or Republic of Portici, which has known different temporal phases with the presence of various personalities, counted at its beginning, in addition to De Gregorio, Cecioni and De Nittis, the painter Federico Rossano and the sculptor Raffaele Belliazzi , joined by Michele Tedesco. De Nittis himself remembered having settled in Portici at the end of 1866, [14] returning from the aforementioned stay in Calvizzano.
In 1893, speaking of Rossano as a «valiant survivor of the artistic Republic of Portici», Giovanna Vittori from Molise asked herself «But what was this Republic?», [15]and commented: «Giuseppe De Nittis, Marco De Gregorio, Raffaele Belliazzi, Adriano Cecioni, Panichi and others, after the plebiscite in favor of King Vittorio Emanuele II, had taken up residence in the former Royal Palace of Portici, bound by an oath of brotherhood and by an artistic program “to practice an independent art, purely veristic and realistic tending towards the true simple manifestation of truth in its various forms without frills and transactions”». Always using the same source, we know that «The colony was governed by a representative government, decided every question by majority vote and had unanimously elected Raffaele Belliazzi as president». «They would portray in one go with a pencil, a brush or a chisel an animal, a child, two trees, a piece of sky, a flower, etc. on plates, tablets, small canvases, analyzing things, competing in precision in portraying them. They had to have a cult of small things that academic conventionalism had held in contempt. The concept was Galilean: Galileo was the first to appreciate small things, believing that the greatness of nature is especially manifest in them».[16]
In this intense two-year period of study from life, once he left the Academy for having opposed his professor, considered mediocre as well as the “most unpleasant one could meet”, [17]De Nittis developed that marvelous pictorial sense based on a very fine and delicate workmanship, on a grey and at the same time colourful intonation, as a miracle of the “new verb“, as Martelli had well focused. This is the characteristic of the initial paintings, which is found in compositions of wide scope even in the medium-small format, measured in spatial relationships and above all denoted by a true light that illuminates the colour and that makes one “see” the air that circulates in the countryside, up the mountains, along the rivers, in the streets.
De Nittis’ Portici phase has been forgotten or neglected by many critics of the last century, or hastily mistaken for Tuscan Macchiaiolism . Already Pittaluga and Piceni in 1963 disagreed with those who had over time compared De Nittis’ youthful work to that of the Macchiaioli, since he, unlike the Tuscans, continued in those years to maintain the sense of design, the melted and calm color, “not devoid of gray resonances even in the sunny effects, adhering with natural elegance to the motif, nor did it harden, opposing, within delimited areas, the Macchiaioli style”; [18] Cecioni himself had highlighted De Nittis’ calligraphic skill in painting, for example, the fallen leaves in the foreground of Casolare , “not executed by touch, but sought for form and color”.[19]
However, the closer proximity to Macchiaioli, and Martelli, in that period of time spent in Florence, once he left Naples and before arriving in Paris, induced De Nittis to experiment with the Tuscan ‘macchia‘, summary and detached from drawing, as would seem to be demonstrated by Masseria , of which today a more sketched version from a private collection is presented ( cat . 5) , very close in pictorial methods, and in particular linguistic, to the small panels of Signorini, Abbati, Sernesi, Fattori, painted in Castiglioncello. It is a small painting of disputed dating, which on the basis of such concordances I would propose to ascribe to the Tuscan period, rather than to the preceding Portici phase or to the subsequent one of the early Seventies.
The members of the School of Resina opposed the “magic color of the distant,” [20]one of the characteristics attributed to the reformed painting of the School of Posillipo – the first important episode of cosmopolitan en plein air painting –, with what could be defined as the “magic color of the nearby.” Everything was studied up close, with a careful eye analyzing the truth, but without this taking the upper hand over either the form or the style. Nature had to breathe on the canvas, become concrete, free itself in all its essence and form. No longer nature seen and then evoked, as with Pitloo and Gigante; nature had to be capable of self-representation. As previously mentioned, this was one of the key elements of Palizzi’s poetics , of which “Porticesi” had certainly assimilated the main framework. Netti understood this when he wrote in 1876 that Filippo Palizzi at the beginning «looked at the truth without the slightest notion of the style and principles in vogue», «and made trees trees , the sky sky , and the ground earthly . His painting called things by their proper name in a moment of metaphors and fables». [21]
The basic substratum was the same: the love of truth, the driving force and ultimate goal of the group. «We were in love with the truth – Gennaro Della Monica, who had shared a long artistic experience with Federico Rossano, recalled in his memoirs – and it was enough for us to see a beautiful effect of light, a beautiful cloud, a beautiful twilight to be happy». [22]
Rossano, who had also put De Nittis on the path, advised to «sketch with very little colour», to «prepare the work with transparent but not too light colours», «nothing too colourful at the beginning», to dose the colour by showing that «the light and the luminosity» depended «only on the ratios of the tones»; but above all Rossano suggested that care be taken that in the landscape, «in the whole as in the parts, one can see the hour and the time».[23]
And if Rossano’s poetic interiority, his refined aesthetic sense and his contemplative nature, with that melancholic gaze on the landscape, had an undoubted influence on the younger De Nittis, the particular rough linguistic style and the simplification of the buildings and the minute elements of the composition, until reaching certain dry geometries, which are found in De Nittis’ first paintings, depended substantially on De Gregorio (on whom Palizzi and then Cecioni had influenced first). Due to its proximity to De Gregorio and to a controlled Palizzismo , the small, luminous view of the Cortile rustico or Cortile al sole of Museum of San Martino ( cat . 1) can be ascribed to Resina’s first period, around 1863-1864. Causa defined it as «the absolute masterpiece of the artist’s Italian period», «almost a local Vermeer resurrected in an inappropriate place, for once, by who knows what mysterious magic», and «one of the most beautiful things of our nineteenth century», [24]of which he would later note the «mysterious sparkles».[25]
However, the roots of Resina’s ‘ macchiaiolism ‘ must also be traced back once again to that long Posillipo parenthesis, since, almost without realising it, it was Pitloo who had triggered a pictorial system based on the stain, which Gigante, more consciously, had transformed by taking it to the extreme.
Returning to the need to detach itself from old patterns, manifested mainly in the independentism of De Nittis («since then I abandoned school and became my own master»), [26] School of Resina, as happened for that of Posillipo, sought emancipation: emancipation from the palimpsest of the paysage classique , still prevalent in the 1850s, but also by modern landscape painting, generally unconvincing in its relationship with reality. The main subject was no longer Naples and the wonders of its gulf, but the harsh and rugged landscape of its interior, up to the slopes of Vesuvius. No sea, lots of countryside, mud and dust, without anything picturesque; and Vesuvius became the focus of observation. When De Nittis returned to Portici in 1872, Vesuvius would be the central theme of his painting. Small studies, all made on site, challenging the fumaroles, later merged into compositions of a larger scope, but always preferring small dimensions. One day while he was working «on that painting which was later purchased by Count Lanckoroński » – which we find today in the exhibition, accompanied by a very accurate description that sheds new light on the painting to which the title I crateri del Vesuvio prima dell’eruzione del 1872 (cat. 9) –, had just left his post, when “a large gash opened up right in the place where I had been working for a month. The jet of stones and lava reached where I was without hurting me”. [27]Also the unpublished Impressione del Vesuvio ( fig. 2 , cat . 7) , which seems to recall that «wild beauty» of the Vesuvian nature that strikes him, a nature observed and rendered with extreme essentiality through a rapid system of spots of very few chromatic tones, can be traced back to this period of intense reflection on the volcano, when the artist feels he is gripped by «love for the mountain». [28]It was close to the famous eruption of 26 April 1872: De Nittis, who had returned to Naples because of the events of the Franco-Prussian war that were affecting Paris, was settling back in Portici, meeting up with old friends.
Although highly formative, Resina’s experience ended with his move to Paris in 1868. It is possible to follow the scans of his stay in Paris, his stays in London and his returns to Italy through the well-known Taccuino . The real success in the French metropolis came in 1872, when he exhibited the Route de Brindisi (Italy) [29]( fig. 3 , Indianapolis Museum of Art), a memory of his land that seems to overturn the gloomy day of the Traversata into the fiery dusty expanse of the long road, of which that trace of the road in the small, marvelous essay of the Paesaggio sotto il sole of Barletta ( cat . 6) could be a study .
La Route de Brindisi , «qui réapparait au Champ de Mars, more affine , more vibrant encore ins six luminous intensity under the email and the blonde patina of it temps », [30]was evoked by Paul Lefort to introduce the chapter on the artist in his evaluation of the Universal Exhibition of 1878, where De Nittis exhibited twelve works.[31] «C’est un chercheur, un audacieux que M. de Nittis. Nature nerveuse et délicate, toute voie déjà battue lui paraît vulgaire. Il lui faut les sentiers ignorés, à peine foulés par d’autres: c’est un curieux que l’inconnu, le nouveau, sollicitent de préférence et attirent. Nul, plus que lui, n’a dans l’école le sens des élégances féminines et le goût de la modernité». Nervous and delicate nature, a researcher and a bold man: this is what Lefort thought of him . Curious to know the unknown, with an exquisite sense of feminine elegance and a non-trivial taste for modernity.
Regarding his first French production, critics had compared him to Meissonier , but « abruptly » « «M. de Nittis a laissé là cette première manière précise, aiguë et si habile dans ses ténuités à exprimer le relief des formes, l’éloignement ou la diversité des choses». The painting would mature, three years later, in the sunny Sur la route de Castellammare (fig. 4) , [32]exhibited at the Salon of 1876, [33]from which his friend Alceste Campriani would draw for his 1877 canvas Il Ritorno dal Mercato (Milan, Art Studio Pedrazzini, fig. 5 ), much appreciated by Goupil.[34]
Despite the change of pace implemented in Paris, De Nittis remained, therefore, in love with the truth, attentive in his vision, which he then elaborated with that «finesse and elegance» recognized by Cecioni as «the characteristics of his talent»; and Cecioni, who remained his friend even after his transfer to France, remembered, still in the early Nineties: «I always told him that he was called to render the elegant side of nature».[35]
In Paris, where he was contracted by Goupil, the recognition obtained in 1872 and then confirmed at the Universal Exhibition of 1878, was not lacking even at the Salon of 1874, where De Nittis exhibited the two famous paintings Dans the blés and «Fait-il- froid !!!» , [36]while the third one he wanted to present, Ritorno dalle corse , was excluded by the jury. Louis Gonse [37]had noticed the two ladies walking among the ears of corn in a blaze of light of Dans the bles (fig. 6) , the small painting from a private collection that is now more celebrated than ever, [38]which drew inspiration, as always, from the observation of reality. In fact, De Nittis recalls in his Taccuino that the idea for the painting came from walks he took with his wife on his way back from the banks of the Seine, where he used to go, crossing the nearby wheat fields to shorten his walk. [39]
It was the period of the enchanted Paris, the same Paris that ten years later would suffocate him («Paris destroys everyone», he wrote in 1884); [40]but at that moment everything seemed golden to him: «None of the countries I have ever known had the sweetness of this beautiful land of France. The banks of the Seine enchanted me. Every day I painted those dear landscapes in a green as tender as youth, the almost grey willows on the banks, the transparent fogs and the pale skies. I know all these images well».[41]
In 1874 De Nittis also appears among the exhibitors at the first Impressionist exhibition, with five works. [42]In the powerful 2022 volume dedicated to the very prestigious Gruvelle -De Nittis donation of Barletta, Renato Miracco examines the relationship that De Nittis had with Impressionism. [43]
From this contribution emerge some important contemporary testimonies all in agreement in evaluating De Nittis’ Impressionism as a “brilliant Impressionism”, since «il s’était bien gardé des écarts de ceux qui ne voient dans cette école qu’une facilité à l’usage des peintres qui, dépourvus d’études suffisantes, confondent dans un même dédain, couleur, composition et dessin»; [44], it was said about his pastels exhibited in 1881, «ce que M. Degas et quelques autres ont rêvé ou ont réalisé en laid, ou ont exprimé avec un sentiment vif, mais par trop morbide, de la nature et de l’humanité contemporain». [45]
What is relevant is that De Nittis had been recognized for having brought to France a different and more direct relationship with the truth and with reality translated into color, descending from his Neapolitan origins. The same had happened to Gemito, when in 1877 he brought realist sculpture to Paris. De Nittis was «un des artistes qui ont le plus fait, par leur exemple, pour pousser la jeune école française dans la raprésentation des scènes de la vie actuelle et dans l’étude du plain air, et cela avec un sentiment remarquablement juste de la couler et de sa vérité», [46]an assessment which seems to us to be the compendium of what he had assimilated in the years of his education thanks to the various reforms implemented in Naples starting from the end of the eighteenth century, which were mentioned above (we remember that Thomas Jones had stayed in the Neapolitan city already in 1778-1779).
Lefort ‘s thought , cited at the beginning, the critic also comes to address the theme of impressionism: «L’impressionisme venait de tenter M. de Nittis, et il s’y est livré avec l’entraînement que ce tempérament si essentiellement artiste sait apporter à la poursuite de son rêve ».[47]
On the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of 1878, the opinions of De Nittis’s work were more than positive, even surprising. De Nittis had made his new ideal explicit: to transmit the life and the hustle and bustle of the big cities, with a detailed vision, almost from a ‘corner’; he is there, shy, observing. The paintings Paris-la Place des Pyramides, Paris, vu du Pont-Royal, Londra, exhibited at the Salons of 1875 and 1877, are views characterised by a light grey veil, designed to reproduce the atmosphere of the two metropolises that struck the artist, created with a certain abbreviated but structured linguistics, which is found in the very small Porte Saint-Denis a Parigi ( Bari, Metropolitan Art gallery Corrado Giaquinto , cat . 12 ).
The artist then introduces small figures portrayed with the tip of the brush, thin silhouettes surprised in their mobility, «in the perfect measure required by the tone of the plane». [48]
Sometimes he inserts only a few details of these figures almost fleetingly, not only to delimit the foreground of the composition, but also to trigger a dynamic process in the vision according to the photographic model, as his friends Degas and Manet do. An example of this is the small panel from Barletta centred on the quick impression of a Ponte , perhaps that Pont Royal referring to the painting Paris, vu du Pont Royal from the Salon of 1877, [49]as has been hypothesised (cat . 13 ), in which the blond head of a little girl almost by mistake enters the painter’s vision, who adopts a photographic shot framing. After all, Charles Blanc had already noted how De Nittis’s eye was attracted by every element of everyday life to crystallise, as in an icon, modern life: «de Nittis, doué d’un talent hardi et jaloux d’innover, ne prend pas la peine de choisir. Tout lui est hon : le môme qui passe, l’enfant au cerceau, la petite dame qui relève son jupon sur le pavé humide, faisant miroir, le flâneur qui achète un journal au kiosque, le bibliophile qui lit un bouquin sur le parapet, pour se dispenser d’en demander le prix, le sergent de ville enfin, ou le policeman, tout, dis-je, lui paraît digne d’être fixé sur la toile, et tel quel. Ses tableaux donnent l’idée d’un groupe d’objets et de figures, disposé par le hasard, saisi par la photographie instantanée, et placé dans un cadre qu’on pourrait élargir ou rétrécir à volonté» .[50]
The critics have dwelt a lot on the French production: the figurines, much sought after by the market, a symbol of worldliness and modernity, were appreciated for their accurate and delicate application, outlined by brush strokes that were never too short. That linguistic figure characterized by the delicacy of the touch, dear to Martelli, had also been noticed in France. «Just as he knew how to avoid the brutal vigor so easy for those who place blacks on neutral or gray backgrounds», Lefort writes again , not only Paris, but also London, with its thick fogs, was at the center of the works brought to the exhibition by De Nittis: « National Gallery , Trafalgar Square , Bank of England , Piccadilly , despite the pressure different from one same and solid impression , feeling , seeing and translating avec un rare bonheur “, works created by “un peintre d’une étonnante sincerity ».[51]
Flirtation ( cat . 11) , a masterpiece from 1874, [52]is one of those representations of De Nittis’ production that sum up his stay in London well. It is a production that always manages to restore identity and definition to the subjects portrayed in an exquisite and intimate worldliness, keeping alive the observation of reality. A production very distant from that of other artists present in Paris in the same period, who, responding to specific market demands, had created a stereotyped and mannered world that was increasingly distant from reality. The theme of racing, which was of great interest to artists and photographers such as Edgar Degas and Eadweard Muybridge is here approached by observing the bourgeois society that entertains itself at the edge of the track on a beautiful sunny day, of which De Nittis even gives the sensation of warmth. The Longchamp and Anteuil racecourses , opened in the Bois de Boulogne, were the new centers of entertainment of the Parisian high society where they could show off fashionable clothes and weave new relationships, as suggested by the intimate conversation of the couple in the foreground. We can hear the echo of some compositions by Degas, De Nittis’s companion, the one who induced him to exhibit with the Impressionists, especially in the idea of placing the man from behind sitting on a foreshortened chair that defines not only the foreground of the composition, but the entire design of the space.
However, in what in a broader sense could be defined as impressionist production, De Nittis was in the group but also independent of it (a group that, as we well know, was united only by an idea). This ambivalence was also clear to the critics of the time, divided between those who considered him an impressionist and those who believed, or even wanted, that he was not. His accreditation on the market, thanks to a collecting that preferred him to others, motivated the decidedly contrasting position taken by many critics, which emerged especially in the aftermath of his premature death. But the reasons are complex and stratified, as Miracco clearly highlights, which ultimately led to the elimination of De Nittis from the Impressionists and the painter’s participation in the first famous exhibition of his biography. The erasure of De Nittis from the history of impressionism continued in the twentieth century. However, looking back , his fate is not very different from that of other non-French artists present in Paris in the same years, with more or less close connections with the members of the impressionist group. Certainly his origins contributed to this, which led him to be almost considered a stateless person in art, neither Italian, nor French, nor even English. When in 1880 he decided to take part in the IV National Exhibition of Turin, among the six paintings sent, he felt he had to present at least two of “Neapolitan” origin. This was not enough for him to be unanimously applauded by the critics, who considered him almost on a par with a foreign painter. Among those five paintings, Ferdinando Fontana, although he applauded him wholeheartedly, placed the emphasis on the painting entitled Tipi Napletani , «the most powerful that is at the Exhibition today», [53]although he was then unable to remain silent in front of the small painting Nei campi , declaring that: «Where others paint, De Nittis barely touches, and obtains with a brushstroke the delicate and finished effect that others obtain with a hundred thousand dashes […] De Nittis manages to make a lively, detached, very finished little head, almost with a single brushstroke».[54]
De Nittis’s fortune in the critical, scientific and collecting fields has grown more than ever today, thanks also to new studies and the marvelous collection donated by his wife in her will to Barletta, where he arrived on 29 March 1914, and today wonderfully exhibited in Palazzo Della Marra, which allows the continuation of scientific research
[1]De Nittis ed. 1964, p. 24.
[2] Ibidem .
[3] Lefort 1879, p. 191.
[4]Martelli ed. 1952, p. 124.
[5]Ibid., p. 125.
[6] Ibidem.
[7]Cecioni ed. 1905, p. 364.
[8]Schettini 1967, II, p. 32.
[9]Guidi 1867.
[10]Cecioni 1894-1895, p. 147 .
[11] Ibidem .
[12] Cecioni ed. 1905, pp. 360-361.
[13]Starting from Novembre by Telemaco Signorini of 1870 (Venice, International Gallery of Modern Art of Venice Ca’ Pesaro), remembered by all scholars, and before by Monti 1989, pp. 47-48.
[14] According to literature, De Nittis moved to Portici in 1863.
[15]Vittori 1893-1894, p. 197. This question by Vittori, dating back to 1893, clarifies, if there were still any doubts, that the name “Republic of Portici” was not an invention of Vittorio Pica in 1914, as recently explained (Valente 2024, p. 87 note 17).
[16]Vittori 1893-1894, p. 197.
[17]De Nittis ed. 1964, p. 31.
[18]Pittaluga, Piceni 1963 p. 25.
[19]Cecioni 1894-1895, p. 147 .
[20] Mattej 1860, p. 239.
[21]Netti 1876, p. 7.
[22] Della Monica 1902, pp. 22-23.
[23]From Consigli di Rossano pel paesaggio, notes from lessons taken by Angela Carugati, a student of the master at the Academy (unpublished manuscript in a private collection, to be published in the future).
[24]Causa 1966, p. 35.
[25]Causa 1975, p. 20.
[26]De Nittis ed. 1964, p. 32.
[27]Ibid., p. 73.
[28]Ibid., p. 75.
[29]On the painting, mentioned in the exhibition catalogue at no. 1177 ( Explication 1872, p. 179), see, among others, Miracco in Giuseppe De Nittis 2022, pp. 96-100.
[30] Lefort 1879, p. 191.
[31] The works were, according to the catalogue: Green park (Londres), Place des Pyramides, Route de Brindisi, National Gallery, Westminster, Trafalgar square, Retour des courses du bois de Boulogne, Bank of England, Canon Bridge, Piccadilly, Avenue du bois de Boulogne, Paris vu du pont Royal (Exposition Universelle 1878, p. 226 nn. 56-67).
[32]Recently auctioned by Il Ponte, 17 December 2024, auction 689, lot 94 .
[33] Explication 1876, p. 192 n. 1543.
[34]I. Valente, in Boldini De Nittis et les italiens de Paris 2023, pp. 106-107.
[35]Cecioni ed. 1905, p. 362.
[36] Explication 1874, p. 204, Dans les blés n. 1394, «Fait-il- froid !!!» n. 1395.
[37] Gonse 1874, pp. 41-42.
[38]The work has been present in many exhibitions in recent years. See the beautiful entry by Elena Lissoni, in Boldini De Nittis 2023, p. 128.
[39]De Nittis ed. 1964, p. 36.
[40]Ibid., p. 185.
[41]Ibid., pp. 35-36.
[42] Société Anonyme 1874, p. 16, in the order: Paysage près de Blois (n. 115), Lever de lune. Vésuve (n. 116), Campagne du Vésuve (n. 117), étude de femme (n. 118), Route en Italie (n. 118 bis). See the recent exhibition: Paris 1874. Inventer l’Impressionisme by Musée d’Orsay in 2024 (Paris 2024).
[43] Miracco 2022.
[44]JB 1884.
[45] Blémont 1881, p. 6.
[46] Portalis 1885, p. 439.
[47] Lefort 1879, pp. 191-192.
[48]Ibid., p. 192.
[49] Explanation 1877. The painting earned him the third class medal, ibid., p. 203 no. 1598. In addition to the painting, De Nittis exhibited two watercolours, Le boulevard Haussmann and La place Saint-Augustin , ibid., p. 413, nos . 3210, 3211.
[50]Blanc 1878, pp. 316-317.
[51] Ibidem .
[52]On the work, which boasts a very long bibliography, see the summary card by M. Raspa, in Boldini De Nittis et les italiennes de Paris 2023, pp. 328-330, and the card by LSR Puca in this volume ( cat . 11).
[53]Fontana 1880, p. 173.
[54]Ibid., p. 175.
Gioacchino Toma from Salento to Naples and back
Maximum Guastella
« I was born exactly in this place […] where that pearl of a man and pearl of a simple, clear, sad and thoughtful painter who bore the name of Gioacchino Toma was born… ». With these words the sculptor Gaetano Martinez from Galatina remembered his fellow citizen artist in his Cenno Autobiografico dated 1921. [1] People of Salento have shown attention towards Toma on several occasions: the subsidy of a thousand lire granted to him in 1867 by the Provincial Council of Terra d’Otranto, by virtue of the support of personalities such as Mancinelli, Palizzi, Angelini, Smargiassi, Morelli, Solari, Maldarelli, Postiglione and Catalano, to demonstrate that the thirty-one-year-old “highly talented artist and also distinguished patriot” [2]was well-integrated into the Neapolitan artistic environment where he taught and married Diletta Perla; the monumental bust created in Lecce in Piazzetta Falconieri by Francesco de Matteis (1898), who was his pupil, of whom we have only some period photographic reproductions, sacrificed, in 1941, for war purposes in the collection of bronze for the Fatherland; [3]the commemorative plaque with an epigraph dictated by Fausto Salvatori, placed on the facade of his birthplace (not without controversy) in 1926; [4]the naming of Galatina School of Arts and Crafts after “Gioacchino Toma”; the monumental bust created, with the contribution of “public money” and personal commitment, by Martinez (1927-1928).[5]
In addition to the commemorative moments, in the territory of origin it is worth remembering the critical recognitions such as the twenty works coming mostly from Naples, but also from Florence, Palermo, Piacenza and Lecce, exhibited in room F of the 1939 [6] Mostra Retrospettiva degli artisti salentini; the retrospective ordered by Luigi Salerno in Palazzo dei Tribunali in Lecce in 1954, with an important corpus of works by the Galatina artist; [7] the study dedicated to him by Lucio Galante in 1975, a reading still to be suggested. [8]
And, again, in 1996 the exhibition on the painter from Galatina, preceded by the exhibitions on the occasion of the 30th Spoleto Festival and Naples, hosted at Museo Provinciale Castromediano in Lecce: a systematic work curated by Bruno Mantura and Nicola Spinosa, [9]which reconstructs the painter’s activity retracing, through fifty-six works, his brief but brilliant career – he died at the age of fifty-five – and finds specific confirmation in the autobiographical prose of Ricordi di un Orfano, published for the first time in 1886, which can be read in various editions, the last in 2011, edited by Aldo Vallone for Congedo.[10]
Starting from that exhibition, in which Mariaserena Mormone collects a report of still lifes, of “as many as eight examples in a private collection in Lecce, which constitute a notable contribution to the knowledge of the youthful works”, even if it is not easy to ascertain whether they were executed in Salento or come from Naples, [11]attention for Toma’s works follows one another in the collecting of the territory, which are added to the few testimonies kept in local museums. First of all the civic collection that includes Roma o Morte! of 1863 and a draft of I sommozzatori of 1884-1885, both exhibited in that and this exhibition; while in banking institutions there are Natura morta con noci verza e oggetti in rame (Banca del Salento Collection) [12]and Donna con bambino (Matino, Banca Popolare Pugliese Collection), a youthful work from 1861, already compared to Erminia from 1859. [13]
In the guide that accompanies Lecce exhibition of ’96, further works present in private collections in Salento are made known, proposed by Lucio Galante [14]and Antonio Cassiano, [15]including Romanzo nel chiostro (fig. 1 ) , a delightful watercolour present in a collection of Squinzano, which replicates the 1888 canvas of Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome, then exhibited in the exhibition Arte in Terra d’Otranto tra Otto e Novecento , set up at Museo Castromediano in Lecce between 2007 and 2008. [16] To confirm the return of interest in the territory of origin for the Galatina, on that occasion two still lifes were exhibited, coming from collections in Lecce, [17]one of which is Natura morta con ortaggi, pane e bottiglia di vino already published in the 1995 catalogue – edited for the three exhibitions in Spoleto, Naples and Lecce –, paired with a Natura morta di Pere[18] as well as Natura morta con aragosta, sale e pepe e limoni ( fig. 2 ) .[19] In the 2000s, the attraction for his works in the antiques market and in local collecting has grown, also due to the exhibition initiatives at the turn of the century and certain editorial contributions, some of which are of a popular nature, harbingers of knowledge contributions based on rediscovered documents. Among female portraits, which await the scrutiny of an accurate stylistic examination, and signed still lifes, works that increase the Tomian catalogue are now permanently acquired in Salento collecting; from the painter’s youthful period is Cristo deriso signed in 1857 (Torchiarolo, private collection, fig. 3 ); coming from the same collection, [20]there is also a version of Pioggia di cenere del Vesuvio ( fig. 4 ), recently made known by Lucio Galante in Ritorno a Toma ,[21] reduced version of the successful Thomonian subject, which, degraded, subjected to careful restoration has revealed itself to be of sustained quality and materially precious; Mare mosso ( fig. 5 ), yet another variant, without the figures, of the marine theme of I Sommozzatori , which maintains «an almost unchanged basic scheme, on which substantial variations are made that determine the chromatic-luministic quality of the work»; [22]and furthermore, the renowned landscape of Torre del Greco, otherwise entitled Villa Dalbono ( fig. 6 ), [23]a Macchiaiolo update, presumably from 1883-84, in which Lucio Galante sees the translation of a «sense of lively quiet», [24]pertinent to that number of «canvases (rustic courtyards, garden recesses)» that «are memories of things that were close and usual to the artist’s summer and restful life». [25]
Two other works to be noted, present in Terra d’Otranto, are: Ritratto di Gentildonna (fig. 7) , painting of considerable size previously in the collection of Maurizio Aiuto and then transferred to the antiques market, [26]and Una madre , an oil painting from Naples, now in a private collection in Lecce.[27]
These “returns” of the artist from Galatina – Neapolitan by adoption – to his land, through his paintings make us think back to that intertwining of existential experience and artistic experience, which has been considered his peculiar style, although constantly to be verified and especially to what extent one has influenced the other [28]. «His memory» of the infinite variation of greys that dominates Salento landscape «had a great influence – asserts the painter Vincenzo Ciardo – on the art of the Salento artist Gioacchino Toma».[29]
On the other hand, his “repatriation” can only be recorded through his works; with the exception of his early works, he had no relations with the territory during his career, even though he suffered from it in his heart, as highlighted by the study of Luigi Galante, who published an exchange of letters with his fellow Galatina native Pietro Cavoti, to whom he wrote: «I cry and bleed inside unfortunately for having distanced myself from Galatina», and again, «my pain, my lament, my sad distance my Galatina […]. I have never forgotten the Christmas to which I belong».[30]
Superficially dismissed with the nickname of “painter of pain” for the expression of his sad themes in greyish colours – but he does not paint exclusively pathetic subjects –, the revival of Toma’s critical success is mainly due to Michele Biancale, who starting from 1933 positively resolved that “misunderstanding” that had hindered his fame.
The story of Gioacchino Toma fits into the most recent critical reevaluation of the artistic culture of the Italian nineteenth century (contrary to the cutting judgment of Roberto Longhi, with his Buonanotte, Signor Fattori ). Toma’s art, “remains, however”, Luisa Martorelli rightly observed, “still difficult to critically define, alternating between constant commitment to teaching, phases of stasis and phases of militant and rigorous commitment”.[31]
After the sufferings of the early loss of his parents and the rudiments of drawing learned at the Hospice for the poor in Giovinazzo, Toma briefly returned to his hometown; in the years 1853 and 1856 he was between Tricase and Galatina. The youthful works executed in the three-year period 1853-1855 are mediocre for Luigi Salerno, [32]“unworthy of memory” for Raffaello Causa. [33]
He mostly creates paintings of sacred subjects and portraits, which do not yet sufficiently clarify certain formative experiences and forms of self-teaching. Among his early canvases there are sacred icons – for which I allow myself to refer to some of my recent notes – [34] executed for churches or private homes, not mentioned in his Memories . This is a group of paintings that belong to the period of residence in Tricase with relatives, returning from Royal Hospice, indicated by Nicola Vacca, [35]on the recommendation of Amilcare Foscarini, [36]such as the oval depicting SS. Medici Cosimo e Damiano (1853) and the autographed altarpiece of Madonna delle Grazie (1854), located in the church of San Domenico, in Tricase; in the same center, in 1854, he frescoed Madonna di Loreto on the external portal of the Chapel of the same name. These are initial tests [37]of the then seventeen-year-old Gioacchino, a beginner, already committed to large dimensions, which despite the negative judgments of the most authoritative critics reveal, for Mariaserena Mormone, «a notable confidence in the compositional approach, oriented towards the pictorial culture of the seventeenth century», inspired by “santini” or other sacred images of popular devotion. [38] Ritratto di don Pasquale Piri and l’Autoritratto of 1854 [39]belong to these years .
He reached Bourbon Naples in 1856; since then his adventure in the southern capital began, now on the path to the great season of artistic civilization of the nineteenth century. In the Neapolitan city he lived with participation the climate of patriotic conspiracy and political renewal typical of the independence movements. In Naples (he would later also stay in the Benevento, Avellino, Irpinia and Matese) he trained first with Fergola; then he frequented the naturist Guglielmi and committed himself to artistic teaching and promoted scholastic institutions.
At his debut, with the series of still lifes from the second half of the 1850s and the very early 1860s, culturally indebted to the naturalistic humus of the seventeenth century, among the pictorial testimonies of the period – remembering that in 1862 he exhibited in Naples at the first Exhibition of the Society for Promotion of Fine Arts –, we find L’obolo di S. Pietro, ovvero il Prete Rivoluzione from 1861, and coming from Pinacoteca Metropolitana Corrado Giaquinto in Bari I figli del popolo (1862) and from the Must Lecce Roma o Morte! (1863). [40]
The artist himself defines these last two canvases as “bambocciate”, for the immediacy of execution aroused by Garibaldi’s exploits as well as by the post-Risorgimento euphoria. The patriotic theme, as in Roma o Morte! , is recurrent in his production and «he did not limit the evocations of patriotic deeds to paintings of Garibaldi’s soldiers, but touched on other motifs that were connected to it, such as those of priests who nourished revolutionary feelings almost tinged with carboneria and therefore particularly dear to the artist’s soul», not without «interest in [41]Palizzi’s realism ».[42]
Of the first linguistic maturation, of historical Morellian ancestry, belongs a painting, from 1864, depicting Un esame rigoroso del Santo Uffizzio ( cat . 20), presented at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867: the artist’s reference is explicit, reiterating in the thematic choice his political commitment to the unitary state and his hostility towards the church. While Madre che insegna a leggere a una bambina , which can be placed at the beginning of the Seventies as La scuola delle merlettaie cieche (1872), they are works representative of both the analytical and synthetic compositional research, supported by the mastery of the luminous factor, and of the importance attributed to similar subjects rendered through social poetics; it is typical of post-unification Italy to pedagogically affirm in the depicted message the centrality of the woman-mother-educator. This is confirmed by Le Due Madri ( cat . 22) , Donna che cuce e Dietro la porta ( cat . 23), subjects executed towards the middle of the eighth decade, with thematic references that bring him closer to Silvestro Lega and Adriano Cecioni.
The new role assigned by Toma himself to female dignity [43]stands out, with greater clarity, from the first version of Luisa Sanfelice in prigione (Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, fig. 8) , executed in 1874, and in the almost specular replica of a little later, one of the most famous paintings of the Italian nineteenth century which occupies a very important place in Toma’s artistic career, if only for the appreciation that the variations on the topic were met with: [44]in the melancholy of the condition of the heroine who sews the layette, within the bare, narrow space of the prison barely illuminated by the light filtering through the grate, and in the play of the muted tones of the palette, Toma expresses the dramatic sense of the contemporary historical and social event. The depiction of Sanfelice – posed by Diletta Perla, painter’s wife –, already a symbolic figure of dramas and novels centred on the fight against tyrannical power, takes on tones of inner humanity in the painting: the woman accused of an anti-Bourbon conspiracy to escape, in vain, the death sentence appears pregnant and is depicted intent on embroidering for the unborn child. A painting made suggestive precisely by the presupposed maternal sacrifice. One perceives an atmosphere full of pathos, sad – the same feeling can be appreciated a decade later in Luisa Sanfelice trasportata da Palermo a Napoli ( cat . 27) – which will continue to characterise in part the production carried out towards the end of the Seventies, as can be observed in a painting such as Il viatico dell’orfana (1877), which does not escape the support of compositional solidity and interior scenography, elements clearly confirmed in Onomastico della maestra (1879, cat . 25 ) and in Educande al coro. On the other hand, the relaxed Donna che legge riposata is of high quality and more in keeping with the European artistic cultures of the time. In my opinion, it is a piece of accentuated intimacy, perfect in the drawn details and equally extraordinary in its chromatic and pictorial sensitivity. It is within a «silent world suspended and waiting» that, writes Michele Biancale, an attentive and sensitive scholar of the Galatina area, «Toma’s art ranges, metric, perspective, chiaroscuro and with a dilated and pulsating luminosity», [45]one can recognize it for example in La confessione in sagrestia from 1880 ( cat . 26) .
An exemplary text of the last decade of Toma’s life can be considered La pioggia di cenere sul Vesuvio (1880), a painting that recalls the eruption of 1872, a scene with contrasting light modules and a distinctly developed narrative score: the group of women facing the volcano, the “scugnizzi” leaning out from the parapet, the begging girls and the indifferent passers-by protecting themselves with umbrellas.
In the ninth decade of the century, Toma turned his attention to landscape painting, “a true Macchiaioli attempt”; the [46]en plein air paintings date back to this period , in which the painter experimented with painting outdoors; sunlight is the protagonist of Pecore al macello (around 1880), Funari di Torre del Greco (1882), Pioggia, Immagini fugaci (1882), of the representation of Villa Dalbono of 1883-1884 (fig. 6) , woven with dots of colour, of Sommozzatori (1884-1885). Alfredo Schettini writes about this: « Le pecore al macello are set in an open countryside that recalls the landscape painting of Posillipo School. Pioggia di cenere and Immagini fugaci, from 1887, are above all views of the sky, while the sea occupies the largest landscape canvases, as in Funari, and in the two versions of Sommozzatori , in which everything is similar, and everything is different».[47] If in these works we perceive the persistent illustrative descriptivism, we discover how Toma would soon choose to renounce it: in the series of landscape representations created during his stay in S. Giovanni a Teduccio, we can in fact detect late tendencies towards adhesion to School of Resina. The artist gives evidence of this research in the Vesuvian views at different times of the day, in the versions painted between 1882 and 1886.
Of the two-year period 1888-1890, the final period of Toma’s activity, who died on 12 January 1891 following the stroke that had struck him a month earlier, we note Il Tatuaggio del Camorrista (1888-1889, cat . 29), created «with essential, constructive touches of colour, as can be seen in some details, from the tattooed man’s shirt to the blanket, to the pillow», [48]and the unfinished work of a subject centred on a tormented existence: Il refettorio delle cieche (1890, cat . 30 ) which, despite the visible regrets, relating «to the position of the figures and the presence of the drawn outline», is for Galante not «far from its definitive stage».[49]
Gioacchino Toma had no followers and perhaps he did not have the courage to show himself aware of the visual developments that the French painters had reached and that animated the Italian epigones and yet in certain works, we must recognize «Toma’s true greatness and the singularity of his art, new in Italy and precocious in Europe».[50]
[1]I find inspiration in what I had the opportunity to write in the article on Gioacchino Toma (Guastella 1996, p.11), published on the occasion of Lecce exhibition at Museo Provinciale Castromediano in February-April 1996 ( Gioacchino Toma 1996).
[2]De Donno 1867, p. 3; Minerva 2007, p. 241.
[3] Erroi, De Pascalis 2012, p. 22 ; Coi 2022, pp. 49-55; Galiotta 2022, p. 7.
[4]Gaetano Martinez’s quarrel against “Toma” committee emerges, A proposito di Gioacchino Toma 1926 , p. 1.
[5]F. Riezzo , in Gaetano Martinez 1999, p. 102.
[6] Mostra retrospettiva degli artisti salentini 1939, p. 50.
[7]Salerno 1954. The exhibition is also held in Rome at Palazzo delle Esposizioni between November and December, with a catalogue.
[8]Galante 1975; Galante 1996, p. 8.
[9] Gioacchino Toma 1995.
[10]Toma ed. 2011.
[11]Mormone 1995, p. 16; see Gioacchino Toma 1996, pp. 14-18.
[12] Gioacchino Toma 1996 , p. 16.
[13]Ibid., p. 18; Arta. Dalla collezione d’arte 2003, p. 53.
[14]«Even if not all of them can be attributed to him with certainty» (Galante 2008, p. 31), the scholar from Salento published, in addition to the aforementioned Natura morta con noci, verza e oggetti in rame, around 1851, Una dichiarazione d’amore dated around1874, il Ritratto di nobile con la croce dell’Ordine di Malta, Un fine pranzo in trattoria e un piccolo Ritratto di fanciullo, see Galante 1996, pp. 5-6.
[15]Cassiano places alongside Toma’s production: Un bambino sul seggiolone (Brindisi, private collection) and Natura morta con bottiglia di marsala , in Locorotondo, both bearing on the back the attributions signed by Michele Biancale, the depiction of La Botte, already mentioned in Lecce exhibition of 1954, belonging to Russi collection of Squinzano, then passed into an inaccessible collection, and a Giovinetta Sconsolata , see Cassiano 1996, pp. 11-12.
[16] Salento artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries 2007, p. 121.
[17]Ibid., p. 122.
[18] Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 14 .
[19] Artisti salentini dell’Otto e Novecento 2007, p. 122; Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 14.
[20]In Torchiarolo collection there is a Ritratto di giovane donna, executed in oil on canvas, 58 x 39.5 cm, perhaps a portrait of his wife, accompanied by an expert opinion on a photograph by Alfredo Schettini from 1972, who considers it a «very valuable unpublished and unknown work by Toma» (Torchiarolo, private collection archive).
[21] Galante 2022, pp. 149-154.
[22] G. Delogu, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 114. The work already exhibited in Lecce in Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954a , p. 37 plate 32.
[23] For the critical success of the painting see Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 79 n. 38.
[24]Galante 1975, p. 26.
[25]De Rinaldis 1934, pp. 62-63.
[26]Oil on canvas, 180×126 cm, I thank Pino Ciliberti and Giacomo Lanzilotta for kindly sending me the photo reproduction. The work is generically cited as “large austere painting” together with the Ritratto di fanciullo assigned to Toma now at Castromediano Museum in Lecce from Maurizio Aiuto Donation, see Minerva 2021, pp. 22, 45.
[27]This is an oil on canvas measuring 77×52 cm, see Galante 2008, p. 32.
[28]Galante 1996, pp. 7-8.
[29]Ciardo ed. 1990, pp. 138-139.
[30]Galante 2013a.
[31]Martorelli 1995, p. 27.
[32]Salerno 1954, p. 13.
[33]Causa 1955, p. 41.
[34]Guastella 2019, p. 153, and bibliography therein.
[35]Vacca 1933, pp. 225-233. See also Fersini 1999, pp. 149-152.
[36] Foscarini 2000, pp. 219-220. See also Cassati 1977, pp. 26-27; M. Peluso, V. Peluso 1977, pp. 129-130; Farese Sperken 1996c, pp. 79, 208, who points out La preghiera della pastorella (ibid., p. 81 with reproduction), an oil painting present in a private collection in Lecce and already exhibited in Lecce at the 1956 Sacred Art Exhibition, ibid. pp. 81-82 (the new edition with updates and insights is from 2015).
[37]In this debut production Nicola Vacca mentions: San Pietro in carcere, a lost work of which there is a copy in the parish church of Caprarica del Capo, San Pietro in carcere, formerly in Addolorata, in a poor state of conservation which he signed in 1854, in a private collection in Tricase, Vacca 1933, pp. 228, 230-232. See also Farese Sperken 2015, pp. 84-88, 217-218.
[38]Mormone 1995, p. 15.
[39] Ibid ; Foscarini 2000, pp. 219-220.
[40]A larger version with minimal variations is in a private collection.
[41]Biancale [1933], p. 35.
[42]Salerno 1954, p. 16.
[43] Mantura 1995, p. 13.
[44]di Majo 1995, p. 33.
[45] Biancale 1938, p. 267.
[46]Causa 1955, p. 48.
[47] Schettini 1967, I, p. 325.
[48] Galante 1975, p. 28.
[49]Ibid., p. 27.
[50] Mantura 1995, p. 12.
Francesco Netti, painter and art critic
Lucio Galante
«In the second [painting] – Francesco Netti wrote to his father on November 10, 1861 – I will paint an episode of the Revolution in Palermo. Everyone has painted Garibaldi’s battles to their heart’s content, events of the revolution: but I believe no one has now painted the domestic revolution, made by every citizen. Therefore I would like to paint a family, who has barricaded themselves in the house and is firing from the window, and a woman who helps loading the rifles, and everyone who, determined to fight to the end, has prepared stones, furniture, etc. to use when the ammunition runs out. The painting is of three figures and the main subject is the window.»[1]
I thought it useful to quote the well-known letter describing the painting Un episodio del 15 maggio 1848 (Napoli, Museum and Certosa di San Marino, cat. 31), which he had decided to make at his debut and in which he declared the reason that had prompted him, to give space to the “domestic revolution”. He was clearly convinced that the revolutionary movements had truly been popular, with the active participation of women; he had also added the elements that would compose the representation, in which the window would have played the “main” role, that of a light source, which, in fact, allowed him, by relating it to the shadows and the arrangement of the objects and figures, to define the space of the event. In the painting, a descriptive concern is also evident, which responded, at the time, to the need to make the event believable, as can be seen in the rendering of the fabrics and objects and in the actions of the figures. Finally, it is worth underlining the conscious use of the term ‘revolution’ to indicate the events that had led to the unification of Italy, facts not only perceived but also participated in.[2] The awareness that the political Risorgimento would have to involve the cultural one will be found in his critical writings. What is clear at that time is his commitment as an artist who felt the need to test himself on a Risorgimento topic.
The decision to devote himself to painting was definitive, so much so that he participated in the first four Neapolitan Promotrici: of the paintings presented, only the titles of the first, from 1862, Un Pensiero, of the second from 1863, Toletta per una mascherata and La sera del dì di festa, of the third from 1864, Un bibliofilo e La pioggia, and those of the fourth from 1866, Una processione di penitenza al Ponte della Maddalena, durante l’eruzione del Vesuvio del 1794: mese di,Giugno [3].
It was during this period that another decision was made, that of dedicating himself to art criticism, which materialized, as is known, in the publication, in 1865, of the review of the previous year’s Promotrice, an activity that would last until the end of the 1880s. [4]
It seemed to me, therefore, that this singular juncture was closed by the awarding of the prize to the work presented at the fourth Promotrice.[5]
The singularity of his condition as an artist was given precisely by his being at the same time a critic, a role that in that circumstance, and in all subsequent ones, he obviously could not cover in order to comment on his works. To the question, which I asked myself, how he would have judged his paintings, I seemed to be able to find the answer in the aforementioned review. I do not believe, therefore, it is useless to recall the structure that he gave to this text, organized according to the following thematic paragraphs: I. La pubblica esposizione, II. La critica, III. L ’esecuzione e la verità, IV. La macchia e il quadro finito, V. Il soggetto e il quadro storico, VI. Una fuga per le sale dell’esposizione, VII. Conclusione. As can be deduced from the titles, the fundamental paragraphs are those from II to V. When he set out to create La processione, he had certainly already elaborated his fundamental concepts, which were also at the basis of his intentions to give form to the event depicted. He, like Morelli in his work presented in that Promotrice, had not tried to represent the historical truth of the event, but «the feeling that an artist sees in a situation […] which is the true subject of the painting» and «that which makes you feel all the poetry of the subject of the painting» which «is precisely the execution, conceived as an impression of the truth». [6]
Who knows, then, whether the jury that judged his painting did not resort to precisely these criteria when it decided to award him the prize. Netti had been peremptory regarding the “subject”, when, in fact, he maintained to leave aside «the usual disputes of historical or genre paintings. They are not the ones that would advance painting by an inch; and painters would continue to make paintings in their own way, which is the best thing in the world», because the painting is «first of all a manifestation of painting and never a story or a chronicle».[7]
As concerns the painting La pioggia dated 1864 (Naples, Gallerie d’Italia, fig. 1 ), considering the subject and examining it for the first time, [8] I highlighted its difference from the “verismo” of the painters of the so-called School of Portici, and I stated that at that time Netti tried to make the critical awareness (manifested in the cited review) correspond to the artistic commitment, providing proof of a happy coincidence between theoretical clarity and poetic sincerity. Returning recently to the painting, I underlined that the object of the representation is not the meteorological phenomenon in itself, but, keeping in mind what was argued in the cited review, he had expressed the impression he had felt observing that reality. This explained what had been said about the pictorial aspect, for example by Bruno Molajoli , who had noted in it «that very fine effect of translucent luminosity contrasting with brown glazes». [9]
In fact, thanks to the pictorial rendering we perceive not only the physical effects of the rain, such as the wetness on the pavement of the street with the related light accidents, but also and above all the gloomy atmosphere that gives character to that portion of the city, where, despite the adverse weather conditions, life continues to flow, as we are told by the carriage that continues on its way, with its drivers sheltered by a comfortable umbrella, the two women who are freezing and quickly crossing the street, the solitary man (a homeless person?) who moves slowly and aimlessly, and a couple, equipped with umbrellas, seem to bring up the rear of a procession. Netti obviously did not comment on the work, but it is not difficult to imagine what he might have said. For example, that he had decided to express precisely what had impressed him most about that ‘situation’, which was certainly not one of those imagined and real, but certainly one of those observed so many times, and to do this it had not been necessary to describe in detail all the elements that composed it, but the feeling that such a reality had aroused in him, probably that background of silent sadness that accompanies the gloomy atmosphere of a cold and rainy winter’s day. Despite the small dimensions, the solution of the decentralized perspective system had also given that portion of the city the necessary breathing space to make us perceive it in its truth.
His appointment as a member of the Italian Commission for the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1867 led to his transfer to Paris at the end of the previous year, where he remained until 1871. In his review of the Exhibition, his analysis of landscape painting demonstrates the changed historical climate and the changed ideological motivations. [10]
The genre, which in the view of many critics, such as Massimo D’Azeglio, was still seen as uninvolved with respect to history painting, had become for Netti the one that had best responded to the need for greater popularity and the search for a path more suited to the new times, thanks to the “cult of truth”, which had thus ended up changing “even morally the course of artistic thoughts” ; therefore he found it questionable that D’Azeglio had been chosen to represent Italy for that pictorial genre – which was also poorly represented from a quantitative point of view. The comparison, then, that he made between the French landscape painters who, coincidentally, answered to the names of Dupré, Rousseau, Corot, Daubigny , Courbet, that is the protagonists of a great revolution, and the Italian ones selected for the exhibition, was naturally to the advantage of the former. The fact is that in Netti the idea of national identity was not separated from that of the need for modernity. For him it was no longer time to remain anchored to tradition, and he was not the only one to maintain that the genre in which painting had gained the goal of modernity was the “landscape”, an expression of the new times precisely because through that thematic typology the need for the democratization of art had been given substance.
The large presence of Neapolitan artists in the French capital has become the subject of many studies and an important exhibition in recent years. [11]
In addition to the commitment of the long review, Netti did not remain completely inactive as an artist. The creation of the painting Festa a Gretz is linked to his stay in Gretz (Bari, Corrado Giaquinto Metropolitan Art Gallery, cat . 34 ). It cannot be excluded that the choice of this theme was stimulated by what he had observed at Paris Exhibition, which had been the object of examination and consideration, in particular, those concerning “landscape” painting. He had highlighted the new aspects: the more correct and truth-like execution, the feeling of nature, the need for truth that had led to the overcoming of the conception of art, maintaining that the course of artistic thoughts had changed, even morally, aware, in affirming, also critically, that the new poetics had been accompanied by new technical discoveries, for which «the craft always remains an interesting part of painting however high the ideas it aims to express». The confirmation of this last conviction of his is precisely the preparatory work for Festa a Gretz (Bari, private collection). [12]
There has been no shortage of those who have seen in this work a reference to the “macchia” technique, which he knew well, having spoken of it in the 1865 review, which proved effective in that painting to render the naivety and truth of an occasional event: the popular festival of a small town, where the spectators gathered on the steps, the bright sky and the chalky white houses, bring to mind the descriptive grace of an Abbati or a Signorini.
The painting Dopo il veglione (Naples, Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte, cat . 33 ), made in 1872 in Naples, has been read as a reminder of the cultural and environmental climate of Paris, especially for the subject, about which he had clear ideas: that is, as claimed, to be an expression of the artist’s character, while keeping in mind that what mattered was its pictorial translation. It has been observed that the setting is certainly Parisian, and in the depiction it has been read as «an obvious touch of irony, which equally affects all the participants. Raising large clouds of dust, the street cleaners seem to literally sweep away, together with the rubbish, the two pairs of fleeing masks». [13]
It should be noted that the subject is not pure invention or even “genre”, and the pictorial solution adopted must be taken into account, starting from the place of the event which is not made “believable”; it is, in fact, a real city place, of which he has reproduced the constituent elements, the series of houses and buildings that delimit the space of the action, just as the dust raised by the street cleaners appears real to us, who seem out of focus, while the two masked couples are more clearly defined. It should be noted that the artist has even managed to render the twilight light.
In the years preceding the third National Exhibition of 1877, and his collaboration with the magazines «L’Illustrazione Universale» and «L’Illustrazione Italiana», Netti intensified his activity as a critic but also participated in the Promotrici, without interrupting his activity as a painter.
We do not know when he began the work on Coro antico che esce dal tempio (Naples, GAN-Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts , cat . 37), that he would present at the exhibition. The significant number of preparatory studies, including oils and drawings, tells us that its creation required a considerable amount of time and that, precisely because it was intended for this purpose, Netti must have considered its particular importance. Furthermore, he knew that the work would be compared with those of all the other artists in the country. Strange, if anything, was that it was he who reviewed the exhibition in the pages of «L’Illustrazione Italiana».[14]
It is also worth noting that he decided to begin his Note d’arte with a long introduction, in which he clarified how he would proceed, and, above all, what their purpose was: «to recognize (possibly) the present state of Italian art, or rather of the art that is represented at the exhibition», looking «preferably […] at the works […] that bear the imprint of an individual expression, those where the artist has manifested himself as he is, has said what he felt, has executed [the italics are textual because they referred to what he meant by “execution”] to express himself, and has worked rather for his own satisfaction than for the satisfaction of others». Needless to say, those must have been his intentions; «Such works – he added – already have a great assured merit, that of being rare, and one cannot ask them why they have given so much and not more, once what they give is all their own stuff». [15]
Even in this circumstance he, obviously, did not comment on his work; it would have been useless, because the answer lies in what he believed about the historical subject, that is, also that of his own painting. Against the risk of an “ academization ” of the poetics of “vero”, it was necessary to have a clear concept of “subject” that he now more explicitly identified with that of “situation”. The differences in social and ideal conditions between the present and the past, he maintained, did not allow any going back; what mattered was what reality at that moment required, that is, greater truth, “so that […] even when dealing with an ancient subject” it was first of all necessary to give it “a character, a soul, a passion”. In Coro antico the architectural setting, the resumption of iconographic motifs from ancient sources constitute only the indispensable documentary part. The meaning and the truth must be grasped in the ‘situation’: what is represented is a concrete event as it was felt and imagined by the artist. Here, then, is the meticulous and analytical rendering of the architectural environment, the attention to the various groups of figures, the theory of dancing girls, the crowded crowd rushing to attend the religious rite, but above all the sunlight, which also highlights the background and gives a sense of truth to the whole. Finally, he must have considered the horizontal format of the functional canvas.
Netti’s activity as a critic and writer did not, over time, lead to a reduction in his activity as a painter. This is attested by the number of works that make up his catalogue, which is still subject to increase.[16]
After all, painting had been his primary and fundamental vocation. In the aftermath of the National Exhibition, for example, he did not stop participating in the Promotrici, even if with pauses, and created works that have aroused particular interest in scholars.
New life experiences, such as the trip to the East, were then the occasion to create new works. Critics have already highlighted that as an artist he was fully aware of the changes that had taken place in the field of pictorial research, in particular, for example, with regard to the transformation of “verism” into “social verism“, or even the spread of the fashion for Orientalism. [17]
And yet, in his case, the reference to the East was interpreted differently. In the painting La siesta of 1884 (Bari, Pinacoteca Metropolitana Corrado Giaquinto, fig.3), the careful setting, from the lush vegetation to the large carpet in the background, from the embroidery of the blankets and the cushion to the abandoned flabellum, to the hookah , is nothing but the necessary frame for the woman’s sleep, whose abandonment seems almost underlined by the apparent disorder of the dress, the pillow and the subtly decorated blanket and the accidental balance of the flabellum. Nothing is casual, and everything reveals the careful study of every detail. What saves the painting from this excessive concern with getting it right is, however, the quality of the pictorial execution, especially in that subtle gradation of light tones. But as regards works that can be assigned to the years following the trip to the East, such as , for example, Ragazza assopita (Conversano, Polo Museale MUSECO), [18] it is difficult to recognise any suggestion of the oriental world: what stands out almost immediately is its status, a real sleep, because it is made spontaneous by the force of painting (note, in particular, the careful application of the flesh tone that stands out against the sketched pictorial conduct of the fabrics and whose naturalness also lies in the gradation of the natural colour, as natural as that of the visible parts of the straw-seated armchair). The orientalising suggestion is more obvious, even in the theme itself, in the painting Odalisca ( cat . 40 ). But if we look closely, more than the female nude, which has a long tradition in the history of painting and which is entrusted with the function of alluding to voluptuous physical beauty, it is the setting that refers to the exoticism of the East, recognizable, in particular, in the decorative richness of the fabrics: that is, precisely those elements that required patient pictorial elaboration, a fundamental step for Netti, who maintained, as already said, that the painting, first of all, was a manifestation of painting.
Upon his return to Santeramo, as known, Netti did not remain inactive; he committed himself to the conception and realization, which remained unfinished, of the cycle of I mietitori. Dedicated to the peasant world, in particular to agricultural work, it has found the critics in agreement in considering it an expression of Netti’s attention to human reality. When I had the opportunity to speak about it for the first time, it seemed to me, therefore, not by chance that the rediscovery of that world occurred by noting the unchanged conditions of forty years before; thus he wrote: «They are all farmers, but it is not agriculture understood as a science, which today has progressed everything, it is the material cultivation of a field as it was done a thousand years ago». [19]
I also recalled some judgments and observations: for Maselli his painting was presented with a «figurative rhythm more responsive to him […] materially marked by social references that somehow raise the artist’s faculty» and his last stage was marked by the possession «of human seriousness, of primitive morality, of the roughness of the customs customary to the peasants of his country»; [20]
and for Mormone the realism of the moment was, even, a reconnection, also on a stylistic level, to the European one. [21]
There is in these works a pictorial simplification that gains in expressive intensity, which becomes intensity of light in Il pasto dei mietitori, a work dispersed and known thanks to a photograph, [22] or a calm sense of reality in Riposo in mietitura ( cat . 43). That at the base there was a rethinking of “macchia” can be deduced from his proceeding with clear color breaks, which take on a constructive function in the definition of the image and at the same time, due to the tone, happily contribute to the rendering of light and atmosphere. These results of Netti were all the more important if related to the developments of the Neapolitan artistic culture of the last decades of the century. They confirmed that in the history of Neapolitan painting of the second half of the nineteenth century the most significant innovations had been the prerogative of the artists born in the Thirties, those of the season of verism, who could revive it as proof of coherence and moral rigour, even when the favourable historical conditions no longer existed.
[1]The letters are published in Farese Sperken 1996.
[2]In the early months of 1861, after leaving Domenico Morelli’s studio, Netti enlisted in the National Guard. This was the experience that allowed him to live intensely the final phase of the process of national unification, as witnessed in the aforementioned letters (see Galante 2013; Galante 2005).
[3]For the catalogues of Promotrici napoletane, from which the data are taken, see www.ODArC – Open Digital Archive of Catalogues .
[4]His writings are collected in Netti ed. 1980.
[5]About the painting see Galante 2018, pp. 199-204; Netti ed. 1980, pp. 7-29.
[6]The complete text was as follows: “This work alone would be enough to establish the fame of an artist and a painter. In it, what makes you feel all the poetry of the subject is precisely the execution conceived as an impression of truth.” When he recognized the qualities of Morelli’s painting, there was not only a debt of gratitude for the help he had received during his training, but also the intention that at that moment was guiding the realization then probably already underway, as attested by the many preparatory studies.
[7]Netti ed. 1980, pp.18-19.
[8]Galante 1981, pp. 103-136.
[9] Opere d’arte del Banco di Napoli 1953, p. 33.
[10]Netti ed. 1980, pp. 31-63.
[11] From De Nittis a Gemito 2017.
[12]Illustrated in Francesco Netti 1980, pp. 45-46. The drawing on paper in a private collection in Bari is also in Francesco Netti 2023, p. 35.
[13]Farese Sperken 1996, p. 15. The French title, La sortie du bal, rue de l’ Accadémie de Medecine, indicates a specific place in the city.
[14]Netti ed. 1980, pp. 129-193.
[15]Netti ed. 1980, p. 133.
[16] Gallante 2024 .
[17] Orientalisti 2011.
[18]In Francesco Netti 2023, p. 43.
[19]F. Netti, Lettera a Domenico Morelli, 19 July 1859, in Levi 1906, p. 102.
[20]Maselli 1952, p. 43.
[21] Mormone 1972, pp. 70-72.
[22] Francesco Netti 1980, p. 63, ill. p. 121.
Giuseppe de Nigris, the «wonderful exactitude» between patriotism, historicism and realism
by Rosa Esmeralda Partucci
Only rarely has historiography paid attention to the still not fully documented figure of Giuseppe de Nigris, which has highlighted some significant aspects of his artistic production. The physiognomy of this artist, however deserving and «devoted to glory», is still lacking of a monographic study and has often been outlined in the margins of other painters from the same context of origin and training. Consider, for example, Raffaello Causa’s contribution on Gioacchino Toma or Christine Farese Sperken’s research on 19th-century painting in Apulia, in which the painter’s profile is partially outlined. With the exception of sporadic biographical notes, mainly derived from the testimony offered by Maria Della Rocca, who in 1883 dedicated a detailed cameo to the artist, there are very few available sources relating to de Nigris, who in fact escapes scrupulous analysis of the historiographical documentation, since the traces that have reached us up to date are insufficient to verify the information transmitted by the critics of the time. Apart from the documents kept at the Historical Archive of the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples, which –briefly – give an account of the training period at the Royal Institute, and the interesting letter addressed to Annibale Sacco in 1884, made known by Mariantonietta Picone Petrusa, which documents the contacts with the administration of the Royal House for the allocation of the works, nothing else seems to have been acquired by the studies. However, from the examination of the catalogues of the exhibitions in which he took part, from the Promoting Societies (Naples, Genoa, Florence, Turin) and Brera exhibitions, up to the national (Parma, Naples, Milan, Venice) and international (Vienna, Paris, Melbourne) exhibitions, a truly interesting fact emerges: de Nigris was a regular visitor of art exhibitions and his constant presence therefore allows us to record the works proposed in the exhibition and to understand the nature of his artistic production. He was in fact a prolific author and well capable of mastering different artistic genres: from patriotic and irredentist historical painting to still lifes, from neo-Pompeian subjects to genre painting, investigating with an ironic and satirical vision topics of social nature, linked at times to the world of children, at times to the religious sphere and at times to folkloristic culture. His works are often indebted to the compositions of other artists, in particular to his fellow countryman Toma, with whom he is often confused, due to the adoption of common subjects and the melancholic atmospheres of certain paintings, but also to Induno brothers, due to the choice of certain compositional solutions found, for example, in the painting Impressioni di un quadro, which recalls those used by Domenico Nello studio del Pittore (1861) and by Gerolamo in L’imbaro a genova del Generale Giuseppe Garibaldi (1860).
The «Golden Dream» of Rome and the formative years
Contemporary sources report the presence of a «letter of recommendation» addressed to Achille Vertunni, living in Rome, with which Domenico Morelli favored the transfer of de Nigris to the city at the end of the 1850s, where he «studied art with passion and high intentions» .
Vertunni, who had already once agreed to the request to receive ” a Florentine painter ” recommended by the master, as shown by a letter dated December 10, 1857, once again did his utmost for the young artist from Foggia and «kindly welcomed him into his studio and subsequently showed him the greatest benevolence», as reported by Countess Della Rocca .
It is known that de Nigris – having received his first drawing lessons from his maternal uncle – had developed from an early age the dream of coming to Rome to «become an artist in that city» and it was «reading the history of Roman greatness, the lives of illustrious painters» that inflamed him «while still a child with the desire to go to the eternal city to study art».
Contemporary reviewers agree in reporting an adventurous episode from his childhood, first mentioned by Costantino Abbatecola in 1877, then by Della Rocca in 1883 and later by Vittori in 1894.
Firm in his conviction, at the age of sixteen, de Nigris left Foggia together with «another young man, the same age, his schoolmate and art friend», perhaps Vincenzo Dattoli, as today’s scholars would have it, fired with the same desire and also persuaded to pursue the glorious intent, that – yes, of going to Rome – but there «of enlisting in the armies of Lombardy or at least taking service in the Roman armies», joining the independence campaigns of 1848. After a march that lasted five days, tired in body but not in spirit, they stopped in Cassino, where they were stopped by the police and, found in possession of a pistol, a dagger and numerous “bellicose poems” of Rossetti and other great patriots, were taken to prison. Thanks to «very valid recommendations» and the intercession «of authoritative people in Cassino», who classified the episode as a “prank”, after a month the two prisoners were freed and directed to Naples, where de Nigris established his permanent residence from then on. Here he was admitted to the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in 1849 and, making his own way, he distinguished himself «for artistic merit and moral conduct» so much so that, years later, in 1866, his first painting teacher, Giuseppe Mancinelli, warmly endorsed the request for financial support, so that the Provincial Administration «would grant him suitable encouragement and also allow him to travel to the rest of Italy and abroad».
Considering de Nigris’ progress in painting, which earned him «the praise of the public and artists in all the public exhibitions of fine arts, and especially in the last exhibition of the promoter», in which «his painting representing the game of lottery reveals him to be an uncommon artist», Mancinelli stood as guarantor of “this worthy young man”, since «with such encouragement the aforementioned Province could be certain that De Nigris with his uncommon talent and with the firm will of always can advance in art, he would achieve such success as to honour his Province and Italy».
In fact, de Nigris revealed his pictorial qualities since the Bourbon exhibition of 1859, where he presented Ossian e Malvina (Palazzo Reale, Caserta), still of academic tone, with which he obtained the first class silver medal award.
It was probably Mancinelli’s recommendations that promoted the purchase by the Province of the paintings La mano del ladro ( cat. 45 ), exhibited at Promotrice of 1864, and, later, also of Les merveilles du chassepot ( cat. XX ) of 1870 and Il campanello della parrocchia , signed and dated 1885.
It is probable that the acquaintance, not well documented, with the Calabrian Giuseppe Benassai and the Sicilian Salvatore Grita – referred by Della Rocca (and repeated in recent studies) to the Roman period – dates back instead to the years of training at the Institute and was strengthened during his stay in Rome in 1859. In fact, the presence of both artists in Naples is attested already in the mid-fifties: the first arrived in 1856 as a student of Salvatore Fergola, the second instead in 1854 following Antonio Calì. Their « intimate friendship » would have led de Nigris to «completely renounce the old academic principles» and to dedicate himself to the study of reality, also on the basis of the Palizzian and Morellian verb.
” L’amor patrio ” and the subjects of Risorgimento
Having returned to Naples in 1860, driven by a renewed expressive urgency and «boiling with patriotic love» , he zealously treated subjects of Risorgimento, producing several canvases between 1860 and 1862, including Garibaldi dicente: Che tristo destino degli uomini lo scannarsi fra loro!, presented at the first Exhibition of the Society for Promotion of Fine Arts in 1862. Purchased by “Mr. Count Tasca in Palermo” and never repainted, the painting was supposed to depict «Garibaldi on horseback, paused thoughtfully in front of a group of Garibaldian and Bourbon corpses mixed together, the sight of which saddens him and makes him deplore the sad necessity of that fratricidal war ».
The subject of a second canvas, smaller in size, painted at the same time as the previous one, was also conceived with reference to the clashes of Garibaldi’s expedition, but representing «an episode of Palermo revolution», that is, the insurrection that took place at the end of May 1860. A «third painting», mentioned by Della Rocca, also dates back to 1861, which reproduces Garibaldi in Caprera (Giulio de Martino’s collection; fig. 1 ), whose portrait was judged to be «very similar» and was approved by the general himself, who – as Vittori recalls – was generous «with praise for the artist, and Laura Beatrice Oliva Mancini – the patriotic poet so dear to Italy – wanted to make a copy of that happy painting herself».
It cannot be ruled out, in fact, that de Nigris used a photographic medium to execute the portrait, as he often did, perhaps using the well-known half-length carte de visite , made by Leonida Caldesi for Blanford & Co in Naples in 1861 (London, National Portrait Gallery, inv. Ax17833), as the many physiognomic correspondences would indicate (the wide receding hairline and the curls at the base of the neck, modelled in the same way). We should also point out the presence of a small, signed painting of unknown location, presented at the exhibition Garibaldi: Larger Than Life at Garibaldi Meucci Museum in New York in 2011, which in my opinion could be the preparatory sketch for Garibaldi a Caprera ( fig. 2 ).
Still insisting on Garibaldi events, the painter from Foggia created Impressioni di un quadro, signed and dated 1863, also known as Omaggio a Garibaldi ferito sull’Aspromonte.
Exhibited at the Neapolitan Promotrice in 1864, together with La mano del ladro , the painting offers the image of a group of observers who in turn scrutinize a canvas depicting the wounded general on the Calabrian promontory. Through the expedient of meta-vision, the artist devises a double narration, which allows for the simultaneous representation of a historical event and its immediate reception among contemporaries. Already with this work de Nigris gives proof of an uncommon conceptualism, capable not only of conveying a personal critical vision (see in fact the concentrated and serious expression of the man on the right, in which one could recognize the author himself), but also of renewing the traditional iconological codes, proposing figurative statements with a double register of reading. This attitude can be found in much of his genre painting, as well as in Les merveilles du chassepot ( cat. 46 ), proposed to Promotrice of 1870 together with Bersagliere sugli spalti , in which, with the astuteness of a chronicler who misses nothing, he undermines all patriotic and clerical rhetoric, thus showing the depraved face and sadistic ostentation of the monk, who complacently observes the pile of lifeless bodies fallen in Mentana.
Genre painting: still lifes
The existence of the Natura morta con agnello (Naples, on deposit at Villa Rosebery, fig. 3 ), signed and dated 1859, places the beginning of this type of production back to a phase in which, as Raffaello Causa maintained, the «old traditional trend of local naturalism» was strongly felt in the academic world, and artists such as de Nigris and Toma were not left unscathed by its influence. In fact, the legacy of the eighteenth-century tradition (De Caro, Nani, Menendez) is mainly recognizable in the lenticular description of details and in the adoption of strong light contrasts, masterfully enhanced by a dark background. The natures are in fact exhibited in a close-up and the choice of subjects reveals de Nigris’s predilection for elements belonging to Neapolitan culinary and material culture, as demonstrated by “casatiello napoletano” that appears in the above-mentioned Natura morta con agnello and which, together with lamb, caciocavallo, “ricotta di fuscella” and other vegetables, characterises the baskets still prepared today for Easter celebrations. The catalogues of the Neapolitan Promotrici record the presence of a certain number of still lifes executed between 1872 and 1885, among which is Un gatto ladro , probably considered the work preserved at the National Museum of San Martino in Naples, due to the presence of the cat attracted by a plate of fresh sardines (cat. 47). This element allows us to compare this subject with two works found on the antiques market: one known with the title Disputa della cena (Doyle of New York, auction of 14 February 2006, lot 3086) and the other, Giochi di bimbi, of smaller dimensions, signed and dated 1881, sold at Bolli&Romiti auction in Rome, on 3 December 2019, lot 302 ( fig. 4). In this last canvas, crossing the topic of still life with that linked to the world of children, the artist inserts into the composition, described with accurate realism, the figures of two amused children, intent on persuading the cat to pounce on the fish, placed on the table between an overturned pan of vegetables, a flask of wine and a piece of meat. The two still lifes, which became part of the English collection of Wilson– Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum thanks to a donation by Edward Rogerson in 1901 (inv. nos. 1901.1.1; 1901.1.2), are both signed and present a composition that reveals a common creative idea, but different from the examples distributed in Italy, due to the acquisition of a much lighter palette and a white background.
We also note the passage on the market of a small painting (Blindarte auction in Naples, 23 May 2017, lot 141; fig. 5 ), signed and dated 1873, depicting a greengrocer sitting next to her goods, which can probably be attributed to the subjects known with the title Na verdummara, presented in the rooms of Promotrice on two occasions, in 1872 and later in 1885.
Visions of an ancient time and a childish world
It was the dreams of youth and the readings on Roman antiquities that fueled de Nigris’s interest in the subjects of Pompeian inspiration, produced between 1869 and 1885, precisely in the years of greatest diffusion of the neo-Pompeian genre. Although time has not returned yet even one work of this series or any reproduction of it, the reviews that have appeared in the magazines allow us to describe the composition of some of these canvases and to reconstruct the critical success of at least the most acclaimed ones. Exhibited at Promotrice of 1869, I fanciulli pompejani was judged «a work full of grace and vivacity» and was also excellently reviewed by Cesare de Sterlich, who observed how the childhood of those young people was useful in suggesting «an intimate scene of that buried city from which the most marvelous moments of the ancient city emerge after twenty centuries».
A contemporary source reports that in that very year de Nigris had made an excursion to Vesuvius in the company of Toma, Boschetto, Romano and d’Ayala, to observe the effects of the 1869 eruption at close range. A painting with the same title was then released in 1879 and could probably be a second version of the previous subject. The latter was briefly mentioned in Nicola Lazzaro’s article in «Gazzetta letteraria» , while the reviewer of «Roma Artistica» dwelt more at length on those «dear, lively and carefree» children, «who are remembered with such pleasure by those who have been able to admire this beautiful canvas which presents them under a vague aspect».
The subject of the work is known thanks to the description reported in «Il Pungolo», in which we read that the children «had organised a representation of a military triumph; but, when a wheel slipped off the small chariot, or triumphal chariot, the boy inside, wearing a purple toga and a laurel crown, was seen to have fallen to the ground, while the two who were pulling the vehicle and the other who was carrying the captured weapons burst into laughter».
The following year, de Nigris took part in the second National Exhibition of Parma with the canvas Piccoli gladiatori pompeiani , which was noted by Telemaco Signorini for the «graceful idea and […] the execution of certain parts is as fine as that of an ancient cameo».
At Promotrice of 1871 he presented Una Pompeiana, depicting «a young woman spinning, and meanwhile smilingly observing a cat that would like to grab the spindle from a marble table, where there are flowers, a glass and a vase; further back you can see the well-known statuette of Narcissus on a pedestal. The woman’s head is animated by a lovely joy; under the tunic her chest is partially visible; her arms are bare».
The subject of this canvas seems to be similar to that of a painting in popular costume, found on the antiques market at the Leski Auctions auction in Armadale (5 September 2021, lot 125), in which a woman is seen, leaning against a wall, playing with the spindle and a cat.
Pompeiana was remembered by the reviewer of «Il Pungolo» for the realistic rendering of both the environment, which «it seems you can walk through it», and of the figure, «because it harmonizes wonderfully with the background from which it stands out».
In June of the same year the painting had already been sold to the English lord Philipps, who purchased it together with Felicità conquista by Saverio Altamura.
Encouraged by the accolades and the progress made in recent years, de Nigris made his debut on the international scene, sending Ultimo giorno di Pompei to the Universal Exhibition in Vienna in 1873 which “obtained a real success […] and Società Promotrice, in Bologna, purchased it for the prize-giving ceremony.
Francesca Sinigaglia is credited with finding a document that allows us to establish precisely the year of purchase of the painting by Società Protettrice of Bologna in 1874, for a sum of 2000 liras, which was then immediately put up for grabs in a lottery and probably purchased by a private individual .
This time the historical reenactment was elaborated through the acquisition of a literary filter, mainly provided by the novel Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei by Edward Bulwer-Lytton from 1834, inspired by the canvas of the same name by Karl Pavlovič Brjullov and, in turn, by the theatrical performance by Giovanni Pacini, staged at Teatro San Carlo in Naples on 19 November 1825. Also of a neo-Pompeian subject is Una poetessa in famiglia, as can be learned from the review of the XII exhibition of Promotrice in 1875, where the canvas was proposed and appreciated. In fact, we read on the pages of «Il Pungolo» that the author «has depicted a large Pompeian room, in the middle of which a young woman, sitting at a table, thoughtful and collected, seems to be about to compose verses, while on the right side two figures are partially visible, one of which is trying to place a laurel wreath, suspended from the top of a cane, on the poet’s head. These two figures are smiling at the imagined joke and at the surprise that the young girl will feel, who, turning her back on them, cannot notice it».
Not having iconographic sources, we can only guess how well versed de Nigris was also in this artistic genre, trying his hand at the complicated reconstruction of Pompeian environments and the reuse of ancient finds, which certainly required an almost philological attention to archaeological materials, found in many artists in the sector (Miola, Maldarelli, Sciuti, Altamura, Netti, Boschetto, De Gregori, De Martini etc.). The inclusion in Una Pompeiana constitutes the proof of the statue of Narcissus, found in Pompeii in 1862, which was the inspiration for many neo-Pompeian works, such as the bronze statue by Vincenzo Gemito of 1885. The production of works with an ancient theme seems to end with Il foro di Pompei, sent to the International Exhibition of Melbourne in 1880, and with Pompei e il suo nemico, presented at Promotrice of 1885, of which however there is no trace, as they do not appear in the reviews of the time.
Not unlike Toma, de Nigris was also attracted by the narration of the children’s world, dedicating to this theme not only many neo-Pompeian works, as mentioned above, but also subjects of a genre, sometimes characterized by a playful tone (for example in Un medico in erba , cat. 48 ) and sometimes full of underlying social implications (as in I giochi dei ricchi and L’ultima risorsa). cat. 50 and 51 ), which reflect on social inequalities from the point of view of children.
From popular and anticlerical themes to the epilogue
When the Italian section of Vienna International Exhibition opened in 1873, foreign critics were deeply impressed by the works of our artists, Alceste Campriani, Giacomo di Chirico, Rubens Santoro, Federico Cortese, Francesco Netti, Edoardo Tofano, including Giuseppe de Nigris, because «they all have this kaleidoscopic sparkle, this style of painting that makes the paintings look like mosaics made of precious stones».
Furthermore, their canvases were populated by subjects drawn from the real world and the most varied characters: «a crowd of canopies, priests and altar boys, peasants who salute and kneel as the Sanctissimum passes by, weddings, horse races and country festivals, everything colorful, lively, shining with the Neapolitan sun: this is usually the content of the images» .
In fact, popular themes constituted a significant part of de Nigris’s production, to which he devoted himself since 1866 with I giuocatori al Lotto, proposed to Promotrice of that year and drawn up in two distinct canvases with a few variants.
In the version recently reappeared at the Wannenes auction in Genoa on 18 June 2024 (lot 177; fig. 6), a disparate group of people is gathered outside a lottery shop: some of them are busy checking the numbers of the latest draw, while the rest of the bystanders are already regretting not having been lucky. Drawing inspiration from reality, in this work the artist does not limit himself to the depiction of a social practice that was widespread among the less well-off classes, as well as among the bourgeoisie (as demonstrated by the presence of more than one wealthy man), in fact, he offers the opportunity to reflect on the innate inclination of the population to entrust the resolution of economic difficulties to fate. Upon closer inspection, the presence of posters on the walls, one of which has an explicit socio-political content, seems to propose an alternative subtext to the immediate reading of the work, alluding to the hunger for “freedom and work” of the people, who are not given any opportunity other than that offered by the means of fortune. As argued by Isabella Valente, the painting finds a valid counterpart in Incoraggiamento al vizio by Michele Cammarano (Pescara, Museo dell’Ottocento Persio-Pallotta Foundation, 1868), marked by clear anticlerical intentions that denounce the misery of the Roman population under the papal government, deaf to the appeal for assistance and food of the crowd, crowded outside the door of the convent. Furthermore, a subject similar to that of de Nigris was drawn up by Giacomo Favretto in L’estrazione del lotto (1880), equally imbued with a polemical and humorous sense, expressed by the excitement of the people gathered at the ticket office in “calle dei due mori” in Venice. The denunciation of the precarious conditions of a large part of the population is the subject of the canvas Il Banco de’ pegni del Monte della Pietà, inaugurated at Promotrice in 1869, in which the «scene […] reveals misery and suffering, vice and shame».
The subsequent exhibitions were followed by works whose titles foreshadow difficult topics to deal with and effects of pathetic sentimentalism, such as: La sventura oltraggiata (Naples 1867), Le cieche operaie (Naples 1876), Concerto per ciechi (Naples, Accademia di Belle Arti, 1886); Giornata triste (Naples 1887, 1888) and L’ultima risorsa (Naples 1891), La sperenza nella sventuta (Turin 1896). Referring to the work Giornata triste, observed at Promotrice in 1887, Michele Ricciardi argued that de Nigris’ painting is a little lacking in color, «nor superb in concept and he is still romantic in his means of execution. His scene is essentially Neapolitan as Neapolitan is the feeling, which transpires from the faces and attitudes of the figures. A beautiful young girl of the people and a traveling guitar player are sitting on the steps of a church. The daughter counts the money collected by her blind father and the human feeling rises powerfully: that feeling, due to the preconception of the painter, who seeks the effect, becomes sentimentality».
Indeed, like other artists of social realism, the works of this period are influenced by the climate of post-unification crisis and the general social discontent, arising from the disappointed expectations of political and socio-economic renewal of the South, whose fortunes worsened further a decade later, generating widespread discontent. In addition to these underlying reasons, in most genre production there is a constant anticlerical motif, already noted in Les merveilles du chassepot , but made even more evident in Servite Domino in laetitia (Naples 1879), in which “a sinewy priest, who is languidly reclining in an armchair, with his feet by the fireplace, and his elbow resting on a table full of delicacies, pretends to read the breviary. Instead he looks with satisfaction at a stocky and pleasant servant with blond hair, who in a provocative pose offers him a cup of coffee.
Although the concept is not new, since it was «copied from some prints that come from France and Germany», the «marvellous accuracy» of the representation and the truth of the objects reproduced in the manner of a still life correct the painting from every defect, making us «forget the lack of originality and the lack of interest».
With sarcasm and irony de Nigris adopts an oxymoronic title for this lascivious composition, since in recalling the evangelical joy of the Christian mission, he denounces the decline of the clergy into vice and vile pleasure. A similar conceptualism is also proposed in the work Meditazione, exhibited and purchased by Società Promotrice in 1893, whose title, while wanting to allude to mystical concentration, instead ironically refers to the figure of the cleric absorbed in prosaic readings, fished out of the basket of a street vendor. The discovery of a description not yet acquired for studies, which appeared in the magazine «La Tavola Rotonda», has allowed us to relate for the first time the unpublished painting from Museum of San Martino ( cat. 53 ) to Meditazione dated 1893, of which the small double-sided panel is the preparatory sketch. The source reports that «a begging monk is stopped in front of the steps of the church of Constantinople, on which a type of vendor very well known [also to the artist, evidently] has displayed in a beautiful order his goods, consisting of old books and drawings. The beggar meditates in front of the portraits of Pius IX, Crispi, Garibaldi, Mazzini, Leo XVIII, Cavour, which are placed next to each other, in a harmony, which is certainly neither historical, nor political, nor religious and which captures the attention of the beggar. The salesman, who is smoking his pipe, lying high up on the last steps of the church, looks at him ironically, perhaps enjoying the strange impression he receives from the monk in seeing Pius IX and Leo XVIII among Mazzini, Cavour and Garibaldi.
According to the reviewer, who did not spare any harsh criticism, the painting must have exhibited great accuracy of detail, although the composition seemed rather «monotonous and sad» and the subject appeared to be «a bad photographic reproduction of a small picture that has no interest whatsoever».
Much acclaimed was instead the subject of L’ultima messa ( cat. 49 ), performed in two contemporary versions, whose merits not only stimulated the interest of the king, but also earned its author the nomination of honorary professor of the Royal Institute. Also worth mentioning are the works connected to popular devotion, not devoid of a strong folkloristic character, in which the sacred is mixed with the profane, such as the processions of Saint Anthony ( cat. 50 ), Il Campanello della Parrocchia (Naples, Metropolitan City, 1885), Processione di penitenza nelle catacombe di Napoli (Naples, Academy of Fine Arts, 1886) and La Croce (Naples 1888).
Equally appreciated was Il frenologo Gall (Rome, Palazzo del Quirinale), considered the painting «among the most beautiful of the exhibition» of Promotrice dated 1894, in which Vittori extolled «the very high qualities of de Nigris’ painting», being able to reproduce with scrupulous truth the portrait of the doctor and the multitude of busts, skulls and volumes that crowd his study. The framing and the immediacy of the work seem to reveal, in this case too, the use of a photographic support, to which the artist often resorted. Furthermore, the painting could be compared to Faust (1879) by Raffaele Armenise from Bari, which depicts the famous character while examining an animal skull sitting at his desk, occupied by books, bone remains and a phrenological head. For the 1896 exhibition, de Nigris dedicated «another graceful» painting entitled Mutuo soccorso, in which we see «a donkey tied to a cart on which is another blindfolded donkey, returning from the blood-letting man».
Admired mainly for the well-conceived background and for the excellently painted cart with the beast, the work shows the artist’s talents «in portraying animals», already recognized by Giuseppe Amati in the painting La mano del ladro , as well as a particular interest in treating animal subjects, as demonstrated by their recurrence in the painter’s works.
In the biographical medallion dedicated to de Nigris, Countess Della Rocca concluded with some severe considerations, considering him «not among the first of Neapolitan art». He was indeed a “very industrious” artist, who produced and sold a lot, probably also to a foreign market, and this would explain why many works have not been traced to this day. He was certainly a «conscientious painter, faithful reproducer of the truth, full of inspiration and who worthily holds a place among the best. There is not much to hope for from him, but what has already been done is enough for posterity not to forget him» .
Passionate about culture and the city of Naples, he chose it as his second home and source of inspiration for many of his paintings, and he remained there until his death, which reached him in his home in Marano di Napoli on 2 February 1906.
EXHIBITIONS
1862 – Promotrice of Naples
Garibaldi dicente: Che tristo destino degli uomini lo scannarsi fra loro!
1863 – Promotrice of Naples
Gender framework
1864 – Promotrice of Naples
La mano del ladro
Le impressioni di un quadro (Omaggio a Garibaldi ferito sull’Aspromonte)
1866 – Promotrice of Naples
I giuocatori al Lotto
1867 – Promotrice of Naples
La sventura oltraggiata
1869 – Promotrice of Naples
O fanciulli pompejani
Il Banco de’ pegni del Monte della Pietà
1870 – Promotrice of Naples
Les merveilles du chassepot
Bersagliere sugli spalti
1870 – Nazionale of Parma
Piccoli gladiatori pompeiani
1871 – Promotrice of Naples
Una pompeiana
1872 – Promotrice of Naples
Un gatto ladro
Natura morta
Natura morta
Na verdummara
1873 – Promotrice of Naples
Dopo la lezione
1873 – International of Vienna
Ultimo giorno di Pompei
1875 – Promotrice of Naples
La canzone d’amore
I verbi latini
Il Cenciaiolo
1875 – Promotrice of Naples
Un medico in erba
Una poetessa in famiglia
1876 – Promotrice of Naples
Le cieche operaie
1877 – Nazionale of Naples
La canzone d’amore
Le cieche operaie
Vino e donna
L’ultima messa
1878 – Exhibition of Brera
In flagrante crimine
L’ultima messa
1878 – International of Paris
L’ultima messa
1879 – Promotrice of Naples Servite Domino in laetitia
Fanciulli pompeiani
1880 – Promotrice of Naples
L’ultima messa
1880–International of Melbourne
L’ultima Messa
Operaie cieche
Un’eruzione del Vesuvio
Mergellina
L’acquedotto di Claudio
Costa di Sorrento
Costume di Palazzolo. Castrocielo
Paesaggio con capra
Torre del Greco
Il foro di Pompei
1881 – Promotrice of Naples
La Porta Capuana a Napoli
1883 – Promotrice of Naples
La processione di Sant’Antonio Abate
Nel mio Studio è il Manichino
1885 – Promotrice of Naples
Na verdummara
Il campanello della Parrocchia
Pompei, e il suo nemico
1887 – Promotrice of Naples
Giornata triste
1877 – Nazionale of Venice
Il primo ritratto
L’ultima risorsa
1888 – Promotrice of Naples
Giornata triste
La Croce
1890 – Promotrice of Naples
La fontana
1891 – Promotrice of Naples
L’ultima risorsa
1893 – Promotrice of Naples Meditazione
1894 – Promotrice of Naples Il frenologo Gall
1896 – Promotrice of Naples
Mutuo soccorso
1896 – Promotrice of Turin La speranza nella sventura
1897 – Promotrice of Naples
La distribuzione del pane di Sant’Antonio
Giuseppe Forcignanò and Francesco Giambaldi, two artists from Salento in Paris between the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Massimo Guastella
Peppino Forcignanò from Gallipoli and “ lu Ciccillu ” Giambaldi from Lecce are two forgotten
“artistes salentini de Paris”, who have not had the notoriety in the local artistic history that was somehow recognized to them in France. In Paris, where they lived between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, their artistic exploits are intertwined with unfortunate personal events: the first, a painter, sentenced to forced labor for uxoricide, ends his days in French prisons at the age of fifty-seven; [1]the second, a sculptor, with the code name of “Foulard” is the confidant of the Ministry of the Interior of the Italian government, through the spy network directed by Count Toninelli, Italian ambassador in Paris, infiltrated in the Italian anarchist circles active in the capital [2]and it cannot be considered a coincidence if his studio catches fire and «it was not only the place where the artist worked, but it was also a gallery full of paintings, important collections of sculptures since Giambaldi, in addition to being a man of letters and a sculptor, was a shrewd collector and boasted very precious collections of great value».[3]
The critical success in Italy of both artists is very poor, and it is appropriate to refer to the contributions of the last decade by Ilderosa Laudisa for Giuseppe Forcignanò [4]and Paul Arthur for Francesco Giambaldi, [5]who died at just 50 years of age.
In this regard, a more detailed survey of the production of the two artists of Salento origin is hoped for, combined with the reorganization of the reports of art criticism in France between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, and, starting from this brief contribution, a greater attention from scholars is suggested, indeed a substantial re-evaluation, since up to now, in my opinion, the two personalities and their works have been unjustly neglected by art history literature.
Giuseppe Forcignanò painter and uxoricide in Paris
Giuseppe Forcignanò was born on December 20, 1862 and lived with his father’s second wife, Pasqualina Fersini [6]. Giuseppe, known as Peppino, showed his passion for painting from an early age and his father, a teacher and poet, encouraged him.[7]
At the beginning of 1882, the Provincial Deputation of Lecce offered a subsidy, requested by the Municipality of Gallipoli, “to the young nineteen-year-old […] painter of great promise”, of L. 75 for attending the Drawing courses at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Naples. [8]It is not clear whether he finished his studies. Among his youthful works are the portrait Umberto I of 1884, Ritratto di Rembrandt dated 1885, Ritratto di Francesco Valentino, made in 1887, and Ritratto di Emanuele Barba, dated 1891, representations that correspond to the declinations of nineteenth-century celebratory portraiture, preserved in the Civic Museum of Gallipoli. [9]A similar approach is found in Ritratto Giambattista Guarini (Lecce, Municipality), mayor in office in the capital of Salento from 1854 to 1858.[10] Around 1891 Forcignanò was in Rome, but maintained relations with Salento and collaborated as an illustrator for the Gallipoli vernacular fortnightly «Mamma sarena », published between 1891 and 1894. [11]For the inaugural celebrations of Lecce Civic Museum (1898), he donated a pastel on paper, recognised by critics as Marina di Castro ( fig. 1 ), depicting, for the reviewer of «Corriere Meridionale», «la riviera di S. Cesaria, with an artistically reproduced cliff», who added: «What is admirable is a brilliant sky, shaded by pink clouds, and a sea lightly agitated by a morning breeze, which prove once again the power of the genius of this brave artist, whose name is so well known everywhere». [12] The pastel, en plein air , is close to the style of Giuseppe Casciaro, who he frequented during his Neapolitan education. Nature predominates, animated only by a triplet figure of the fisherman with his back to the viewer; the light impacts the landscape and cancels out its sharp contours; the rocks and the surface of the water and the clear sky are distinguished by their changing colours, white and light blue, ochre and blue and green.
At the age of thirty-seven, around 1899, the artist decided to emigrate to San Nicolas de los Arroyos, in Argentina, where he obtained the chair of drawing at the National College of San Nicolas. The approvals in the judgments on the works he created in those years did not take long to arrive. In 1902 «Corriere Meridionale» [13]published some excerpts of the «flattering reviews» dedicated to the artist. «La Nacion » highlighted how much Forcignanò impressed them with «his luminous studies , full of so much spontaneity, where the color placed there in a manner that seems distracted, but is jovial and effective, sings and laughs with an abundance of intense tone, without being noisy». His frequent participation in exhibitions in Buenos Aires is attested by the newspaper «La Patria degli Italiani» (18 March 1902) which recalls how much the large painting is appreciated, «depicting an episode of the recent great Argentine naval maneuvers», exhibited in a «Florida showcase», and which represents «a duel at night between the armored cruiser Buenos Ayres and torpedo boat Espora », well executed despite the difficulties of recreating the scene that the painter from Gallipoli has «been able to overcome happily, making a painting that, especially for the decorative effect, is very pleasing and has real merit». [14] It is the periodical «El Diario» which informs that the work representing the « Buenos Ayres and Espora in the first phase of the latest naval maneuvers of Argentina» was purchased by «Mr. Minister of the Navy» who came to consider it «as one of the best that Buenos Aires art has produced ».[15]
On May 21, 1903, Forcignanò inaugurated a personal exhibition, Esposizione Forcignanò , set up in Peracca house , as reported by «La Capital» di Rosario; [16]the works were appreciated for «the beauty of the style and the sweetness of the color». [17]There were numerous seascapes, but «singular», for the public, was «the expression of his Ecce Homo and Ciaramellaro gaitero », [18]two works that seem to be, by theme, pertinent to the Italian iconographic tradition, especially in the subject of the bagpipe player with bagpipes, as can be seen from the translation of the title. «Il Noticiero » [19]of San Nicola tells an unpublished detail regarding the «ornamentation» of the room, entirely executed by the artist, corresponding to an allegorical decoration of the curtain that was part of the background scene. The reviewer offers a careful description of the details that range from the symbolism of the eagle, «strength of the glorious nation» of Italy, which holds in its claws the shield with the «cross of Savoy», and also «the gold plate on which “Libertas” was written»; these scenographic elements are flanked by «two grandiose portraits» of the «two heroes of Italian unity: Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuele II». It is «a revelation of the scenographic art that he demonstrated to have like few others» that strikes those present and is considered one of his «specialties» [20] This information, far from negligible, would open new insights into the knowledge we have today of Forcignanò’s artistic production.
In 1905 Salento press published news that came from correspondents in Argentina, enthusiastic about the fortunes and praises that «the brave Peppino Forcignanò» was receiving with Ritratto di Manuel Quintana , «new president of the Republic» since 1904, displayed in the shop window on Via Florida.[21] Forcignanò «he managed to capture the intelligent face on the canvas with such vitality», that the portrayed, after having seen it, had it purchased by the Presidency of the Senate of the Nation and the correspondents met the painter who showed them nostalgia for his country and for the absence of his father Luigi. [22] The letters he sent to his sisters, in particular to Nina, shed some light on Peppino’s life in this period of years. [23] The news of his successes was counterbalanced by the artist’s restlessness, as documented in the letter dated 22 November 1909 to his sister, the first of many that recount stories linked to melancholic thoughts and economic problems. The desire to return to Italy remained alive in him even if «it is so difficult when you are not rich, to move from this country». [24] Even though he had a good job, in 1912 he considered Argentina, «an ungrateful country for an artist».[25]
When he was 48 years old, in August 1910 [26] Peppino married Rosa Fernandez Simonin (San Nicolas, Argentina, 1874 – Paris, 1914), [27]a well-known Argentine journalist, director of San Nicolas College and author of children’s books, [28]of whom he had already spoken to his family on a trip to Gallipoli, [29]presumably in 1907 on the occasion of the death of his father Luigi. [30] The couple both landed in Genoa in September; after having undertaken several trips, on 11 March 1913 Giuseppe informed Nina that they were moving permanently to Paris following Rosa’s appointment as “correspondent” for “La Prensa” in the French capital. [31] From June of the same year he sent letters from the Parisian apartment located in rue de l’Université. He said little about his job as a painter. He highlights some details: «I still have not wanted to barter myself by selling paintings to art dealers (who are always loan sharks) and I walk with leaden feet waiting for the right opportunity in the hope of being able to start the best I can in my artistic life here». [32]So he tries to “tempt fate”. [33]
With these words full of hope Forcignanò says goodbye to his sister, unaware of how much his life would change in a few days. On the morning of February 17, 1914, in the grip of furious jealousy, he kills his wife, in their home, shooting her twice with a rifle. He turns himself in to the police, without knowing that Rosa is dead, but believing she is only wounded. He spent the last five years of his life in French prisons, starting with La Santé, with a ten-year sentence to be served in the penal colony of Guyana, which was changed to four years of forced labor on the island of Saint-Martin-de- Ré , and then, thanks to the commutation of the sentence to simple imprisonment obtained on September 14, 1918, in La Rochelle, painfully waiting to be transferred to Melun, where he never arrived after death. The Parisian newspapers offered many details on the sad story and also told how this gesture was unmotivated for “Josè”, a painter in search of redemption who, after having traveled a lot, had achieved with his wife a serenity in his work and «who lives of his art and had more times exposed in the salon of Independents from works with a taste assez hardi ».[34] He shares his passion with Rosa. «Execute the sketches accompanying the articles of your woman and sell separately those pages with originality and talent».[35] Many are pointing out that her “talent de portraitiste ” is about to assert itself in the city.[36]
In the days preceding the tragedy he was completing three paintings to exhibit at the Salon, but evidently he did not have time to send them. This is confirmed by the direct testimony of Carlo Gaspare Sarti, [37]correspondent from Paris for «La Tribuna». The journalist went to the Salon with the intention of finding the works of the seventeen Italian artists who appear in the exhibition catalogue, but, mainly, with the «pressing curiosity to see the paintings that Giuseppe Forcignanò was finishing in the days when fate was preparing his misfortune». [38]Sarti fantasizes [39]about the possibility of being able to perceive what «tremors» should have «shaked his hand»; he provides the titles of the three works that Forcignanò would have exhibited and says that he wandered around the rooms, looking for them without any success. He asks himself: «Where is that Mattino della vita that he cared so much about, that Punta dell’Inca that he had sketched in Buenos Aires, that Testa di Donna that he never wanted to part with?». The paintings that the painter “dreamed” of exhibiting in Paris are “unfindable”.[40]
From prison, Peppino continues to write to his sister Nina, unaware that the end of his days is coming. [41]
The letters tell of regrets, misunderstandings, happy memories and belated feelings of guilt, perceived by a man tried by the thoughts and precarious health conditions that a few months, according to him, from the hope of definitive release for good behavior, would actually lead him to death.[42]
Today, the artist’s varied pictorial production remains to be traced in its entirety, with the exception of the study of some works from private collections started by Ilderosa Laudisa in 2014. [43]Among those found on the collectors’ market, and precisely in Minerva Auctions auction held in 2014 in Rome, [44]a Nudo di giovane donna ( fig. 2 ) and two pleasant seascapes stand out: Pescatore in barca al tramonto (fig. 4) and Barche in secca a Mergellina (fig. 3), certainly attributable to the Neapolitan period. The paintings convey a minuteness of details in the different shades of a bright sunset, with touches of thick brush strokes that revive the brightness of the sea and the reflection of the sun, barely visible on the horizon, among the shadows of the evening. The recovery of the truth and the impressionistic rendering of the entire composition are the stylistic features of the artist, from which to start to investigate in depth this convincing artist, but unfortunate man.[45]
Francesco Giambaldi sculptor and spy in Paris
Born in Lecce (1867) Francesco Ignazio Annunziato Giambalvo’s son, he was orphaned by his father, a public security officer. [46] After his mother disappeared, perhaps kidnapped, he was raised by relatives “at S. Francesco” [47]in the capital of Terra d’Otranto, who educated him with lessons for elementary studies and taught him the rudiments of drawing and plastic art. He moved to Naples around 1883. [48] What is more certain is that, self-taught, he went to the capital as he himself testifies: «I did not study in any academy; I educated myself by studying in books, reading a lot, seeing, admiring, observing, loving nature and Beauty. Having left Lecce at sixteen, I spent some years of my youth in Rome. I adore Rome, as I adore Greece. These are my teachers». [49]In Rome, according to Teodoro Pellegrino, he deepened his studies of literature and art and «collaborated with Imbriani and Felice Cavallotti, but he supported more than one polemic with D’Annunzio».[50]
He returned to Lecce, at the age of twenty, on September 1, 1887, to answer the call; on November 8 he was called up for military service and on the 29th of the month joined the 38th Infantry Regiment. [51]The military record describes the young Francesco Giambalvi, or with his real surname, as one meter and sixty centimeters tall, with a dark complexion, straight brown hair, gray eyes and a scar on the left cheekbone, he declares his profession as “scritturale”. [52]Above all, we read of charges of April 7, 1889 and a subsequent disciplinary measure of May 17, which constitute important clues to what would happen later in his life in Paris: «Put in prison of the body awaiting trial, accused of subversive intentions and for direct participation in a society adverse to national institutions. Such in the 1st Punishment Company, as per the military disciplinary regulations».[53]
In 1894 he was in Rome. The information coming from the capital reveals that his surname was slightly changed to Giambaldi [54](perhaps because of the assonance with Garibaldi, a surname celebrated in Europe?), but above all they let us know that he was «the Roman correspondent of the Giustizia Sociale di Palermo», guilty of a well-known episode in Lecce when «together with Sergeant Catanuto he took the famous bundle of papers from the Hon’s house. De Felice to the home of the parish priest Don Concetto Urso» and therefore finding himself «at Aragno café with some socialist friends» a customer amazed «to see him in that place, called him a spy for having denounced Sergeant Catanuto ; while Giambaldi was trying to clear himself, his adversary struck him in the face». [55]
His nature, therefore, was already emerging at that time.
On August 1899 he put his works up for sale in « Cocorico »; therefore, credibly, by that date he had already moved to Paris. It remains difficult to systematically reorder his artistic career, [56] especially in light of what has emerged about his double life.[57]
In the City of Light he lived for a while in the Passy district, in the 16th arrondissement. In the Cabinet des Estamps of The National Library of France’s stamps preserve some of Giambaldi’s prints, including a Tête de femme levée, engraving believed to be by an imitator of Charpentier. [58]
It could be assumed that he refined his knowledge of plastic art in Parisian artistic circles close to Alexandre Charpentier, since in his production one can perceive that versatility towards the arts, not only sculpture but also the minor ones, with an interest in the decorative arts influenced by Art Nouveau, dominant in Paris between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.
Studies conducted a decade ago by Enrico Tuccinardi and Salvatore Mazzariello revealed that Francesco Giambaldi, close to the Italian anarchist movement in the late 1880s, moved around 1900 and was hired by Giuseppe Tornielli, Italian ambassador to France from 1895 to 1908, where he directed the spy network of infiltrators among the Italians who had taken refuge in Paris, a crossroads of anarchist emigration. Of a restless nature and passing himself off as a sympathizer, Giambaldi assiduously and cynically frequented the militants of the Italian group called “la Sciarpa”, which included anarchists such as Arturo Campagnoli, Silvio Corio, the painter Felice Vezzani and Nino Samaia, linked to Errico Malatesta.[59]
He frequents the cultural circuits of the French capital: «I am a friend from middle Paris – alone exclaim at his moments bitter – now I grow the other mitad » we read in an obituary of 1918 in the Argentine magazine «Augusta Revista de arte». [60]In fact, he established relationships with various intellectuals and artists. The writer, caricaturist and literary critic Ernest La Jeunesse dedicated to Giambaldi «a sonnet-prayer», in the periodical « Gil Blas», describing him while he was «en taquinant le marbre , en violant la glaise / en faisant de la pierre une chair de douleur ». [61] He collaborated with the fortnightly «Le Fureteur », directed by the young Louis Dourliac , who dedicated a review to him in 1901.[62]
Paul Boutigny , painter, illustrator and director of the Art Noveau magazine « Cocorico », called him to collaborate between 1899 and 1902, to execute drawings, engravings on plaster, terracottas. [63] The magazine had the covers illustrated by renowned artists such as Mucha, Steinlen , Grun , Kupka , and the cover for the Christmas 1900 issue was created by Giambaldi, with a reproduction of one of his works ( fig. 5 ).[64]
Victorien Du Saussay , in the passionate novel Femme, Amour , Mensonges dated 1905, «makes a living portrait of Giambaldi, […] he was small, fat, short, common; he had big hands, big fingers, big arms […]. On an enormous pelvis, an obese belly rounded off its width. He had soon become bald. His face was […] almost bestial, his lips sensual […]. A bull’s neck […], he was therefore ugly. Moreover, he possessed, to the highest degree, contempt for the conventions of the world, he would not have stooped to an elegant baseness, he disdained his contemporaries whom he accused of all the villainies».[65]
Among his friendships were a devoted one to the writer Anatole France, [66] a certain closeness to the bass-baritone singer Jacques Isnardon [67]and an acquaintance with a prominent figure such as Auguste Rodin, considering that «François Giambaldi» was among those invited to the banquet in honour of the sculptor, held at the Café Voltaire on 11 June 1900, with other artists and writers such as Jean Moréas , Oscar Wilde, Emile-Antoine Bourdelle , Georges Grappe, René-Albert Fleury, Vollard, Paul Sérusier to name but a few.[68]
He also maintains contacts with intellectuals, artists and Italian notables present in Paris. In 1903, he attends with journalists the celebrations in honor of the King and Queen of Italy, confirming that «le statuaire Italian well connu » enjoys consideration in institutional environments .[69]
In April 1905 “ lu Ciccillu ” – as he liked to call himself when he wrote to friends – [70]joined the establishment of an association of independent artists, sponsored by the Italian government, at the studio of the painter Crotti, at 95 rue des Petits-Champs, whose president was the Milanese sculptor Medardo Rosso, with Felice Vezzani and other artists he met in Paris. [71]
It should not be overlooked that, between art and espionage, Giambaldi alias Foulard remained an important confidant of the Ministry of the Interior, and therefore denounced «Vezzani, as the one who “captains” the Italian anarchists who emigrated» and informed «the Italian authorities of Corio’s plan to publish a single issue for soldiers of the disciplinary companies and military prisons in which an article by Cipriani, one by Vezzani and one of his own would appear». [72]
«His underhanded infiltration» remained constant over the years and «he maintained his role and procured information for the Italian authorities. In any case, no one ever discovered his double game». [73] His ambiguity meant that who, in addition to proving himself to be «a perfecto bohemian endowed with a great intelligence , a vast culture and a prodigious [74]fertility », is in fact a treacherous character, an aspect that never emerged until the historical research of the last decade. So much so that the change of his surname and the two devastating fires in his ateliers raise questions.
Not many of his works can be traced due to the adversities mentioned above. According to the current state of studies, the beginning of his critical history in Paris dates back to 1899 when, in the magazine « Cocorico », a Vase 26 cm high, probably in ceramic, is offered for 300 francs. There is also a bronze version [75]of the Vase de fleurs , with a female nude with long hair in a sinuous posture, holding the edges of the fabric to represent the lightness of movement, in an Art Nouveau style; the small sculpture combines, in symbiosis, the formal and functional elements of the vase; the contrast between the golden patina of the female figure and the dark drapery behind her stands out. A similar aesthetic, oriented towards the new style, can be seen in the Nudo di Ninfa tra le Onde ( fig. 6 ), the small golden patina figure of the young, naked, sensual Nereid is lying on the crest of the dark brown bronze-toned waters. Another vase, made in pewter, was published by « Cocorico » in August 1899, indicating a price of 500 francs. [76] Winding lines and soft shapes, with Art Nouveau suggestions, recall in the subject lovers kissing, on Rodinian and broadly Klimtian cues; perhaps it can be identified with that Bacio seen in the photograph by Valentini: [77] the anatomical rendering seems balanced and well made, the plastic discourse becomes intense and emotional, while the structure of the vase takes on spiral lines to become wavy at the mouth.
We do not have any type of confirmation of the “médaillon en terre- cuite d’art Le Duc de Reichstadt by the master sculptor Giambaldi », prepared for «Le Fureteur , journal de la curiosité » which offered it free of charge to its subscribers and announced starting in December 1900.[78]
In August Dourliac gave us back a medallion in 1901 poetic of the sculptor salentino , after have visited his atelier in Passy: «blanc de plâtre, rouge et suant de la lutte chaude avec les shapes puissantes et les subtiles élégances des lignes nobles, criant de sa voix romaine: Good morning, friend » , and describes it while «blanc de plâtre, rouge et suant de la lutte chaude avec les formes puissantes et les subtiles élégances des lignes nobles, criant de sa voix romaine: Buon giorno, amico», e lo descrive mentre «Courbé sur la glaise compacte, haletant le souffle de son rêve, les regards chargés de formes et de lignes, la face rouge au dessus des blancheurs du torse puissant tendu dans l’angoisse de l’œuvre, les mains poignantes dans un geste de caresse, le sculpteur».[79] It would seem that Louis Dorliac observes in the « âmes chères au maître master» a group of portraits of celebrities of the time, Gautier, Verlaine, Nietzsche, Beethoven and the myth of Sappho. For example, Busto di Nietzsche , with its austere expressive tone, can be recognized in the photograph proposed by Oronzo Valentini in «La provincia di Lecce», in the article summarizing Francesco Giambaldi’s stay in Lecce. [80]The subject of Sappho falls within the common themes of that symbolist climate at the turn of the century; this is confirmed by other works that Valentini himself reveals to us that he saw, being moved, in the photographs shown to him by the artist: Lo Schiavo and Bacio.[81]
The successful artist received from Mr. Paul Boutigny a new job to illustrate “ Cocorico ” story ( fig. 5 ) , come from the page of another periodical “Justice”: “Have the cover of a publication modeled illustrated by a sculptor , is not, in fact , a banal idea . This is what he has just achieved. To tell the truth, the innovation is not absolute. We are reminded of an issue of the same Cocorico published a few months ago, decorated with a page in glyptography by Mr. Giambaldi. It is to this same sculptor that Mr. Boutigny asked for the cover of his Christmas issue, published a few days ago. The high relief very skillfully executed by Mr. Giambaldi and excellently reproduced by a photographic process of rare perfection is printed on a reddish background , giving the illusion of a pottery panel. It is a very curious effect, very decorative, which could receive varied applications.[82]
Francesco Giambaldi’s closeness to the editorial staff of « Cocorico » indicates his adherence to the Art Nouveau taste, highlighted by the two vases of flowers published in the magazine. The artist reveals a particular predilection for the technique of “ photosculptogravura ”, which consists in the modeling of subjects in clay that, once completed, are photographed for various editorial uses, especially postcards. [83] Due to the success achieved by this production, Giambaldi commercialize it by founding, with the engraver and anarchist from Ravenna Antonio Biancani, the “Société Biancani et Giambaldi photosculptogravure ”, then dissolved on 26 September 1905. [84]
Examples of this are some postcards taken from clay reliefs: Vals St Jean and Vals Precieuse , from 1903; Le Quattro Stagioni dated 1904; Quo Vadis series from 1905, including La Mort de Petrone , Le baiser d’Eunice , Le Cirque, Lune de Miel .
On February 21, 1902, in the news pages, «Le Figaro» reported the fire in Francesco Giambaldi’s studio, located at 50 rue Saint-Georges, « in t dans le nouvel atelier, recemment installè par M. Francesco Giambaldi, sculpteur italien» ».[85] The damage is considerable caused by fire that «a dètruit des tableaux de valeur, la bibliothèque des cires en cours d’exècution et Lugete Veneres!… quatre maquettes d’un buste de Mlle Liane de Pougy». Waxes, sketches, Rossetti’s precious paintings, his library and valuable manuscripts burn, and the studio is not covered by an insurance policy.[86]
The nature of the fire is unknown, but it cannot be a coincidence that after three years it happened again.
For the Dieudonné matinée, at the Sarah Bernhardt theatre, Giambaldi created the cover of the booklet containing unpublished drawings by Clairin and Louise Abbéma and various portraits of the beneficiary.[87]
The artist from Lecce also works in locations other than Paris, such as the marble statue, located in the Parc Miraton in Chatel-Guyon, witnessed by postcard reproductions ( fig. 7 ) . The sculpture, a blend of classical-symbolist language, personifies the thermal water source that the pharmacist, Gilbert Miraton, discovers on his property and bottles with some success.[88]
Around 1903, he executed the bust of Paul Frank.[89]
Having opened a new atelier on the ground floor of 112 Boulevard Malesherbes , on the ground floor of the villa which houses artists’ studios, on the morning of 9 March 1905 it once again suffers destruction due to flames from the stove, as the chronicles report; although painters, sculptors and even female painters rush to help from all sides, the model burns his beard and the artist suffers burns to his face and hands and, therefore, asks for hospitality from his friend the singer Jacques Isnardon , «dont l’ hôtel est contigu ».[90] A good part of the production is destroyed : «Ford un Christ qu’il veinait de terminar, œuvre intéressante et sortant de la tradition, une serie de “Cléo de Mérode”, et une serie de “ Wagneries ” en collaboration with Mme Judith Gauthier».[91] The article in « Gil Blas » calls the lost work [92]Christ socialiste , which he was working on with the living model.
After the disaster, he returned to Lecce for a short stay, meeting up with his few relatives and socializing with local intellectuals, some of whom he had met during his childhood; he mentioned Donato Greco, Luigi Paladini, the sculptor Luigi Guacci, Cosimo De Giorgi, who took him to visit the excavations of the Roman theater recently rediscovered in Piazza Sant’Oronzo, [93]and Oronzo Valentini, who left us a dense report, with some personal judgments, citing surviving works that Giambaldi could only show in photographs, such as Lo Schiavo and Il Bacio : “The first is both Michelangelo-esque and Rodin-esque , the second is as beautiful as Afrodite che esce dal bagno , the divine bas-relief from the Museum of the Baths of Rome, found in Villa Ludovisi!”, [94]referring to Ludovisi Throne preserved in the National Roman Museum of Palazzo Altemps.
In 1905 he reached Rome, where he met his wife’s relatives, [95]and travelled to Calabria and Sicily, to Syracuse, Palermo – where he contributed to «Giornale di Sicilia» on Wagner – [96]and Santa Margherita Belice in the land of his paternal grandfather, a Bourbon officer, and presumably in the same year he went to Greece, as a correspondent for a Parisian newspaper to illustrate the monuments.[97]
Around 1906-1907, when he moved back to Paris, where he lived with his wife and son, and reopened his atelier at 9, Via Falguerre , Montparnasse, [98]two friends from Lecce visited him and discovered that he was playing the organ while singing L’ Ave Oronti, a sacred hymn to the patron saint of Lecce.[99]
In October 1910 he exhibited at the Salon de l’Union International des Letters and of Beaux -Art at the Alcazar d’ Eté on the Champs Elysées , and the critic Ernest La Junesse wrote of him: «Adding to the science of modern thrill and modern anguish the notion of classical purity and beauty, traditionalist and innovator, Francesco Giambaldi, writer, poet, philosopher, always agitated and prophetic and to the point of beatitude has something eternal in himself. He is not of yesterday nor of tomorrow; he is eternally current». [100]
Among his last undertakings, from 1909, is the creation of the monumental statue of Giovanna D’Arco , designed by the Dominican abbot Louis-Albert Gaffre , known as Prémartin (1862-1914), presented in 1911 at the Salon des artists français ( fig. 8 ), and intended for the Vieux-Marché square in Rouen, where it was inaugurated on 20 May 1912.[101]
Debussehère writes : «Jeanne d’Arc est représentée expirante sur le bûcher, elle a déjà la vision du ciel, elle sert contre sa poitrine une croix. Les statuaires ont su exprimer la douleur causée par les flammes, en même temps que l’extase de la martyre.»[102]
After a new financial crisis and a period of hospitalization, due to the news of the death of his son Aldo who fell in the Ardennes, [103] he died on January 10, 1918, at the age of 50. [104]
He was buried on January 12 in the Parisian cemetery of Ivry.
[1]Sarti1914; Forcignanò ed. 2013.
[2] Tuccinardi , Mazzariello 2014, pp. 5-7pm.
[3]Pellegrino 1965, p. 3.
[4]Laudisa 2014.
[5]Arthur 2024.
[6]Foscarini 2000, p. 115. I am grateful to Prof. Daniela Rucco for sharing suggestions, observations and information regarding the artistic path of Giuseppe Forcignanò.
[7] Laudisa 2014, pp. 299-303.
[8] Lettere dalle Provincie 1882, p. 2.
[9] Pindinelli 1984, p. 119; La Selva 1984.
[10] Cipriani 2018, pp. 92-93; Farese Sperken 1996c, p. 195; Farese Sperken 2015, pp. 99, 203; Pittori pugliesi 2013, p. 73; Terragno 2015, p. 48.
[11] De Rossi 1980.
[12]Appunti Gallipolini 1898, p. 2; le feste inagurali 1898, p. 2.
Cipriani 2018, pp. 92-93; Farese Sperken 1996c, pp. 98-99, 195; Farese Sperken 2015, pp. 99, 203; Pittori pugliesi 2013, p. 73.
[13]Concittadini altrove 1902, p. 1.
[14] Ibid .
[15] Ibid .
[16] Da Gallipoli 1903, pp. 1-2.
[17] Ibid .
[18] Ibid .
[19] Ibid .
[20] Ibid .
[21] I nostri artisti 1905, p. 2.
[22] Ibid .
[23] Forcignanò ed. 2013.
[24] Ibid , p. 23.
[25] Ibid. , p. 39.
[26]On 8 September 1910 Forcignanò wrote to his sister after having landed in Genoa, wondering if she had received the letter of 7 August, with the enclosed invitation to his wedding, see Forcignanò ed. 2013, p. 27.
[27]For biographical and photographic information on Rosa Fernández Simonín see San Nicolás Antiguo online Un viaje al Pasado Escritora de manual
[28] Forcignanò ed. 2013, p. 27.
[29] Ibidem .
[30] Ibid ., p. 36, the artist specifies that he resided in Naples «five years ago». He writes: «I stayed there for only eight days, ill, and left immediately for Gallipoli». The time frame would coincide with 1907. See also Laudisa 2014, pp. 299-303.
[31] Forcignanò and. 2013, p. 44.
[32] Ibid. , p. 48.
[33] Ibid. , p. 51.
[34] Faits Divers 1914 b, pp. 1-2.
[35] Faits Divers 1914a, p. 2. See also Magne 1914, p. 3.
[36] ” Mr. Forcignanò, whose talent as a portraitist is beginning to show itself, worked tirelessly on the completion of several canvases while ” reads in ” L’Express” (Un drame conjugal 1914, p. 2). See also Ganimard 1914; Un artiste peintre 1914, p. 1; De deux coups de fusil 1914, pp. 1-2.
[37]Carlo Gaspare Sarti has been the correspondent in Paris since 1911 for the Roman periodical “La Tribuna”, cfr. De Stefani 1993, pp. 65-81 .
[38]Sarti 1914, p. 5.
[39] Ibidem .
[40] Ibidem .
[41] Forcignanò ed. 2013, infra .
[42] Ibidem .
[43]Laudisa 2014, pp. 299-303.
[44] Dipinti e disegni antichi 2014, p. 69.
[45]This is how Carlo Gaspare Sarti defines him in «La Tribuna» (Sarti 1914).
[46]Pellegrino1965, p. 3.
[47] Appunti Gallipolini 1898, p. 1.
[48]Foscarini 2000, p. 122; Pellegrino 1965, p. 3; Pellegrino 1976, p. 15.
[49]Valentini 1905b, p. 1; Valentini 1905c, p . 9.
[50]Pellegrino 1965, p. 3.
[51] ASLe , Military District of Lecce, Ruoli Matricolari , year 1867, vol. 41, matr . 91.
[52]Ibid.
[53]Ibid.
[54] «Corriere Meridionale» 1894, p. 2. This news would deny that he assumed the surname in Paris as supported in Tuccinardi , Mazzariello 2014, p. 18 and Arthur 2024, p. 68.
[55] «Corriere Meridionale» 1894, p. 2.
[56]Arthur 2024, pp. 68-79.
[57] Tuccinardi , Mazzariello 2014, pp. 18-22.
[58]Pellegrino 1965, p. 3.
[59] Tuccinardi , Mazzariello 2014, pp. 18-22. On the figures of the Italian anarchists see the entries in Franco Serantini Library ; Licandro 2015.
[60] Francisco Giambaldi 1918, p. 156; Tuccinardi , Mazzariello 2014, p. 19.
[61] Le Diable Bolteux 1904, p. 1 ; see also Valentini 1905b, p. 1; Valentini 1905c, pp. 6-7 .
[62] Dourliac 1901, pp. 507-508.
[63]News on « Cocorico » 1899, inside cover; « Cocorico » 1900, inside cover; « Cocorico » 1901a, inside cover.
[64]« Cocorico » 1901b, cover ; «La Justice» 1902, p. 1.
[65]Valentini 1905b, p. 1; Valentini 1905c, p . 7.
[66]Valentini 1905b, p. 1; Valentini 1905c, p . 5.
[67] DV 1905, p. 3.
[68] Le Banquet de La Plume 1900, pp. 487-488 ; Arthur 2024, p. 68.
[69] Lalo 1903, p. 2; Bocquin 1903, p. 3.
[70]Pellegrino 1965, p. 3.
[71] Beaux-Arts 1905, p. 2.
[72]Antonioli, Vezzani, Felice , online .
[73] Tuccinardi , Mazzariello 2014, p. 22.
[74]Ivi, p.19.
[75]” Cocorico ” 1899a, second cover.
[76] ” Cocorico ” 1899b, second cover .
[77]Valentini 1905b, p. 1; Valentini 1905c, p. 6.
[78] Memento 1900, p. 813 . The news was spread by numerous Parisian newspapers during the period.
[79]L. Dourliac 1901, pp. 507-508.
[80]Valentini 1905b, p. 1.
[81] Ibid ; Valentini 19052c, p. 6.
[82] Echos 1902 , p. 1.
[83]Arthur 1924, pp. 69-70.
[84] Dissolution Société 1905, p. 1354 ; Arthur 1924, pp. 69-70.
[85] De Paris 1902, p. 4.
[86] Le feu 1902, p. 5; «L’Aurore» 1902, p. 3 .
[87] Crispin 1902, p. 6.
[88] See r .Quand l’ Eau changes , p. 24 .
[89] «Revue moderne» 1903, p. 22.
[90] DV 1905, p. 3. Isnardon is a tenant of the same building , Hauser 1905, p. 3. Other newspapers spread the news.
[91]De Paris 1905, p. 4; Pasquin 1905, p. 3; Remember 1905, p. 3; Le Diable Boitrux 1905, p. 1.
[92] Le Curieux 1905, p. 3.
[93]Pellegrino 1965, p. 3.
[94]Valentini 1905b, p. 1; Valentini 1905c, p. 6.
[95] Valentini 1905a, p. 1.
[96] Ibidem .
[97]Pellegrino 1965, p. 3.
[98]Lo scultore Giambaldi 1910, p. 1; L’opera di un nostro concittadino 1910, p. 3 .
[99] Ibidem .
[100] Francesco Giambaldi 1910, p. 2. Pellegrino 1965, p. 3.
[101] De Narfon 1909, pp. 3-4 ; Un nostro artista 1909, pp. 1-2; L’opera di un nostro concittadino 1910, p. 1; Le Senne 1911, p. 186; Le Gay 1911, p. 2 ; Pellegrino 1965, p. 3. Other newspapers report the event.
[102] Debussehère 1912, p. 2 .
[103]Pellegrino 1965, p. 3.
[104] “La Liberté” 1918; Archives de Paris, état civil – January 10, 1918 in Paris 4th, act no. 120, view 16/31, p. 2.
SHEETS
SHEET 1
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
Cortile rustico / Cortile al sole
Around 1864
Signed lower right: De Nittis
Oil on canvas, 17 x 18 cm
Naples, Certosa and Museum of San Martino, inv. 13720
A creaking wooden door opens onto a rustic courtyard bathed in the clear light of a spring morning. The jasmine, climbing ivy and leaves of a magnolia with their shades of green contrast with the yellows of the beaten pavement and the tuff of the buildings. A contrast accentuated by the shadowed foreground and the bright background. A child remains still and seems almost intrigued by the presence of the painter (and of us as observers), who, as in a photographic snapshot, immortalizes this daily moment charged with an unspoken lyricism and a melancholic streak. It seems to smell the scent of the tree species, the heat of the sun on the face softened by the sea breeze, all the sensorial triumph that the Vesuvian area can offer in the summer. We are probably in Resina or Portici, places chosen by that “Republic” of painters, as Domenico Morelli ironically renamed them, who could not stand the academic climate of those years, including the different reformed orientations of Neapolitan painting. And it is precisely at the dawn of the School of Resina and of De Nittis’ artistic production that this small but very precious canvas should be placed. Elimination of every trace of preparatory drawing, primacy of color, which is entrusted with the creation of shadowy silhouettes and volumes, small format of photographic inspiration, marked preference for intimate and family scenes imbued with a melancholic realism “in the shadow of Vesuvius”: these are the characteristics of the young De Nittis and his colleagues of Portici Republic. Close similarities, both in terms of subject and execution, can be found between our canvas and another Interior of a Courtyard by Marco De Gregorio, also preserved in the Museum of San Martino: this similarity underlines the commonality of intentions and values that permeated the climate of the anti-academic School of Resina.
Exhibitions: Il paesaggio nella pittura, Naples 1936; Giuseppe De Nittis, Naples 1963; La Scuola di Resina, Naples 2012.
Essential bibliography: Il paesaggio nella pittura 1936, p. 85 n. 5; Piceni 1955, p. 177; Molajoli 1958, p. 67; Giuseppe De Nittis 1963, p. 61; Pittalunga, Piceni 1963, n. 16; Causa 1966, p. 35; Causa 1975, p. 20; Il secondo ’800 italiano 1988, tav. 220; Giuseppe De Nittis 1990, p. 68; Dini, Marini 1990, n. 24; C. Farese Sperken, in Civiltà dell’Ottocento 1997, p. 548; V. Lanzilli, in La Scuola di Resina 2012, p. 50.
Loris Cozzolino
SHEET 2
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
Sull’Ofanto
1864-1867
Oil on canvas, 50 x 58 cm
Inscription on the back of the frame: “De Nittis Giuseppe / Palude presso l’Ofanto / Ownership Cav. R. Ferrara”
Bari, Metropolitan Art Gallery, Corrado Giaquinto, inv. 311/270
This sharp glimpse of his native land set in a timeless atmosphere entered the Art Gallery of Bari in 1936, donated, jointly with his entire collection, by the collector Riccardo Ferrara. The acquisition was particularly important as it enriched the institution, which a year earlier had purchased Controluce and Paravento giapponese, with another work by the painter from Barletta, this time related to his native landscape. Set in the marshy area of Ofanto River, the painting was perfectly comparable to a pictorial genre destined to influence the development of the so-called ‘school’ of Apulian landscape painting, which recognised in its author the role of precursor and main interpreter. In fact, De Nittis was to be credited with having laid the foundations of a trend that, through peculiar representational methods faithfully anchored to places, had gone on to claim a linguistic autonomy freed from the glittering Neapolitan Vedutism. He had succeeded in capturing the charm and intimate, subdued beauty of those places, even in the quiet atmosphere, purified of chromatic sonorities, of a marshy landscape that simply reproduced a bush of reeds with a flock of swallows, the only hint of life in the solitude of the places, gliding in a circular movement.
The work should be dated to the late 1860s. Just a few years earlier, in 1863, the painter, still enrolled at the Neapolitan Institute of Fine Arts from which he would be expelled that very year, had received by the Council a mention «for merit» in landscapes painted from life” (R. Institute 1864, p. 10). At the time, De Nittis was used to paint en plein air in the countryside near the Royal Palace of Portici as part of an artistic association, the School of Resina, which included, among others, Marco De Gregorio, Federico Rossano, Raffaele Belliazzi. That Sull’Ofanto is an early work is attested by the clear contiguity, also due to the use of a palette set on low chromatic gradations, predominantly greenish and earthy, with the Bufali in riva all’Ofanto, of unknown location, where however the view widens to contemplate a large portion of the river, dotted with the characteristic bushes. Dating back to a period around 1864, Bufali in riva all’Ofanto is earlier than Sulle rive dell’Ofanto (1867, Florence, Natonal Gallery of Modern Art), which proposes the extreme horizontal format.
However, Sull’Ofanto contrasts these works with a close-up point of view that is also found in the painting Studio di palude, with a diagonal cut, in Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan.
The restoration, carried out in the laboratory of the then Superintendency for the Historical, Artistic and Demo-ethno-anthropological Heritage of Apulia (2002-2004), lightened the pictorial film from numerous repaintings, ascertaining that the signature, already legible at the bottom left, is apocryphal.
Exhibitions: Prima mostra, Bari 1930; Giuseppe De Nittis, Naples 1963; Terra e mare, Barletta 2009; Passioni di un collezionista, Bari 2010; La Scuola di Resina, Naples 2012; Infinito Leopardi, Recanati 2019.
Essential Biography: Gervasio 1937, p. 36, n. 72 (con ill.); Belli D’Elia 1972, p. 17, n. 41, p. 16 ill.; Farese Sperken 1975, p. 375; Le collezioni 1977, pp. 43-44, n. 140 (con ill.); C. Farese Sperken, in Giuseppe De Nittis 1990, p. 71; Dini, Marini 1990, I, p. 381, n. 172, II, n. 172 ill.; C. Farese Sperken, in La Pinacoteca Provinciale 2005, p. 63, n. 61a (con ill.); R. Falcone, in Terra e mare 2009, p. 170, tav. 2 p. 75; V. Lanzilli, in La Scuola di Resina 2012, pp. 64-65 (con ill.); C. Gelao, in Da Terra di Bari 2015, p. 193, tav. 1 pp. 52-53; F.R. Posca, in Infinito Leopardi 2019, pp. 28-29, tav. 1 p. 29.
Lucia Rosa Pastore
SHEET 3
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
Casale nei dintorni di Napoli
1866
Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 76.5 cm
Signed and dated lower right: De Nittis 1866
Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, inv. 60 P.S
Exhibited for the first time at the fourth Neapolitan Promoter in 1866 and, on that occasion, chosen as a prize by the Royal House, the work ‒ also inventoried as paesaggio presso Napoli con villaggio e contadini ‒ is part of De Nittis’ production from the period of the School of Resina. De Nittis himself describes his work, providing the context: made upon his return from Calvizzano, where he had spent a few months dedicating himself to research on drawing and color, Casale represents a «belle journée d’hiver» in very light tones, later blackened, as the author himself points out. The descriptive elements indicated by the painter highlight the focal points of the composition: in the foreground there is «un lac très limpide, dans lequel se reflètent les pierres et les ombres des feuilles mortes» and in the background «troncs d’arbres et des enfants», or workers, and again «the puis des champs et une route allant vers un village, tout au fond du tableau», identifiable on the left, where a cart loaded with people is heading towards some farmhouses (De Nittis ed. 1895, p. 30). The accuracy of the details and chiaroscuro effects testify De Nittis’ attention to light and its impact on everyday scenes and landscapes. Overall, one perceives an atmosphere of suspension, timeless, rendered with a clarity, almost a whiteness, typical of sunny winter days. Particular emphasis is given to the sky, clear and sharp, characterized by a slight iridescence between white and light blue, which achieves an almost enameled effect, sought by the artist precisely in those years, as his friend Cecioni and the various subsequent critical readings of the work would report. Among the most interesting results of the Neapolitan years, Casale nei dintorni di Napoli has been rightly compared with L’Ofantino, belonging to the same year, with which, Farese Sperken claims, «our painting forms a sort of pair; a pair of detailed views united by the same luministic vision, almost surreal, and by the same way of constructing the landscape in successive horizontal planes» (C. Farese Sperken, in De Nittis 2004, p. 243); the canvases are also similar due to the presence of some elements, which return in both as leitmotifs, such as the tree trunks and the small characters intent on country activities. The suggestive landscape did not go unnoticed and was immediately acquired, fresh from its creation, for Capodimonte picture gallery; later, the canvas would be exhibited in several retrospectives dedicated to the Apulian artist. Lastly, a news story dating back to 2005 is reported, when the work, jointly with two others, was stolen along the return journey from Milan, where it had been exhibited, to be recovered in 2009.
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1866; Mostra retrospettiva, Barletta 1934; Retrospettiva, Bari 1954; Mostra di Giuseppe De Nittis, Naples 1963; Il secondo ’800 italiano, Milano 1988; Giuseppe De Nittis, Milan-Bari 1990; L’Ottocento Negato, Naples 1991; Ottocento. Romanticism and Revolution, Baltimora 1992; Civiltà dell’Ottocento, Naples -Caserta 1997-1998; De Nittis, Rome-Milan 2004-2005; Ottocento a Capodimonte, Naples 2012; Una infinita bellezza, Venaria Reale 2021.
Essential Biography: De Nittis ed. 1895, pp. 29-30; Pica 1914, p. 7 (con ill.); Piceni 1934, tav. II; Maltese 1960, p. 196, tav. 115; Mostra di Giuseppe De Nittis 1963, p. 49 n. 2, tav. III; Causa 1975, p. 20; Piceni 1979, p. 10; Del Guercio 1982, pp. 52, 54 ill., 182; C. Farese Sperken, in Giuseppe De Nittis 1990, p. 66 n. 2 (con ill.); Dini, Marini 1990, I, tav. II, p. 378 n. 96; C. Farese Sperken, in Civiltà dell’Ottocento 1997, p. 548; C. Farese Sperken, in Dal vero 2002, pp. 60-61 (con ill.); C. Farese Sperken, in De Nittis 2004, p. 123 n. 5 ill., p. 243; M. Mormone, in Ottocento a Capodimonte 2012, pp. 117 ill., 135 n. 65; Martorelli 2013, p. 26 n. 4 (con ill.).
Rosanna Carrieri
SHEET 4
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
Una traversata negli Appennini – Ricordo
1867
Oil on canvas, 44 x 76 cm
Signed and dated lower right: De Nittis 67 [70]*
Naples, Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte, inv. PS 70
A master work in De Nittis’s career, Una traversata negli Appennini – Ricordo, dated 1867, inaugurates the very successful trend of long roads that disappear into the horizon, wedged into landscapes with rigorous perspective geometries; rainy, muddy or sunny and dusty roads, which from then both De Nittis and the leading or supporting painters of Resina School created in the same years and throughout the following decade. The painting was exhibited at the V exhibition of Società Promotrice di Belle Arti in Naples in 1867, together with Impressione nelle pianure di Puglia (identified by C. Farese Sperken in the painting L’Ofantino, in Dal vero 2002, p. 61 fig. 56), where Vittorio Imbriani, applauding both works, wrote about the first: «It is also photography as a detail, but just hinted at in colour. Nevertheless, the fine, delicate execution and the sustained intonation make the effect real and leave nothing else to be desired». (Imbriani 1867, p. 157).
It is possible to document it previously at Promotrice of Florence of the same year, even if it is not present in the catalogue: «De Nittis and Fontanesi, here are the two main poles of this Hall», wrote Guidi about the first hall of the exhibition; and about Traversata «he wanted to recall the impression that in rainy times the fogs that develop on the Apennines give, and here too he was able to capture the feeling of the thing with rare mastery», although «as chiaroscuro lacks relief in some parts and the wall that flanks the road is difficult to determine what it is» (Guidi 1867). It was later when Adriano Cecioni remembered that «De Nittis brought with him some paintings that were liked in Florence, it is impossible to say how much. They were all liked without distinction and, above all, La nevicata e Una diligenza in tempo di pioggia. The success of this painting reached fanaticism. You could see a muddy road with a stagecoach, painted yellow from the middle up, going towards the horizon, a soaked wall, a dark sky with dark and almost black clouds on the horizon, from where a storm seemed to be coming; a tear in the air that allowed a little light to be seen, which rendered the agitation of a stormy sky so well, and increased the sadness of the effect. All this was done in such a way as to amaze anyone, especially artists who know how difficult it is to render in shape and color the mud, the pebbles, the ballast, the rails in the mud, the mountains of rubbish; all things of the greatest difficulty and which De Nittis did to perfection» (Cecioni ed. 1905, p. 364). Cecioni’s memory becomes fallacious when he adds that «The La nevicata, and I think also La Diligenza, were sold to Promotrice of Florence, where they were exhibited together with his other works» (ibid., p. 365). Instead, the second was purchased on the occasion in Naples by the knight Annibale Sacco, together with ten other works, for Pinacoteca of Capodimonte (Maimone 2012, p. 251).
When De Nittis exhibited in Naples, critics were divided into two opposing camps: those who admired without reserve «the firmness of the painting and the constant mastery with which the smallest details are rendered», and those who instead had something to say about the «equality, identical of merits in every part» that gave «the effect of a photographic work»: «I certainly will not make myself a judge between such different appreciations», wrote the critic of «Il Giornale di Napoli», «but I will only observe that, in recognizing a master brush in this painting, the green of those fields and the grey of that air seem to recall Holland or England more than southern Italy» (G.d.C. 1868).
This is perhaps the work that closed the experience of the School of Resina, the very interesting episode of en plein air painting that took place between Portici and Resina (Ercolano) starting from about the mid-1950s and continuing for the following twenty years. The painting represents the effects of a leaden winter day in which a stagecoach slowly travels along the main road that passes through a town, perhaps on the border between Campania and Molise, as it would seem from the buildings located on both sides of the road, among which you can see the bell tower of a small church on the right and a small chapel on the left. «The houses are felt as precise volumes» write Pittaluga and Piceni «within the humid vapors of the recent rain, however, they barely make the edge of the corners felt. Pathetic houses dusted with shadow, pressed to the ground with a sense of poverty and sadness that also echoes in the road cut by the furrows». Furthermore, they identify the carriage, the traveler and the bare tree as the «three accents on which the calm rhythm of the composition rests, compact and shiny as silk» (Pittaluga, Piceni 1963, p. 20).
De Nittis achieves with full maturity the atmospheric effects and the whole concert of light reflections that go beyond the gap in the sky thickened with clouds laden with water in an early morning. At the edges of «a road on which the wheels of carriages have traced countless furrows in the snowy mud» (Schettini 1967, II, p. 32), we see small piles of snow, and not of rubbish as Cecioni recalled, and a dark figure of a man who is coming in the opposite direction, and who can be read in the masterly contraction of light. The composition, admirably built on the balance between formal values, based on perspective geometries, and atmospheric values, shows De Nittis’ attention to the observation of the space that he would soon set aside. The rise of color of the triangle of wet green of the meadow on the left and the yellow of the stagecoach, and that concentration of light retained by the sleet in the center of the road make the work one of the masterpieces of the De Nittis Macchiaiolo of Resina. However, there remains a debt to the Flemish naturalism of the seventeenth century in that piece of wild nature on the right, of which the albeit brief formative period spent in the Academy could have left a faint trace in the young man.
The composition, which would have matured first in the 1872 painting Route de Brindisi (Indianapolis Museum of Art) and then in the 1875 painting Sulla strada di Castellammare (sold at auction, Il Ponte, December 17, 2024, auction 689, lot 94), would later have influenced contemporary artists.
*The painting was stolen in 2005, on its return from an exhibition, and recovered in 2009. When it was found, it had a re-lining that was not its own, and above all I believe that this event was responsible for the alteration of the date, transformed into “70” with a false pigment that is still present, elements that attest to the attempt to transform the work into a version different from the original for purely fraudulent purposes.
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Florence 1867; Società Promotrice, Naples 1867-1868; XI Esposizione Internazionale, Venice 1914; I Cinquantenario, Barletta 1934; Il paesaggio, Turin 1936; L’Arte nella vita del Mezzogiorno, Rome 1953; Il paesaggio, Milan 1954; Giuseppe De Nittis, Naples 1963; I Macchiaioli, Florence 1976; Ottocento/Novecento, Amsterdam 1988; Giuseppe De Nittis, Milan-Bari 1990; L’Ottocento Negato, Naples 1991; Ottocento, Baltimore-Worcester-Pittsburgh 1992; Lavoratori a Napoli, Naples 1995; Capolavori, Milan 1997; Dai Macchiaioli agli Impressionisti, Livorno 1996-1997; Civiltà dell’Ottocento, Naples-Caserta 1997-1998; Antonio Fontanesi, Reggio Emilia 1999; Dal vero, Turin 2002; I Macchiaioli prima dell’impressionismo, Padova 2003-2004; De Nittis, Rome 2004-2005; Boldini e la Belle Époque, Como 2011; De Nittis, Padua 2013; Una infinita bellezza, Turin 2021; An Italian Impressionist, Washington 2022-2023; Napoli Ottocento, Rome 2024.
Essential Biography: Guidi 1867; Imbriani 1867, p. 157; Società Promotrice 1867, p. 11 n. 50; G.d.C. 1868; Cecioni ed. 1905, p. 364; XI Esposizione Internazionale 1914, p. 126 n. 19; I Cinquantenario 1934, p. 5 n. 7; Il paesaggio 1936, p. 85 n. 9; L’Arte nella vita del Mezzogiorno 1953, p. 57 n. 12; Il paesaggio 1954, p. 57 n. 284, p. 175; Piceni 1955, pp. 12, 15, tav. 9; Giuseppe De Nittis 1963, pp. 51-52 n. 7, tav. VIII; I Macchiaioli 1976, p. 222, n. 189; Dini, Marini 1990, I, p. 381 n. 169, tav. V, II, tav. 169; C. Farese Sperken, in Giuseppe De Nittis 1990, p. 69 n. 5; F. Capobianco, in Lavoratori a Napoli 1995, II, pp. 200-201 n. 4 (con ill.); L. Lombardi, in Dai Macchiaioli agli Impressionisti 1996, p. 83 n. 2.10; C. Farese Sperken, in Dal vero 2002, n. 67 (con ill.); S. Bietoletti, in I Macchiaioli prima dell’impressionismo 2003, pp. 288 ill., 289 n. 104; C. Farese Sperken, in De Nittis 2004, pp. 160 ill., 247-248 n. 66; M. Mormone, in Ottocento a Capodimonte 2012, p. 135; Caputo 2013, p. 68, tav. 74; O. Cucciniello, in De Nittis 2013, p. 89 ill.; Mazzocca 2013, pp. 12 ill., 210 n. 11; Valente 2019, pp. 59-60 ill.; S. Serraino, in Napoli Ottocento 2024, pp. 138 ill., 367, n. 89.
Isabella Valente
SHEET 5
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
La Masseria
Around 1867
Oil on canvas, 12 x 25 cm
Signed lower right:De Nittis
Naples, private collection
The pictorial and emotional partnership that Giuseppe De Nittis formed with Marco De Gregorio, Federico Rossano, Raffaele Belliazzi, Enrico Gaeta and Edoardo Dalbono was the opportunity for the painter from Barletta to use new methods of investigation and rendering of nature from life. 1863 was the pivotal year: De Nittis was expelled for indiscipline from the Real Istituto di Belle Arti and joined the group at Reggia di Portici that from there would be identified as Scuola di Resina. Adriano Cecioni, winner of the artistic pension in sculpture in Naples, also arrived there, a key figure in defining the bond with the major exponents of the Tuscan Macchiaioli. Between 1863 and 1867, the year of his departure for Paris, De Nittis created a series of paintings dedicated to Neapolitan and Apulian landscapes. Between 1864 and 1866 he worked in the countryside of Calvizzano, in the surroundings of the city of Naples, producing numerous studies and painting Casale nei dintorni di Napoli, exhibited at the exhibition of Società Promotrice di Napoli in 1866 and purchased by the Royal House.
The examination of the studies has highlighted the hypothesis that in the background of Casale nei dintorni di Napoli, it was possible to recognize the profile of an apparently abandoned farmhouse and identifiable with masseria in the painting in question, a small-sized oil on panel of which two other versions are documented in private collections in Milan (Fondazione Enrico Piceni and Studio d’Arte Nicoletta Colombo). Despite the dialogue between the two subjects, the distance between the work presented to Promotrice of 1866 and the painting in question is palpable. It is an old country farmhouse, rendered with simple and essential forms, in which the lively presence of a group of oxen is flanked by three barely sketched figures, absent in the other versions. The comparison with the two Milanese versions, characterized by a more homogeneous chromatic texture and a tangible use of light, encourages the hypothesis that the one in question could be a preparatory study. The subject is in line with his production from the end of his first Portici period, but the pictorial rendering is different: in fact, we can trace an initial reflection on Tuscan Macchiaiola painting, to which the choice of the horizontal format and the close-up perspective rendering also refer. In fact, his stay in Florence between October and November 1867 would have been fundamental in his understanding of Macchiaiola painting (Scritti d’Arte 1952, p. 125), a period to which, according to the hypothesis of Isabella Valente (see the essay in the catalogue), this study could be ascribed. It does not seem to be a coincidence, therefore, that the panel in question recalls some of the results of the painting of Castiglioncello period, evident in particular in the use of large summary fields and a summary stain. However, De Nittis did not adhere completely to the Macchiaiola poetics: his painting, in fact, never sacrificed the basic design. Concrete, but potentially lyrical, he shuns any rigid theory, he dilutes the colour in the softness of impasto, in the free and strictly material brushstroke, in the tonal juxtaposition of browns, ochres and ceruleans, capturing the essentiality of a landscape that is poor but rich in personal values.
The painting has been identified with the study of the same name present in the dispersed Parisian collection of Jean Dieterle, a friend of Jacques De Nittis, the painter’s son (C. Farese Sperken, in Dal vero 2002, n. 65). The version preserved in Enrico Piceni Foundation, however, was purchased at auction at Galleria Geri in Milan in 1929 by the critic of the same name, and came from the collection of the publisher Sommaruga (Giuseppe De Nittis 1990, p. 89 n. 26; De Nittis 2004, p. 40; Testi 2024, pp. 83-84). Although the two versions differ in the final rendering, they testify that «De Nittis conceived the form as a design within an atmosphere that as a whole characterized an emotion of nature» (De Grada, in De Nittis 2004, p. 30).
Exhibitions: Dipinti e sculture, Naples 2013
Essential Biography: Piceni 1934, p. 262; De Nittis 1955, p. 175; Pittaluga, Piceni 1963, n. 265; Dipinti e sculture 2013, lot number115 ill.; Caputo 2017, p. 48 ill.
Santina Serraino
SHEET 6
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
Paesaggio sotto il sole
Around 1872
Oil on canvas, 18 x 21,5 cm
Signed lower right: De Nittis
Barletta, Municipal Art Gallery Giuseppe De Nittis, inv. 879
The work, published entitled Paesaggio algerino in the 1914 inventory curated by Giuseppe Gabbiani (inv. Gabbiani no. 29), also known as Paesaggio arabo (Arab landscape) (Cassandro 1956, p. 15; Giuseppe De Nittis 1963, p. 64), is part of the series of rural views executed by De Nittis in Italy at the beginning of the Seventies. These titles have to be considered erroneous since there is no record of De Nittis having spent time in North Africa.
In August 1870, the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and the first defeats suffered by the French army led the painter to seek refuge in southern Italy, where he remained until 1872, alternating his stays between Barletta and Naples. For Raffaello Causa, the Apulian painter «returned with a modern disposition, to a “macchia” style that was no longer that of the Tuscans; a finished rendering through a shortened, rapid, impasto touch, remaining within the dimensions of the “study or sketch” […] giving new meaning to the heavy haze of the sun or the transparency of the crystalline air. And it was the path he fearlessly followed in ’72» (Causa 1975, p. 20). The critical comment is not without a certain interest, because it refers, specifically, to the year the painting was created, suggesting a stylistic reading for it. In its compositional setting and for its characteristics, Paesaggio sotto il sole «anticipates all the topics of Strada nei pressi di Napoli» and is also «also relatable to the study Strada vicino Napoli» (Giuseppe De Nittis 2022, p. 101).
After the first phase of his Parisian production, strongly characterized by costume scenes and the «theatrical disguises of historical-anecdotal painting in the style of Fortuny and Meissonier» (Pica 1914, p. 81), De Nittis changed his orientation, reappropriating the landscape painting that had marked his early Neapolitan years. Between 1870 and 1872 he painted a series of panels, with generally small dimensions, made from life, en plein air, characterized by «a particular […] freshness» (Piceni 1934, p. 32), in «direct continuation of the landscapes of Tavoliere delle Puglie» (Farese Sperken 1990, p. 21). In the works of these years, a growing simplification of the scenic layout and forms can be seen; in the selection of the elements, De Nittis transfers the specific characteristics of the southern environment. The composition is essential, dry; the choice of opting for a raised viewpoint effectively conveys the vastness of the road: wide, dirt, deserted, “immersed in light” – to use Goupil’s words –, the central theme of the painting. The painter describes an almost sultry atmosphere, of a typically Mediterranean radiance that, plausibly, could represent the common thread that connects the three different titles attributed to this work.
As provided for in the will of Léontine Gruvelle, the painter’s wife, Paesaggio sotto il sole, jointly with a significant number of works, was donated to the Municipality of Barletta, which acquired it in March 1914.
Exhibitions: Mostra di Giuseppe De Nittis, Naples 1963; De Nittis, Rome-Milan 2004-2005; De Nittis, Ferrara 2019-2020; An Italian Impressionist, Washington 2022-2023; Napoli Ottocento, Rome 2024.
Essential Biography: Cassandro 1956, p. 15, n. 43; Mostra di Giuseppe De Nittis 1963, p. 64 n. 44, tav. XLIV; Piceni, Monteverdi 1971, tav. 4 n. 84; Piceni 1979, n. 12 ill.; Paolillo 1984, pp. 90, 91 ill.; Giuseppe De Nittis 1998, p. 48 n. 16 ill.; Dini, Marini 1990, cit., in De Nittis 2004, p. 150 n. 54 ill.; Russo 2007, pp. 41, 145, 155; E. Angiuli, in De Nittis 2013, n. 2 ill.; De Nittis 2019, p. 117 n. 10 ill.; An Italian Impressionist 2022, p. 122 tav. 15; Giuseppe De Nittis 2022, p. 101 (con ill.); S. Serraino, in Napoli Ottocento 2024, p. 140 n. 93 ill., p. 367.
Alessia Brescia
SHEET 7
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
Impressione del Vesuvio
1871-1872
Oil on cardboard, 22 x 35 cm
Signed lower right: De Nittis
Naples, private collection
The years spent close to Federico Rossano, Marco De Gregorio and Adriano Cecioni infused Giuseppe De Nittis’s painting with a perceptive sensitivity to nature that he would retain for a long time, while also receiving new stimuli over time, opening himself up to continuous experimentation: the experience of School of Resina allowed the painter from Barletta to explore the potential and effects of Mediterranean light, and to test, by painting from life, a quick and confident brushstroke. When in 1870 the war tensions resulting from the Franco-Prussian conflict forced him to return to Italy, he found some of his old companions in Naples, but by then his painting had become more conscious and experimental, as can be deduced from the numerous depictions of Vesuvius that he executed in the vicinity of the eruption dated 26 April 1872, including the oil on cardboard presented here for the first time. Some of these views – more than seventy, many published in the vast literature on the artist – served as studies for larger compositions full of characters, such as Discesa dal Vesuvio, I crateri del Vesuvio (catt. ***) and La Pioggia di cenere in Palazzo Pitti. Others should instead be read as free investigations by the painter, who in his Notebook tells of having gone to the volcano every day for over a year, stubbornly insisting on the same subject. De Nittis alternates wide and airy views with others that are almost suffocating, in which a thin cerulean strip of sky barely appears above the compact and dense body of Vesuvius, sometimes crushed between a blanket of white or grey-pink clouds and a foreground of wild land, now scorched by the sun, now verdant but uncultivated. This panorama is for him an inexhaustible organism to be tested, in which he can combine the light of his South with new suggestions coming from Japanese painting, for which he nurtured a profound admiration. Without losing his adherence to reality, the painter investigates the same landscape countless times, without ever replicating its precise conditions, but proposing new proportional relationships of masses and colors. The choice to adopt some perspective cuts and observation points also denotes his interest in the photographic medium.
In the painting in question, Vesuvius rises on a close horizon, backlit, against a cold, blue sky dotted with clouds. Touches of dark color, green and brown, build its rough surface, and the low observation point gives the impression that the volcano leans down, like a threatening entity from which a vital force still dormant transpires. It is a seductive image, the result of the artist’s immersive experience in the Vesuvian landscape, of which he seems to want to understand the laws and languages.
The work is probably to be dated to the first months of his stay in Portici, and in any case by the beginning of 1872, when there was still no sign of the imminent eruption. Later, the painter would test bolder cuts, a greater freedom of colour – so full of light that it sometimes appears unnatural – and a simplification of forms that would lead him to model homogeneous masses with incisive and deliberately non-amalgamated brushstrokes, as can be seen, for example, in some of the panels donated by Ulrico Hoepli to Modern Art Gallery in Milan. Although they were not appreciated by Goupil, similar views appear in several important collections in northern Italy, such as that of Lino Pesaro, in which a painting rather similar to the one proposed in the exhibition is attested in 1931 (La Raccolta Lino Pesaro 1931, no. 200, plate XI).
Unpublished work.
Luisa Sefora Rosaria Puca
SHEET 8
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
La discesa dal Vesuvio
1872
Oil on canvas, 30 x 55 cm
Signed and dated lower right: De Nittis 72
Naples, private colection
Among the paintings that De Nittis sent to Goupil from Naples – where he moved to escape from Paris in the midst of the Franco-Prussian conflict – a few obtained the dealer’s approval. They were mainly views, of Vesuvius or the Gulf of Naples, not very attractive because they lacked figures and narrative attitudes. Goupil had firmly rejected Lava del Vesuvio, a «black mass» that he considered «excessively real» (Dini, Marini 1990, I, p. 97 note 34), while De Nittis complained that he was unable to satisfy his requests: «Mr. Goupil wanted “subject” paintings, costume scenes. I had tried, and that was precisely the crux of the matter» (De Nittis ed. 1963, p. 85). At that time the painter was carrying out his experiments on the Vesuvian landscape, mixing the sensitivity to light that he had developed during the years of School of Resina with the Florentine scrub he had experimented with during his stay in Tuscany and the lyrical synthesis of Japanese painting. However, he had managed to comply with the merchant’s requests by sending him two or three paintings that he liked: La discesa dal Vesuvio, probably I crateri del Vesuvio (cat.***) and Pioggia di cenere (Florence, Palazzo Pitti). The three canvases document the radical changes in the volcanic territory before and during the eruption of 26 April 1872: the first shows a welcoming and docile Vesuvius, which becomes roaring in the second, and in full eruption in the third. On 27 July 1872 Goupil, dissatisfied with the paintings he had received, wrote to De Nittis: «If instead of sending us (perhaps to make us impatient) uninteresting paintings, you had sent us things like the Discesa dei turisti with that slash of sun on the sea or many other interesting things that I know you are doing, oh then we wouldn’t have so many hesitations» (Dini, Marini 1990, I, p. 300).
The letter allows us to date the sending of the painting to Paris several months earlier, and its execution presumably between January and March 1872, as also suggested by the serenity of the landscape, not at all alerted to the imminent eruption. On 10 February Goupil had still not received anything, so he asked De Nittis: «Do you think of working on your great Vesuvius? I often think about this composition and I believe it will be very successful. It is a novelty, Vesuvius has never been represented in a way that provides a precise idea of it and if you do it it will have the double advantage of being a work of art and at the same time a memory of those who have never been seen» (Miracco 2004, p. 93). The enthusiasm of the dealer, who proposed to make a chromolithograph as soon as the painting was finished, was due to the sight of a sketch sent to him some time before.
The success of the work, highly esteemed by critics, also lay in the modernity of the framing, typically photographic: the painter constructs the scene in overlapping planes, cutting it obliquely and observing it from an angle completely shifted to the right. The debt to the photographic medium is also recognizable in the chromatic proportions and in the light effects, revealed especially in the suggestive backlighting of the foreground. The «slash of sun on the sea», which lights up the horizon and which so enthused Goupil, casts a delicate penumbra on the silhouettes of the tourists, intent on talking to each other with their backs to us. The buildings below are, like the men, silhouettes that stand out against the airy backdrop of the sky. The hierarchies of the elements are cancelled by the “photographic” gaze, which lingers with equal interest on the human figures and on nature, revealing an all-encompassing vision in which light is revealed to be the true protagonist. After observing it at the Salon, Jules Claretie, who recognized an Englishman in the group of hikers, praised its extraordinary use of light: «Le gros Anglais qui descend du Vésuve dans le second tableau ne fait pas attention au vaste horizon que le golfe de Naples déploie, au loin, devant lui; il a bien tort. Cet horizon est superbe. M. de Nittis a rendu, les reflets du soleil couchant sur les vagues qui renent la mer incandescente» (Claretie 1876, p. 183).
The work has undergone several collection passages: from the prestigious American Knoedler collection (see E. Lissoni, in Boldini De Nittis 2023, p. 288) it came into the ownership of Guido Carminati, where it was attested until 1930, when it was put on sale at Pesaro Gallery in Milan (Artistic heritage 1930, plate XXIII), later arriving in Bonomi collection. Long absent from exhibition circuits, it was presented to the public again only in 1990, on the occasion of the exhibition in Milan and Bari Giuseppe De Nittis. Paintings 1864-1884.
Exhibitions: Salon, Paris 1873; Giuseppe De Nittis, Milan-Bari 1990; De Nittis, Rome-Milan 2004-2005; Giuseppe De Nittis, Paris-Parma 2010-2011; La Maison Goupil, Rovigo 2013; La Maison Goupil et l’Italie, Bordeaux 2013-2014; Boldini De Nittis, Novara 2024; Napoli Ottocento, Rome 2024.
Essential Biography: Explication des ouvrages 1873, p. 175 n. 1115; Gnorri 1873; Mantz 1873; Claretie 1876, p. 183; Cecioni ed. 1905, p. 370; Pica 1914b, p. 85 ill.; Piceni 1934, p. 67; Dini, Marini 1990, I, pp. 97-99, 389 n. 366, tav. XIII, II, tav. 366; C. Farese Sperken, in Giuseppe De Nittis 1990, p. 83 n. 21 (con ill.); Ottocento italiano 1992, p. 158 n. 73 ill.; De Nittis 2004, p. 141 n. 37 ill.; Farese Sperken 2004, pp. 34, 36; P. Serafini, in La Maison Goupil 2013, p. 222 n. 40, pp. 152-153 ill.; E. Lissoni, in Boldini De Nittis 2023, pp. 124-125 n. 17 (con ill.); M. Raspa, in Boldini De Nittis 2023, pp. 288-289 (con ill.); Caputo 2024, p. 280 ill.; S. Serraino, in Napoli Ottocento 2024, p. 307 n. 91.
Luisa Sefora Rosaria Puca
SHEET 9
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
L’eruzione del Vesuvio (Sotto il Vesuvio) / I crateri del Vesuvio prima dell’eruzione del 1872
1872
Oil in canvas, 30 x 55 cm
Signed lower right: De Nittis
On the back of the frame there is a series of numbers and the date “28 Nov 72”
Naples, private collection
After almost one hundred and fifty years, in 2017 one of Giuseppe De Nittis’s most appreciated Vesuvian views was exhibited to the public in the Neapolitan exhibition Da De Nittis a Gemito, presented with the title L’aggressione del Vesuvio. The extraordinary pictorial peculiarities of the painting are added to its singular collecting history: the work was part of the prestigious collection of the Polish count Karol Lanckoroński, a man of rare artistic sensitivity who welcomed European and Italian masterpieces from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century into an opulent house-museum in Vienna. The Count also showed interest in his contemporaries (in this regard Giovanna Capitelli gave a speech entitled Il Conte Lanckoroński e l’arte dell’Ottocento, as part of the conference Il fascino di Roma, dell’Antico e dell’arte italiana nella vita scientifica e collezionistica degli ultimi conti Lanckoroński, Rome 5-7 December 2022) and purchased, in circumstances that we will try to clarify here, De Nittis’ Vesuvius, which apparently was located in the space of the second staircase of his residence. Lanckoroński collection attracted the attention of the German authorities, who confiscated it, and only in 1951 did the heirs obtain its restitution. The subsequent collecting passages of the canvas have been well reconstructed by Luisa Martorelli, who, in a 2018 publication, highlighted its relationship with some studies, including two Eruzioni del Vesuvio from Art Gallery Giuseppe De Nittis in Barletta, in which the painter, isolating each of the two groups of hikers present in the final draft, tested variations in light and color; the one with the tourists in the carriage is more harmonious and imbued with suggestions of Japonism, the other is more dramatic, blackened on the right by a blanket of storm clouds that mixes with the shadows of Vesuvius, but sparing the narrow forked path bathed in an incandescent light. The boiling lava craters visible in the final canvas are absent in both. It is strange that for a work of this kind and of such significant dimensions there is no bibliographical history older than 1914, the year in which, still owned by Lanckoroński, it was published by Vittorio Pica with the title: L’eruzione del Vesuvio. To be precise, a trace of its execution is provided by De Nittis himself, who in his Taccuino retraced the moments in which, having climbed Vesuvius as usual, he was working «on that painting that was later purchased by the Count of Lanckoronsky», from which he was distracted when «a large gash opened up right in the place where I was used to working.
The jet of stones and lava reached where I was without hurting me» (De Nittis ed. 1963, p. 73). The painter’s words immediately clarify that the painting was not executed on direct commission from the Count, who would have purchased it later; on the other hand, a direct contact between the collector and De Nittis in those months would not have been plausible, since Lanckoroński visited Naples only a few years later. Furthermore, at the time he was painting the canvas, a few weeks before Vesuvius erupted, the painter was tied by a stringent contractual obligation to Goupil, to whom he would have had to cede all «the paintings, watercolours and drawings, except the portraits and the decorative works» (Contract dated 3rd January 3 1872, in Miracco 2004, p. 90).
The seller takes a different turn in the picture of this composition of rich characters and animates it with a narrative, as Jules Claretie defined «paysage anecdotique»,, referring to the film proposed by De Nittis in the Salon of 1873, La descente du Vésuve (cat. ***) and Les cratères du Vésuve avant l’éruption de 1872, the latter never identified. About it, Claretie noted: «Il faut voir les touristes montant dans le vapeur des cratères, posant le pied sur des terrains aux couleurs bizarres: jaunes, sulfureux au verts. Tout cela doit être exact, étudie et peint sur le vif» (Claretie 1876, p. 183). In the “Gazette des beaux-arts“, Georges Lafenestre noted with argument the silly irony perceptible in the picture: «à Naples, M. de Nittis, qui saisit, avec un esprit du diable, du bout de son pinceau lilliputien, tous ces droles de corps d’Anglais essoufflés, de misses efflanquées, de ciceroni dépenaillés qui éternuent dans la fumée sous les Cratères du Vèsuve, ou contemplent, suivant la formule, en descendant du volcan, la campagne magnifique ouverte sous les yeux» (Lafenestre 1873, p. 50). The pair of paintings also had a certain resonance in Italy: Telemaco Signorini reported that I crateri del Vesuvio had attracted the public for the «strangeness of the motif which is a lava scene involving guides and very elegant ladies lined up one after the other on the narrow fiery edges of the roaring abyss» (Gnorri 1873, p. 69).
Proposing to identify Lanckoroński painting (which clearly does not represent the eruption of Vesuvius, as Pica intended) with the one exhibited at the Salon of 1873, we would recognize, in addition to the precise description of the sources and the accuracy of the title, the strangeness of the scene, depicting the excursion of a group of tourists – perhaps German, according to the testimony of the Taccuino and the light complexions and hair – among the incandescent craters that open up as far as the eye can see on the volcanic surface, among bluish sulfur fumes and under a sky heavy with thick dark smoke. The fast and impressive brushstroke defines more insistently the characters in the foreground, whose colors, desaturated by the light of the sunset, acquire tones bordering on the fantastical, as happens in the face of a woman, perhaps covered by a veil, which is tinged with an intense, indeed sulfurous, blue. Further back, however, the pictorial fabric changes, thickening into brown, ochre and pale pink spots, which roughly outline people and horses and then fray, blending the figures with the ground and the volcanic vegetation.
A letter from Goupil dated 27 July 1872, in which the dealer asked for paintings more similar to Discesa dal Vesuvio, suggests that De Nittis had not sent yet I crateri to Paris at that time, but he would certainly have done so in time for the Salon, where Lanckoroński may have seen it, later purchasing it through the well-known dealer. It is likely that Goupil was referring to this very canvas when, on 2 October 1872, he wrote to the painter: «I forgot to tell you that I saw with great pleasure your latest painting I turisti scendono dal Vesuvio. Send us paintings of this kind often and you will see that you will soon pay off the debt you have contracted» (see Farese Sperken 2004, p. 46). In fact, it must be excluded with certainty that the letter refers to Discesa dal Vesuvio, sent to Paris several months earlier, as confirmed by the “slash of sun on the sea” praised by the merchant in a letter of 27 July. Finally, it is interesting to note the presence, on the frame of the work, of the writing «28 Nov 72»,, the affixing of which, pending further investigations that can shed light on the complex history of this canvas, could be placed, in light of what has been said, in French territory.
Exhibitions: Salon, Paris 1873; Da De Nittis a Gemito, Naples 2017-2018; De Nittis, Milan 2024.
Essential Biography: Explication des ouvrages 1873, p. 175 n. 1114; Gnorri 1873; Claretie 1876, p. 183; Cecioni ed. 1905, p. 370; Pica 1914a, p. 324 ill.; De Nittis ed. 1963, p. 73; Pittalunga, Piceni 1963, n. 180; Dini, Marini 1990, I, p. 392 n. 418; Mazzocca 2017, pp. 103, 113 ill.; Martorelli 2018; Giuseppe De Nittis 2022, p. 92, n. 49 ill.; De Nittis 2024, p. 109 n. 21 ill.; Martorelli 2024, p. 47.
Luisa Sefora Rosaria Puca
SHEET 10
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
Veduta di Coroglio
After 1875
Oil on canvas, 27,5 x 16 cm
Signed lower left: De Nittis
Inscription on the lower right on the back of the frame: “view of Coroglio”
Naples, Certosa and Museum of San Martino, inv. 14293
The small-format canvas is part of Gamberini donation that in 1923 was destined to the Museum of San Martino: it consisted of approximately 170 works, but due to their small size and, above all, because they were works by minor artistic personalities, it received little attention and was destined to storage (ASDMSM, Donation Act 1923, p. 18 no. 121). These were the years of the museum direction of Mario Morelli who, in the layout of the section of the 19th century Neapolitan, privileged the masterpieces of Rotondo Donation, which had been in Certosa since 1915 (Martorelli 1991, p. 17, note 35). The view shows the tuff promontory of Coroglio from the western side, towards Bagnoli, at the end of the winding panoramic road, the current descent of Coroglio, built in 1840 and initially called Rampa dei tedeschi due to the presence of German scholars who, in those years, were engaged in the archaeological exploration of Grotta di Seiano, the long passage dug into the tuff in the Augustan age.
A gray and heavy sky, furrowed by layers of clouds, is reflected in the sea in which the flashes of timid clearings and the severe, greenish and earthy shadow of the cape of Posillipo alternate, creating a chromatic vortex and a mixture of elements.
Due to the stylistic proximity and the similarity of the subject, the work should be placed after 1875, close to the execution of Pranzo a Posillipo, in which the same leaden sky, permeated by mournful melancholic shadows, marks De Nittis’ last stay in Naples a few years before his premature death.
Exhibitions: La Scuola di Resina, Naples 2012.
Essential Biography: Martorelli 1991, p. 17, note 35; L. Martorelli, in La Scuola di Resina 2012, p. 52.
Loris Cozzolino
SHEET 11
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
Flirtation, Hyde Park
1874
Oil on canvas, 33 x 43 cm
Signed and dated lower right: De Nittis 74
Naples, private collection
After terminating his contract with Goupil, in 1874 De Nittis moved to London for a few months, where he attracted the attention of new wealthy collectors, to whom he began to turn without intermediaries. He dedicated few but enthusiastic lines to that first stay in the city: «London brought me luck from the first day. I went there because I foresaw financial difficulties, which there is no point in talking about. Three months later I was back and I had sorted everything out» (De Nittis ed. 1963, p. 114). Flirtation, Hyde Park, purchased by the American entrepreneur of Irish origins Alexander Turney Stewart, who died two years later, dates back to that prolific handful of months. An inventory from 1880 still attests that it belonged to his wife, ‘Mrs. A.T. Stewart’, who also owned De Nittis’s Return from the Bois de Boulogne (Strahan [1880], p. 52). In 1887, however, Flirtation ended up on the market, remaining submerged for a long time in the clutches of private collectors; only in 2001, after entering a Neapolitan collection, was it exhibited for the first time in Trento Boldini, De Nittis, Zandomeneghi exhibition. Until then, the canvas had been known thanks to the pioneering monographic study by Vittorio Pica, who had published it with the title Accanto alla pista. The discovery of the plate affixed to the frame, however, allowed it to be given back its original title, probably chosen by the painter to suggest the key to reading the scene: immersed in the coolness of the park, a couple watches the horse races with ill-concealed disinterest, busy in a polite courtship. Neither of the two is visible in the face, but their closeness, the interest of the man, who leans over to whisper something to the countryside, and the nonchalant attitude of the latter reveal an intriguing narrative: it is not a simple anecdotal story, but a discreet window on the social relations of the time.
In those years De Nittis does not appear interested in large choral scenes, which rather function as a context, but lingers on fleeting and intimate moments of small groups without identity – sometimes without a face, as in this case –, through which he describes a complex, flashy and formal society. Social events, such as horse races, were therefore for the artist privileged stages from which to observe the social dynamics of the middle class. The painter’s attention to the details of clothing, especially women’s, must also be read in this light. In Flirtation the dress of the woman in the foreground becomes more important than her face; on the dark background of the skirt – a deep stain of color – the gray-blue striped motif of the bodice and shawl create a luminous focal point, on which the eye converges without hesitation. As one steps back, the outlines of the figures become increasingly vague, until they dissolve completely into the atmospheric mixture. It is interesting to note how the painter from Barletta in this first London experience still adopts a golden, almost zenithal light, which dyes the ground with ochre and the foliage of the trees with brilliant shades of green. When, later, he returned to England, his palette would cool, enriching itself with leaden greys and veering towards a new chromatic range. Paintings such as The National Gallery and the Church of Saint Martin in London (Paris, Petit Palais), Westminster, Trafalgar Square or Buckingham Palace (all in a private collection) date back to 1878, the latter probably executed in the same meteorological conditions as Flirtration, but with completely changed premises and intentions. London had by now revealed itself to the painter in all its harshness: «With the sun and the gaiety the poor of my country remain optimistic, even cheerful; the air, the sky, the light belong to everyone. […] But the miseries and despair of London are a hell that not even Dante could imagine» (De Nittis ed. 1963, p. 140).
Exhibitions: Boldini, De Nittis, Zandomeneghi, Trento 2001; De Nittis, Turin 2002; Panorama pittorico, Naples 2002; Ritratti e figure, Rome 2003; De Nittis e Tissot, Barletta 2006; Giuseppe De Nittis, Paris-Parma 2010-2011; De Nittis, Padua 2013; Boldini, Forlì 2015; Belle Époque, Milan 2015-2016; Ottocento in collezione, Novara 2018; De Nittis, Ferrara 2019-2020; Boldini De Nittis, Novara 2023; An Italian Impressionist, Washington 2022-2023.
Essential Biography: Strahan 1880, p. 52; Catalogue of the A.T. Stewart collection 1887, p. 55 n. 48; Pica 1914b, tav. f.t.; De Nittis 1955, p. 185; Dini, Marini 1990, I, pp. 299, 396, n. 517, II, tav. 517; Boldini, De Nittis, Zandomeneghi 2001, pp. 112-113 (con ill.); De Nittis 2002, p. 100 (con ill.); R. Monti, in Ritratti e figure 2003, pp. 226-227 n. 67 ill.; C. Farese Sperken, in De Nittis e Tissot 2006, p. 183 n. 17; E. De Rosa, in Giuseppe De Nittis 2010, pp. 214-215 ill.; O. Cucciniello, in De Nittis 2013, p. 215 n. 51; S. Regonelli, in Boldini 2015, pp. 362-362 n. 220; Caputo 2017, pp. 314-315 ill.; E. Staudacher, in Ottocento in collezione 2018, p. 184 n. 46 (con ill.); E. Lissoni, in Boldini De Nittis 2023, pp. 218-219 n. 61 (con ill.); M. Raspa, in Boldini De Nittis 2023, pp. 328-329 (con ill.); An Italian Impressionist 2023, pp. 158 ill., 222, tav. 40.
Luisa Sefora Rosaria Puca
SHEET 12
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
La Porte Saint-Denis a Parigi
Around 1875
Oil on cardboard, 13,4 x 15,7 cm
Signed lower right: De Nittis
Bari, Metropolitan Art Gallery Corrado Giaquinto, inv. 1836/1422
A dynamic scene of Parisian life, acutely annotated with prodigious skill of touch within a highly calibrated perspective composition, an indication of an acquired expressive maturity, characterizes this painting that has arrived at Metropolitan Art Gallery of Bari with Grieco collection (1985). The creation period of the work, published for the first time by Enrico Piceni in 1982, can plausibly be traced back to the second half of the Seventies when these scenes of daily life set in the pulsating heart of the metropolis intensified, where the artist’s attention was concentrated, more than on the city’s monuments, on «that collective being, strange, unstable, always curious, spectacular, which is called a crowd, dense in one place, condensed, sparse in another […] following certain laws of attraction of which no one has yet given the definition» (Chirtani 1884, p. 131). With these words, Luigi Chirtani, a few days after his death, drew a very effective profile of the painter from Barletta, the undisputed interpreter of the «feeling of modern life» (ibidem). The protagonists of this airy vision are therefore the passers-by caught in the act of the moment; not generic, indistinct caricatures, but real individuals: street vendors, elegant ladies, adolescents, children and even tiny dogs to whom De Nittis manages to impress an intimate, unstoppable vitality. It is the same crowd that can be seen in the well-known painting entitled La place des Pyramides (1875, Paris, Musée d’Orsay), similar to ours also for a supposed, plausible chronological contiguity, from which however it differs for its significantly smaller dimensions.
This circumstance and the abbreviated and cursive workmanship of La Porte Saint-Denis in Paris do not prevent the artist from defining every single detail with meticulous precision, thanks also to a diffused light barely veiled by a few clouds. The perspective system is the widely tested one of a straight road that seems to extend to infinity; the triumphal arch, erected in honor of Louis XIV and the undisputed pivot of the image, is entrusted with the task of setting the spatial coordinates according to typically De Nittisian methods, destined to influence a series of artists, from Antonio Mancini, for example in the painting La Villa Comunale di Napoli (1880, private collection) executed after the second stay in Paris (D. Grasso, in Dal vero 2002, no. 100), up to the later Piazza del Popolo (1925-1930, Rome, Museum of Rome) by the little-known fellow countryman Giuseppe Pastina, a staunch admirer of the artist from Barletta. In any case, beyond the calculated perspective representation, the charm of La Porte Saint-Denis in Paris lies in «that imponderable element that forms its essence» for which, paraphrasing Chirtani again, «De Nittis’ paintings can hardly be reproduced by engraving, especially in illustrated magazines. The essential merit of those paintings lies, more than in those of any other painter, in the non so che» (ibid., p. 130).
Exhibitions: Da Fattori a Morandi, Caen 1998; Da Fattori a Morandi, Belgrado 2001; Da Fattori a De Chirico, Cagliari 2010; Giuseppe De Nittis, Paris 2010; De Nittis pittore, Milan 2024.
Essential Biography: Piceni 1982, n. 121 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 1987, p. 44, n. 14, p. 45 ill.; Dini, Marini 1990, I, p. 403, II, n. 655 (con ill.); Pastore 1991, p. 348; C. Farese Sperken, in La Pinacoteca 2005, p. 611, n. 34 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 2008, p. 55, n. 34 (con ill.); Gelao 2008, p. 130; Giuseppe De Nittis 2010, p. 172, n. 57, p. 173 ill.; De Nittis 2024, p. 117, n. 26 (con ill.).
Lucia Rosa Pastore
SHEET 13
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
Ponte
Around 1876
Oil on canvas, 54 x 74 cm
Barletta, Municipal Art Gallery Giuseppe De Nittis, inv. 935
The work entitled Ponte, inventoried in 1914 by Giuseppe Gabbiani, commissioned by the Municipality of Barletta, was at that time reported with the title Lungo la Senna (inv. Gabbiani n. 85). Presumably created around 1876, the canvas is placed in that period of years that critics have identified as «among the most fertile» and intense of the artist’s production (Piceni, Monteverdi 1971, p. 15). Between 1874 and 1878, De Nittis captured in his works the image of Paris de la vie moderne, and not only that. In 1874, the first of several stays in London was recorded: «in London, as in Naples, Florence, Paris, De Nittis’ painting was immediately appreciated» (Piceni 1934, pp. 41-42), Piceni reports, and «since then his activity and his inspiration were tripartite: Italy-Paris-London. In the fullness of his means he passes through what were called his “three Marys” the Italian, the French and the English, with equal happiness» and skill (ibid., pp. 42-43). In fact, in the consistent production of the Seventies, the artist demonstrates an «extraordinary versatility […] the ability to pass from one topic to another, from one climate to another with such astonishing ease but above all the ability to identify the exact tone is, if anything, an indication of a mastery of the craft» (Piceni, Monteverdi 1971, p. 15).
De Nittis, far to be indifferent to the charm and frenzy of the French metropolis, developed a group of paintings «of more immediate impression» (Pittaluga, Piceni 1963, p. 52), mainly made in horizontal format, in which he interpreted the places of social life and progress, the streets, the squares, the banks of Seine, demonstrating a particular sensitivity for the bridges of Paris, a series to which this work belongs. The city view represents Saint-Pères bridge, which runs through the entire composition and divides it into two distinct sections; on the left side, in white, the Louvre is painted, on the opposite side Quai Voltaire and, further away, Saint Jacques tower is sketched. The painter adopted an «unmistakably scenographic» style, and this suggests that «De Nittis had used […] souvenir photos, which were now very popular in the seventies» (Farese Sperken 1990, p. 24). It is also known by chroniclers of the time that the artist worked while looking out of the window of a carriage that he had used as a studio, and this would justify the raised point of view and the presence of the parapet, probably of Pont Royal, from which De Nittis observed the landscape; the impression of casualness and fleetingness of the moment is given by the head of a little girl who “enters the scene almost forcefully” (Giuseppe De Nittis 2022, p. 150). Critics have advanced the hypothesis that Ponte can be identified as one of the sketches made for the painting Paris vu du Pont Royal exhibited in 1877 at the Salon. The inventory of the Parisian Society of Guarda Mobile, delivered at the time of the donation, is useful. It records two works entitled «“Ponte” study/sketch “unframed”» (Dini, Marini 1990, p. 244, nn. 43, 85), which are likely to be identified in this painting and in the canvas, with a similar subject, Ponte sulla Senna, in turn indicated as Ponte in Gabbiani inventory (inv. Gabbiani n. 43).
Exhibitions: Giuseppe De Nittis, Paris-Parma 2010-2011; De Nittis, Padua, 2013; De Nittis, Ferrara, 2019-2020; An Italian Impressionist, Washington 2022-2023.
Essential Biography: Cassandro 1956, p. 16, n. 101; Dini, Marini 1990, I, tav. XXVII, p. 244; De Nittis 2002, p. 112 ill.; Dini, Marini 1990, cit., in De Nittis 2004, p. 168 n. 78 ill.; Russo 2007, pp. 52,156; D. Morel, in Giuseppe De Nittis 2010, pp. 160 ill., 161; A. Imbellone, in De Nittis 2013, pp. 220, 150 n. 74 ill.; Da De Nittis a Gemito 2017, p. 126 (con ill.); De Nittis 2019, p. 195 n. 76 ill.; Ferretti Bocquillon 2022, pp. 150, 151 ill.
Alessia Brescia
SHEET 14
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1884)
L’ora del pasto
1875-1880
Oil on canvas, 9,5 x 7,5 cm
Signed lower center: De Nittis
On the back there is a cartouche: “Galleria Manzoni, Milan”
Rome, Giuseppe Guerriero collection
The painting presents itself as a pictorial snapshot, rendered with the photographic gaze of someone who quickly captures the impression of a scene. De Nittis portrays a woman in whose features one can recognize his wife Léontine, caught in the happy moment of giving crumbs of food to the ducks that have come to the bank of the calm waters of Seine on a late winter day. The suggestion of the moment translates into a free brushstroke, essentially material, almost tactile, which denotes the artist’s personal and critical elaboration of the maquis painting, tempered by impressionistic reflections and influences of Japonism. A mature De Nittis can be traced, imbued with Parisian air, to which the palette, characterized by a soft and muffled chromatism, and an experimental pictorial texture, refers. «In the paintings of Parisian subjects, grey predominates, which better fixes the contours and specifies the colours: pearly skies, compact clouds broken by a pale sun» (Galleria De Nittis 1956, p. 20). The close-up perspective skeleton that opens the space diagonally, in the usual manner of the painter Caillebotte, also harks back to the Parisian experience, interrupted by the verticality of the female figure and by the piece of bare nature that acts as a stage backdrop, and which recalls those attempts at naturalistic rendering in the late Seventies that brought De Nittis closer to the traditional techniques of Japanese art, as can also be observed in the 1978 version of Pioppi in acqua in the Modern Art Gallery of Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Furthermore, the pictorial materiality does not hinder the painter from Barletta in the figurative rendering of Léontine, captured in profile, wrapped in a flounced dress tight at the waist that keeps pace with the fashion of the time. On the other hand, as Piceni wrote: «it is true that De Nittis often studied the dress more than the soul of the woman, but he was able to capture, through that second epidermis of the woman, the esprit of the elegant lady of 1880, captured in her everyday appearance» (Piceni 1934, p. 70).
Essential Biography: Piceni 1982, I, n. 80; Dini, Marini 1990, I, p. 395 n. 500 (con ill.); Caputo 2017, p. 322.
Santina Serraino
SHEET 15
Giuseppe Gaetano De Nittis
(Barletta, 1846 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye,1884)
Riposo
Around 1878
Oil on canvas, 60,5 x 92 cm
Barletta, Municipal Art Gallery Giuseppe De Nittis, inv. 853
«Ceux cui ont eu l’honneur de le voir en famille avec sa femme, avec son enfant, peuvent dire ce que valait son cœur; chez lui, l’homme ètait à la hauteur de l’artiste» (J.B. 1884, p. 1). Devoted companion, close friend, model and wife, Léontine Lucile Gruvelle played a fundamental role in the life and art of De Nittis. A writer with a complex personality, hidden behind the identity of Oliver Chantal, she was strong-willed, intimately feminist, extremely emotional, apparently marginal but faithfully complicit with her husband, to the point of safeguarding, perhaps according to a precise will of her beloved husband, a conspicuous nucleus of works consisting of 139 paintings, 54 graphic works and 154 documentary books of the artist’s thirty-eight years of life, donating it to the municipality of Barletta. An emotional partnership that was never simple, traversed by nerves that perhaps, alongside De Nittis’ not particular inclination for portraiture, would partly explain the reason why the painter never attempted a psychologically in-depth representation of his wife, not even in those passages of intimate and affective daily life that he dedicated to her. In Riposo, in fact, De Nittis offers an image of Léontine far from worldliness, more homely: slim, elegant, with an inscrutable but elegiac gaze, she sits, almost reclining, with her son Jacques, portrayed in profile and who obediently sits in front of her. Yet, the woman does not lose her image of a femme de la Belle Époque, to which the refinement of the details of the dress inevitably refers. Also called Signora De Nittis and her son (inv. Gabbiani no. 3), the work is configured as a heartfelt and very personal interpretation of a moment of pleasant idleness, in which the artist shows his critical elaboration of the impressionist poetics, in which, however, we recognize pictorial suggestions that refer to Antonio Mancini, who, during his intermittent and not simple stay in Paris, concluded in 1878, had assiduously frequented De Nittis’s salon (Leone 2024, p. 62). Another painting in the art gallery, La signora De Nittis col figlio, which the painter from Barletta created between 1875 and 1876, also harks back to Mancini’s poetics: in it, the tender Lolo – a pet name with which the artist affectionately referred to his son – is depicted in the guise of a little street urchin, next to his mother in a spatially undefined interior. A few lines, free brushstrokes with worn contours – with the exception of Léontine’s face – follow one another frenetically on a background in which a chromatic horror vacui predominates. In Riposo, on the other hand, the horizontal cut has the seeds of an attempt at diagonal development, but the composition is perspectively squashed. It is the fleeting impression of a moment detached from any space-time reference, in which the only two figures present a hinted finishing touch to the contour. The pictorial material crumbles, becoming rarefied at times in the definition of an essential interior almost in shadow, characterized by a window that acts as a scenic backdrop in the background, surrounded by floral climbing bunches. The chromatic fabric is a meeting of complementary dark shades, which in their juxtaposition determine a soft chiaroscuro definition sewn by tonal passages.
An impressionist De Nittis emerges, who at the end of the Seventies develops a particular visual awareness of reality, which leads him to experiment with an art of “perception”, which here takes on the features of an emotional testament.
Essential Biography: Galleria De Nittis 1956, p. 17 n. 112; Pittalunga, Piceni 1963, n. 617; Piceni, Monteverdi 1971, n. 68; Dini, Marini 1990, II, n. 770, tav. XLVII; Paolillo 1984, pp. 74-75 ill.; Mascolo 1992, n. 65; Giuseppe De Nittis 2016, p. 117 n. 90 ill.; Farese Sperken ed. 2020, p. 65 n. 17 ill.; Giuseppe De Nittis 2022, p. 375 ill.
Santina Serraino
SHEET 16
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
Ritratto di Giovanna Caso
1857
Oil on canvas, 100 x 75 cm
Signed and dated on the back of the canvas: G Toma dip / 1857
Naples, Michele Gargiulo’s collection
Browsing through the testimonies on the life of Gioacchino Toma, starting from the autobiographical Ricordi di un orfano, we discover that in Naples, despite being engaged in honest work, as an assistant to the painter Alessandro Fergola, in 1857 a raid by the Bourbon police on a café cost him his arrest and the accusation of conspiracy. After a period of imprisonment, which lasted one month and a half, unable to remain in the city, and refusing to return to Apulia – «where it is known how I was born», he confessed to the police (Toma [1886], p. 30) – he was confined to Piedimonte d’Alife (today Piedimonte Matese). In the small town, after overcoming the difficult initial days, he found help and sustenance. The first works to be sold were «the two largest saints in Paradise» (ibid., p. 31), Saint Peter and Saint Paul, two small canvases that were purchased as prizes by drawing lots on the initiative of the patriot and politician Beniamino Caso, collecting many individual shares from the frequenters of the café in the square, and himself purchasing those that remained unsold. Toma’s stay in Piedimonte lasted eighteen months, during which he practiced portraiture and still life to earn a living, and received religious commissions, some for local churches, as well as requests for decorations for the interiors of stately homes. Having tied himself to Caso and Del Giudice families, also due to their shared political affinity, and to the Gaetani di Laurenzana family, he created several portraits for them.
Ritratto di Giovanna Caso, a painting executed as a companion piece to that of her husband Achille Del Giudice, future senator of the Kingdom of Italy (Bojano 2017, p. 31), dates back to this period. Sitting on a chair, of which we see part of the golden Rococo backrest, the noblewoman has worn one of her most refined dresses, embellished with black lace details on the chest and sleeves, and above all she has carefully chosen the jewels to wear, all belonging to the same parure, the definition of which becomes for the artist a display of great technical skill: just note the meticulousness in the rendering of the choker with three strands of pearls held in the center by a gold floral braid, finished with an elegant blue enamel. The hairstyle, which descends from a central parting and gathers at the nape of the neck in tight curls, frames the candid complexion. The small eyes, the Greek nose and the thin lips give a well-defined physiognomy. In choosing a pose that is not completely frontal, the artist does not forget to offer the view, on the right side of the figure, part of the pendant earring and curled hair. On the table, where there is a small glass vase with a bunch of camellias, the woman has rested an arm, whose hand holds small flowers. Compositional commonalities are found in the portraits of the spouses: the same size of the canvas, the positioning of the figure, the predominance of dark colors, the presence of a small table and behind a curtain that opens onto an indefinite monochrome background. The painting can be compared with other portraits executed on commission and dating back to the same period, such as Ritratto della duchessa Gaetani (Exhibition by Gioacchino Toma 1954, p. 29 n. 3, plate 2) or Ritratto della contessa Laura Gaetani (Boiano 2017, p. 49). If in portraying Giovanna Caso Toma adopts a setting and a pictorial style that we could define as academic, the freedom of the brushstroke that would have distinguished the portraits of his family is very different: think of the portrait of his wife or some of his self-portraits, some even close to the period of confinement (Exhibition by Gioacchino Toma 1954, plates 1, 24).
After eighteen months of exile, thanks to the guarantee of Duke of Lurenzana, eager to possess a portrait of himself executed by the hands of the painter and unable to remain in the small village any longer, the artist returned to the Bourbon capital, where, between patriotic adhesions and artistic consecration, he spent the rest of his life.
A clarification regarding the location of the confinement, which must be understood as different from that cited by Toma in Ricordi, is reported by Michele Biancale, who, conversing with a descendant of Caso family, the knight Achille Caso, maintained that this period had as its centre not in Piedimonte, but in San Gregorio d’Alife, where Toma executed various works (Biancale [1933], pp. 111-112).
Essential Biography: Biancale [1933], p. 27; Bojano 2017, pp. 30-32 (con ill.).
Fedela Procaccini
SHEET 17
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Napoli, 1941)
L’orfana
1862
Oil on canvas, 70 x 50 cm
Signed and dated lower left: G. Toma 1862
Naples, private collection
Michele Biancale defined Gioacchino Toma as «the least romantic of the painters of his time, even though he treated almost exclusively romantic subjects» (Biancale [1933], p. 14). The historian was thinking mainly of those scenes, full of bitterness, that only the strong spirit of the Apulian painter had been able to touch without indulging in a «turbid alloy of romantic passion», but with a «very clear vision of reality» (ibidem). Toma’s conscious lucidity in dealing with the most disparate subjects, from the most tender, familiar, delicate, to the most committed and even tragic, came from his singular biographical experience, retraced by himself in Ricordi di un orfano. The few but dense pages that the artist composed after 1865 reveal, right from the title, how his character was marked by the loss of both parents in childhood, and especially, by that of his mother, which occurred before his eyes. Biancale again, reading in those events the origin of his artistic mettle, concluded that «The scene of the children bent over the chest of their dead mother», as narrated in the Memories, «is a Toma before Toma» (ibidem). Although he had drawn only occasionally and openly from episodes of his own life, the painter often entrusted his compositions with the story of his anxieties. This is the case of Orfana, a delicate interior with a figure exhibited for the first time in 1997-1998 at the exhibition Civiltà dell’Ottocento.
Accustomed to reworking the same subject several times, Toma painted a first Orfana in 1862, preserved at Modern Art Gallery in Palermo: «While I was sitting quietly at the window, I laid eyes on a pretty girl dressed all in black. I thought of making a little picture with that beautiful figure, and having asked her if she wanted to be my model, she agreed, and with her I painted an orphan who, after a long time, sees her mother’s clothes again» (Toma ed. 1973, p. 91). The young girl, called Nannina, would later pose for him several times, and reasonably also for the work in question, considering the physiognomic resemblance between the depicted girls, and even the wide-sleeved dress is the same. In Palermo canvas we see a scene from some time after the loss of the mother, whose portrait is turned towards the wall, displaying the frame, perhaps so as not to increase the already excessive grief of the family; Biancale instead supposes that it is a «Madonna stanzionesca» (Biancale [1933], p. 35), but it seems difficult to think that in the culture of a Catholic family of the late nineteenth century a sacred image could be turned towards the wall.
L’Orfana in a private collection instead shows another moment of mourning: placed at the center of the composition and illuminated by a beam of light coming from an open door on the left, the bed, in disarray, has just been freed from the body. Green checked sheets peek out from under the crumpled white pillow, as if to evoke an everyday life irremediably erased by the woman’s death. Traces of the funeral ritual are still in the room: the precious blankets, brought out for the occasion as a final tribute to the deceased, have partly fallen to the floor, the carpet has been trampled by heavy footsteps and the chairs, brought to the bedside for final farewells, have just been left empty. Emptiness is the true protagonist of the painting, tangible in every piece of furniture in the narrow room, on whose high walls the minute decoration of the wallpaper is insistently repeated. It is a physical emptiness that makes the emotional emptiness of the young woman concrete and perceptible, a discreet, silent figure, who lives her pain by telling a rosary and covering her eyes. Toma paints quietly a complex but well-known feeling of loss and acceptance, which he would reflect on many times, arriving at painting the beautiful Solitudine (Il ricordo della mamma) from a private collection, set in a sumptuous interior, in which a woman slightly older than our girl, who has now abandoned the black, lets herself go for a moment to the memory of her mother, whose portrait, once the excruciating pain of the loss has faded, now finds a place, clearly visible, on a small altar set up on a table covered with a dark cloth.
Exhibitions: Civiltà dell’Ottocento, Naples-Caserta 1997-1998.
Essential Biography: M. Mormone, in Civiltà dell’Ottocento 1997, pp. 559 ill., 560 n. 17.176.
Luisa Sefora Rosaria Puca
SHEET 18
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
Roma o morte!
1863
Oil on canvas, 48,5 x 38,5 cm
Signed and dated lower left: G. Toma 1863
On the back two cartouches: 1) G. Toma / Roma o morte! / Lecce – Civic Museum; 2) Exhibition: Gioacchino Toma Palazzo Racani Arroni – Spoleto / Work: 08 – Roma o morte; Inscription on frame: 15094 L. 200
Lecce, Must – Historical Museum of Lecce City, inv. 924
The painting was donated by the painter’s family to the Municipality of Lecce and became part of the collection of the nascent Civic Museum, inaugurated in 1898, at the same time as the commemorative bust of Toma, made by the sculptor Francesco De Matteis and now lost (Franco 1898, pp. 117-118).
Roma o morte! is part of the production dedicated to patriotic and Risorgimento topics, common to many artists in the post-unification period, and, in line with the previous works of 1862 I figli del popolo (Metropolitan Art Gallery Corrado Giaquinto di Bari) and I piccoli patrioti (private collection), highlights the inclination towards a certain «journalistic sketching» (Causa 1975, p. 12). The scene, referring to his brief imprisonment in Isernia, recounted in Autobiografia (1886), is set by the painter in a prison cell where four Garibaldians are locked up. One of them, with his back to the observer, writes the phrase «Roma o Morte! Viva Garib[aldi]», on the wall, while being observed on the left by a wounded comrade, whose face has been identified as the artist’s self-portrait (Iermano 2011, p. 162). The painting attests Toma’s interest in interior scenes – characteristic of his production – and his orientation towards a realism similar to the models of Palizzi and Induno. In Roma o morte! the visual field is limited for a more careful focus on the main scene, bare, except for a few elements: a bucket in the left corner and some objects on the right, in the foreground, which define the depth. The painter experiments with the use of light, coming from the grate above, modulating it with soft chiaroscuro transitions that give a suffused and unitary dimension to the scene. Direct knowledge of those events allows Toma to create a composition that is connected to the battles for Unity, but inspired by the daily life of those who took an active part in them, as did Filippo Palizzi, Andrea Cefaly and Francesco Saverio Altamura. The soldiers depicted live their condition of imprisonment and are bearers of ideals shared by the painter, so the narration of the truth is intertwined with authentic human feeling and political ideal.
About the painting – exhibited at the 1939 Retrospective Exhibition of Salento Artists with the title Garibaldini – there is another version in a private collection, of which the catalogue Gioacchino Toma 1836-1891 (1995, p. 55) offers a visual comparison, with greater spatial breadth – with the insertion of a door on the right –, with different chromatic choices and with the adoption of different attitudes in the soldiers on the ground. In 1944, on the occasion of the Roman exhibition Arte contro le barbarie, Renato Guttuso created his own version of the work: Roma o morte! thus becomes not only the anecdotal representation of a limited event, but acquires a meaning of absolute and timeless freedom (Cassiano 1996, p. 12).
Exhibitions: Mostra retrospettiva, Lecce 1939; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Lecce-Rome 1954; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Naples 1955; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto-Naples-Lecce 1995-1996.
Essntial Biography: Franco 1898, p. 118; Biancale [1933], pp. 43-44, 113, tav. XIII; De Rinaldis 1934, pp. 14-15, 236, tav. VII; Mostra retrospettiva 1939, p. 50; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954a, p. 16, tav. 8; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 10 n. 15; Crispolti 1958, p. 56; Lavagnino 1961, V, p. 868; Causa 1975, pp. 11-12; Galante 1975, p. 9, tav. 5; Falkenhausen 1982, pp. 64 ill., 71; G. Delogu, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, pp. 105-106 (con ill.); Cassiano 1996, pp. 12 (con ill.), 19 ill. n. 15 ; Iermano 2011, pp. 162, 164 ill.; Farese Sperken 2015, pp. 85, 86 ill.; G. Lanzillotta, in Arte in comune 2018, pp. 209, 210 ill.
Erika Presicce
SHEET 19
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Napoli, 1891)
Piccoli patrioti
Around 1863 circa
Oil on canvas, 27 x 23 cm
Signed lower left: G. Toma
Private collection
Returning from exile in Naples, Toma presented the painting Erminia che scrive il nome di Tancredi sull’albero, at the last Bourbon Biennale in 1859, a work awarded the silver medal and purchased by the Royal House. Only two years would pass before the changed political situation allowed the artist to express his patriotic beliefs, exhibiting two paintings with a Risorgimento topic at the first exhibition of the Neapolitan Promoter in 1862: Il denaro di San Pietro, a priest who in the privacy of his cell reflects on whether to support the revolution with almsgiving (Naples, Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte), and I figli del popolo, in which «the patriotic topic is transferred to the world of children and play» (Farese Sperken 2015, p. 85; Metropolitan City Art Gallery Corrado Giaquinto, Bari). If the religious-themed painting is reflective and melancholic, aspects amplified by a monochrome painting, but aimed at sanctioning the closeness of some ecclesiastics to the cause of a united Italy, the «bambocciata of two children celebrating the figures of Garibaldi and Vittorio Emanuele» happily impressed the critics (Toma [1886], p. 48).
In Ricordi the artist mentioned the start of this production: «I presented this little painting at the first exhibition of promoting Society, but with so much fear, and with such a modest price, that Domenico Morelli, who, at the time, presided over that Society, told the secretary to mark it double. When the exhibition opened, that poor little work was not displeasing, it was immediately purchased, and then procured me various commissions for little paintings of that kind, with which, for about a year, I managed to earn my living» (ibidem). The painting from a private collection I piccoli patrioti also dates back to the same year, in which three children are engaged in a battle of toy soldiers, some depicting the Bourbon ones, just as the colours of the flags present in the composition allude to the Bourbons, while, on the other hand, the emblems of Italian Unity are different (Caputo 2017, p. 106). He treated the same topic in 1863 at the second exhibition of Società Promotrice, when he exhibited, alongside Il fiore appassito, oil painting I fanciulli italiani in 1860. These ‘bambocciate’, which as the artist confessed achieved great success, also inspired the version on display here, entitled Piccoli patrioti. Despite the small format of the canvas, very similar to that of the work exhibited at Promotrice in 1862 and the other one mentioned (34×25 cm; I piccoli patrioti 27.5×40 cm), the artist has constructed a delightful scene with a narrative flavour, rich in details and pictorially balanced. Some children have observed the adults in the meetings, have listened to their hymns, their incitements to the King and Garibaldi, they repeat their mottos, such as « Roma o morte!»,, and their imagination helps to transform reality into a game. In a modest interior, illuminated by a diffused light, we can see a small altar affixed to the wall with a print depicting King Vittorio Emanuele II. It is embellished with ribbons and leaves, an allusion to those of a laurel wreath, while on the left two children are holding fake weapons, waiting for the eldest, busy fixing the tricolour to its pole. Shortly thereafter they will stand in front of the small altar to pay homage to the sovereign of the new Italian nation. The physiognomy of these small models is also found in contemporary works of the same subject, together with other details, such as the temporary paper hat or the prints of the King and the Hero of the Two Worlds. They are paintings with a strong autobiographical flavour, as we know that already as a child Toma wasted no time in putting himself at the head of the «little mischief of Galatina» (De Rinaldis 1934, p. 9). In fact, he said that at the age of twelve, after the formation of the National Guard, «I immediately dressed in paper uniforms and armed my company with my father’s surgical instruments; I made for myself a distinct uniform [sic], with a large cardboard hat, covered entirely in gold paper, and adorned with a large plume put together as best as possible with the feathers from my mother’s hats» (Toma [1886], p. 10). The fervent adherence to patriotic ideals will lead the artist not only to dedicate several canvases to these themes, but also to an active participation in the clashes, holding high-ranking military positions.
Essential Biography: Caputo 2017, p. ill.
Fedela Procaccini
SHEET 20
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Napoli, 1891)
Un rigoroso esame del Sant’Uffizio
1864
Oil on canvas, 98 x 130 cm
Signed and dated lower left: G. Toma / 1864
Naples, Civic Museum in Castel Nuovo, inv. 156
«Toma is almost terrible in the Inquisition Scene where the patient lying down is trying to raise his head» (Bürger 1867). Un rigoroso esame del Sant’Uffizio is one of the works most celebrated by critics since its first appearance at the third exhibition of Società Promotrice di Belle Arti di Napoli in 1864-1865. Toma was so aware of its value that three years later decided to send it to the Universal Exhibition in Paris. A bare-chested man, emaciated, beaten, chained at the wrist and ankle, is trying to raise his head to look at the prelate standing in front of him: if it were not for the red tights, it would be hard to tell that we are in the 16th century. To his right, lying on the ground and open to the incriminating pages, is the book of guilt.
The central topic of the painting revolves around the Inquisition court, which in the patriotic pre- and post-unification context played a fundamental role in the artistic, ideological-political and participatory expression of liberal painters of unitary faith. The use of the historical episode of the Inquisition was the tool to demonstrate that, just as the Neapolitan people of the sixteenth century had rebelled against the Spanish oppressor, defending themselves from his impositions, first and foremost that of the Inquisition, so the men of the nineteenth century had succeeded in opposing the Bourbons in the name of a united Italy. More relevant than ever, therefore, in post-unification Naples, the Spanish Inquisition had been at the centre of the painting by another artist, the Lucanian Vincenzo Marinelli, who had won a prize in a competition organised by the Neapolitan Municipality in the aftermath of unification, Cesare Mormile, protagonist of the anti-Spanish revolt that inflamed the Neapolitan city in 1547 (Naples, Civic Museum in Castel Nuovo; I. Valente, in Vincenzo Marinelli 2015, pp. 82-85), while, a few years later, in 1871, the Municipality had a plaque made, now lost, on a text by Paolo Emilio Imbriani, which paid homage to the «commoners of Naples» who managed to prevent «the disgrace of the Spanish Inquisition», also warning that «servitude is a voluntary evil of the people and is the fault of the servants rather than the masters» (Notizie ed osservazioni 1904, p. 30).
In the bare environment of a Neapolitan sacristy, with its sumptuous wooden cabinets with engraved and sculpted doors, four monks are evaluating the accused prostrate on the ground. From an open cabinet you can see a large mass of files, one of which is in the hands of the standing prelate. The unitary verb is also underlined by the use of the colors of the Italian flag, which recur in the paintings of all the painters of the peninsula: the red of the tights, the green of the cloth that partly covers the body of the man (metaphorically sacrificed for the Fatherland) and the white of the shirt slightly dyed red, a sign of the torture suffered. This is combined with the yellow of the cushion on which the book is placed, the derogation of the Neapolitan patriots from the color of the flag of the brief and utopian Parthenopean Republic of Ninety-Nine, whose reverberation, together with its protagonists, was the emblem of their battles. The work, as has already been noted in the past, stands out from Tomian’s previous production, posing greater problems, not only because it deals with the historical theme, but also with questions of perspective, composition and space. Toma here lays the foundations of his painting made of a sophisticated study of space, also calibrated by the use of light, which descends homogeneously coming from an imaginary high window on the left and barely illuminating what it hits, thus contributing to explaining the subject. And it is precisely space, as Galante rightly notes, that for the first time becomes a “significant element” (Galante 1975, p. 11).
The most effective reading of the work, however, remains the one given by Francesco Netti: «I feel a powerful impression […] before the painting by Gioacchino Toma […]. Here at first glance I feel shivers, I feel the artist who has seen his subject, seen, in the strict sense of the word: as if he, closed in his room, and concentrated in body and soul, by dint of repeating to himself the terrible word of the Holy Office, has gradually evoked an immense solitude of a library, where all the shelves instead of books are full of trials of tortured people: and penetrating that silence […] he has seen four white monks enter, who have come to sit around a small table with a green blanket, have opened a small drawer, taken out a small inkwell and a small Christ, and having improvised a sacred secretary, they waited. Shortly afterward a half-naked, livid, dislocated man’s form, carried on a stretcher, was placed with it lengthwise on the floor, in the middle of the room. They would have believed, as those who look at the painting for the first time believe, that the man was dead; except that he had raised his head a little, his eyes open, and a hand that was not strong enough to raise it was wrinkled. That white and open eye, the only living thing in that corpse, is worth the whole painting. Then one of the four, the most arid of soul and the most dialectical, goes to a shelf, takes out the process […] reads him the formula of retraction» (Netti ed. 1938, pp. 25-26). Finally, underlining that «the tone of the painting is wonderfully sad», Netti got to the point: that subject, so powerfully simple, by dint of imagining it had become something extremely true and recognisable, «room, figures, colour, tone, painting». The many praises that had rained down from all sides (including those of Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, see Della Rocca 1883, p. 132) had disturbed the solitude of spirit that was increasingly taking shape in Toma: «In the new house – the artist wrote – I arranged a studio as best I could, and immediately began to paint a tortured man of the Inquisition, […] which earned me exaggerated praise from both artists and the press. Those praises, however, instead of being an encouragement to me, had precisely the opposite effect, disturbing me from my holy peace» (Toma ed. 1973, pp. 93-94).
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1864-1865; Exposition Universelle, Paris 1867; Società Amatori e Cultori, Rome 1905; Società Promotrice, Naples 1888; Mostra della pittura, Naples 1922; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Lecce 1954; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Rome 1954; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Naples 1955; Cento dipinti, Naples 1974; Il secondo ’800 italiano, Milan 1988; Capolavori negati, Naples 1989; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto- Naples -Lecce 1995-1996; Capolavori, Monza 1997; Aria di Parigi, Livorno 1998-1999; Da De Nittis a Gemito, Naples 2017-2018.
Essential Biography: Società Promotrice 1864, p. 4 n. 37; Bürger 1867; Exposition Universelle 1867, p. 148 n. 96; Società Promotrice 1888, p. 18, n. 181; Società Amatori e Cultori 1905, pp. 53-54, p. 57 n. 1041; Mostra della pittura 1922, p. 90 n. 48, p. 73 ill.; Biancale [1933], pp. 20, 37, 44-47, 113-114, tav. XIV; Netti ed. 1938, pp. 25-26; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954a, pp. 33-34 n. 15, tav. 15; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954c, pp. 31-32 n. 14, tav. 14; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 10 n. 18; Ricci 1955, pp. 471-472; Toma ed. 1973, pp. 93-94; Cento dipinti 1974, p. 60 n. 96, fig. 96; Galante 1975, pp. 10-12, 39, tav. 6; M. Mormone, in Castel Nuovo 1990, p. 254 n. 82, p. 255 ill.; M. Mormone, in Capolavori negati, p. 71 ill., p. 110 n. 40; L. Martorelli, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 106 n. 15, p. 57 ill.; Gioacchino Toma 1996, pp. 8, 13 n. 14, p. 19 ill.; M. Mormone, in Capolavori 1997, p. 186, p. 48 ill.; P. Nicholls, in Aria di Parigi, Livorno 1998-1999, p. 172 n. 30, tav. 30; Bojano 2017, p. 82, 87 ill.; Da De Nittis a Gemito 2017, p. 97 (con ill.).
Isabella Valente
SHEET 21
Gioacchino Toma (?)
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
Sketch from La scuola delle merlettaie cieche
[1872]
Oil on paper laid down on cardboard, 9 x 12 cm
Naples, private collection
The small painting in question, recently rediscovered by the writer, consists of the sketch from La scuola delle merlettaie cieche, an oil on canvas measuring 60 x 79 cm, signed and dated «Toma 1872». The definitive work appeared at the Centenary Exhibition of Promotrice of Turin in 1942, where it was exhibited as the property of Dr. Corti of Turin (Centenary Exhibition 1942, p. 77, plate 247), then sent to the Italian Exhibition of Buenos Aires in 1947 1947 (cit. in Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954a, p. 35), and again in Italy: in Milan in 1953, at the exhibition La donna nell’arte da Hayez a Modigliani (La donna nell’arte 1953, p. 169), belonging to E. Tallone of Milan; to the retrospectives in Lecce and Rome in 1954, always from the same collection (Gioacchino Toma Exhibition 1954b, pp. 32-33, plate 12; Gioacchino Toma Exhibition 1954c, p. 32 n. 17, plate 12), in Naples in 1855, where it was instead owned by L. Polacco of Milan (Gioacchino Toma Exhibition 1955, p. 11 n. 20); finally at the exhibition in Spoleto, Naples and Lecce in 1995-1996 (Gioacchino Toma 1995, pp. 59 ill., 107 n. 18), where it was published from a private collection in Vercelli, coming from Dini collection and already sold at auction by Finarte (Milan, 29 March 1995, see Martorelli 1995, p. 24, note 57).
This is a work that documents for the first time a stylistic transition close to the luministic-spatial research of the Tuscan Macchiaioli, whose intermediary was evidently Adriano Cecioni, present in Naples during the years of his artistic retirement (1863-1867). In fact, one can read a proximity to the work of Silvestro Lega, both for the calibrated use of light in relation to the measured space of the room, and for the same spatial conception of the scene, which echoes the syntheses of Piero della Francesca already sedimented in the works of some Macchiaioli in the same period of years (the reference is in). The study of the light, which enters from the window on the left, enhanced by the wooden door painted white, allows it to spread uniformly, calibrating forms, figures, objects, actions. Already in this final choice one can notice the change of pace compared to the sketch presented here, which envisaged a lowering of tone due to the introduction of the wooden wardrobes arranged along the back wall, later replaced by the white wall capable of intensifying the brightness. Even the inclusion of the few objects that are part of everyday life, capable of delineating with philological precision both the space and the cultural topos, such as the wall frame with lace samples and the Braille tables, lead back to Tuscan-type compositional choices. The nucleus of the three figures on the right also appears modified in the final version, placing the elderly headmistress standing and supervising the lesson given by the younger blind teacher, and establishing a direct relationship with the female group of the well-known Canto dello stornello by Lega dated 1867 (Picone 1955, p. 174, later taken up by Martorelli 1995, p. 27). Every single detail, every smallest movement is represented with careful observation of reality, just as the embroiderers’ techniques appear defined, such as the tombolo, a very refined lace of Abruzzo tradition made on cylindrical cushions (tombolo, precisely), with the aid of pins and wooden bobbins.
The effective Macchiaioli synthesis of the sketch, in addition to the very small format of the sheet of paper, suggests that it is the first sketch of the composition, revealing the author’s mature approach to Macchiaioli painting. However, a question arises: first in 1876, at the XIII Neapolitan Promotrice (Società Promotrice 1876, p. 6 no. 22), then in 1877, at the third National Exhibition of Naples (Esposizione Nazionale 1877, p. 62 no. 842), and finally in 1880, at the Universal Exhibition of Melbourne (Esposizione universale 1880, p. 60 no. 42), a similar painting was presented by Giuseppe de Nigris, who at that time was stylistically close to Toma. This is how the painter and critic Costantino Abbatecola describes it in his guide to the national exhibition: «Le Cieche Operaie – Oil Painting No. 842. – How much feeling there is in those figures who, born blind, work lace out of habit. Although those figures do not have [sic] the eye that reveals the soul, one can still observe the different expressions and movements of their soul. How well-chosen is that group of that blind woman who has taken the hands of her companion and makes her work! The idea of the painting is very graceful and beautiful, and it is a painting that moves one. The execution leaves a little to be desired» (Abbatecola 1877, p. 255). Michele Uda noted that in the Blind Workers de Nigris «tones down his attractive vivacity of colour, and also turns grey in the tearful painting, putting a sad expression on the faces with sweetness, which makes one forget the cold tone and some neglected details» (M.U. 1877a).
A further clue is given by a critic in 1876 (G.d.C. 1876), according to whom they were the blind workers of the charitable institute for beggars founded in Naples by Leopoldo Rodinò in 1861 and supported by Lady Strachan, Marchioness of Salsa, in its main educational function of young blind women forced by their parents to beg. This new information leads us to consider two hypotheses: that de Nigris had copied or was inspired by Toma’s work; or that the painting La scuola delle merlettaie cieche should instead be attributed entirely to de Nigris. In favor of this second hypothesis, which at the moment remains such in the absence of further documentation, whether paper or visual, there are mainly two arguments: the late appearance of the work in Toma’s catalogue (it should be remembered that in fact before 1942 it does not appear in the artist’s literature); and the stylistic and formal results, which make the painting almost a solo in Toma’s production. On the contrary, the comparison with de Nigris’ canvas L’ultima risorsa, in the version of Gallerie d’Italia (published by Farese Sperken 2015, p. 36), would seem more stringent, for the similar study of light that transforms into a general brightness, which illuminates, defining them, people and things. It must also be said that Toma was certainly interested in bobbin lace, as evidenced by the Disegni originali di merletti a tombolo exhibited at the XXII Neapolitan Promotrice of 1886 as part of his civil commitment in the municipal schools of Naples for the working class (Società Promotrice 1886, pp. 14-15 n. 102).
Unpublished work.
Isabella Valente
SHEET 22
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
Le due madri / La madre nutrice / La madre di latte
1874
Oil on canvas, cm 55,5 x 74,5
Signed and dated lower left: G. Toma / 1874
Naples, Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte, inv. OA 7715
Made in 1874, the painting was exhibited only after the artist’s death, at the XXVII Esposizione della Promotrice di Napoli in 1891. It belonged to the painter’s family and was donated to Capodimonte Museum by his son Gustavo in 1961. Biancale had already highlighted the contrast between the woman of the people, without milk for her child, and the high-class lady who could not breastfeed her child because he was dead (Biancale [1933], p. 51). A simple, everyday scene, which however hides the anguish of a broken woman and a heavy silence, but respectful of the pain of others. The setting is sumptuous, with two armchairs, red and gold upholstery and light white lace, colours that evoke the social importance of the woman who, in a rich and white dress, breastfeeds her child. On the wall you can see a refined wallpaper, the frame of a painting placed higher up and a boiserie. The two figures, sitting far apart, one on the chair and one on the armchair, are touched by a soft light that enters from a side window, behind a curtain, dimmed on one side by a chair, on the other by the door jamb, elements that create the limits of vision and narration. The atmosphere is silent, collected: the two women do not look at each other, they seem distant and absorbed in their thoughts. The background of the environment is absorbed by the shadows, creating a climate steeped in sadness with flashes of strong color to underline the anguish.
The work was immediately considered by critics to be one of Toma’s most successful for the truth and realistic tension with which he managed to stage the painful social and psychological distance of the two protagonists, made palpable by a subdued style that veils the expressions without hiding them. All the elements of the room seem significant and contribute to build the situation in a modern vision; all on the same level to bring out a human and profound feeling, dictated by the pain of loss for both women: of their own child or of the primary and vital food, in a game that overwhelms and overturns social and human plans, or rather, levels them.
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1891; Società Amatori e Cultori, Rome 1905; Prima Biennale Romana, Rome 1921; La mostra della pittura, Naples 1938; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Lecce-Rome-Naples 1954; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Naples 1955; Acquisizioni 1975; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto-Naples-Lecce 1995-1996; Napoli Ottocento, Rome 2024.
Essential Biography: Società Promotrice 1891, p. 23; Società Amatori e Cultori 1905, p. 56; Tesorone 1906, pp. 102 ill., 104; Prima Biennale Romana 1921, p. 86 n. 16; Biancale [1933], pp. 51, 54, 114, tav. XVII; De Rinaldis 1934, pp. 43-44, 232, 239-240, tavv. XIV-XIV; La mostra della pittura 1938, p. 339 n. 5; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954c, p. 33 n. 18, tav. 16; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 11; Causa 1962, pp. 8 17, tav. [1]; La Sala Toma 1962, p. 17 n. 4, p.n.n. ill.; Acquisizioni 1975, pp. 82-83 ill.; Causa 1975, p. 16, tavv. 5-6; L. Martorelli, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, pp. 63 ill., 107 (con ill.); Bojano 2017, p. 108, fig. 71; A. Coppola, in Napoli Ottocento 2024, p. 378 n. 181.
Rosa Romano d’Orsi
SHEET 23
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
Dietro la porta
Around 1875
Oil on canvas, 44 x 29,5 cm
Signed lower right: G. Toma
Naples, private collection
Dietro la porta is a work from the ancient and rich Neapolitan collection of Alberto Portolano, later dismembered. The composition is constructed with a wise attention to perspective, through multiple levels that induce the observer to direct his gaze towards the central part of the canvas, between the hands and the slightly reclined head of the young woman. The study of the draperies and the accuracy of the details are noteworthy, from the seams of the dress to the hair adorned with a pretty hat embellished with flowers and long ribbons not yet knotted, an element that allows us to hypothesize an imminent exit.
The door, slightly open, allows a glimpse of some decorative elements of the room, not immediately recognizable. The quality of the pictorial rendering is contributed by the beam of light coming from the left, which filters through the cracks in the door and falls on the half-hidden face and bust of the girl, evidence of a refined lighting solution. Overall, a sense of intimacy prevails, dictated by the narrow, almost photographic framing and the dim light that envelops the interior of the room: there is a sense of suspension between curiosity and mystery. It is not known what is beyond the door, just as it is not possible to establish whether the girl is leaving the room or is simply observing something or someone on the other side of the door. This ambiguity is confirmed by the fact that over time the work has been titled both Fanciulla che schiude una porta sia Fanciulla che chiude la porta. Corrado Maltese, who published it in 1954, compared it to Donna che cuce (now at the Metropolitan Art Gallery Corrado Giaquinto in Bari), highlighting the artist’s predilection for «topics of domestic intimacy” and noting “the more vibrant touch, more sensitive to the reflections of colour and light» (Maltese 1954, p. 63); these considerations led the scholar to date the two interior scenes to the early 1860s. Enrico Crispolti in 1958 moved the chronology forward, to around the mid-1870s (Crispolti 1958, p. 63), as was later confirmed by Farese Sperken (1987, p. 90) and Martorelli, who placed them around 1875, after the creation of Luisa Sanfelice in carcere e de Le due madri (L. Martorelli, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 108).
Further comparisons could be made, for the lighting choices, with Scuola delle merlettaie cieche, or again, in the thematic comparison, with the preparatory study for Il tatuaggio dei camorristi, where a door is represented, as suggested by some critical readings (ibidem). In addition to specific references to his production, Dietro la porta recalls, for its layout and subject, some contemporary works by other artists of the time, from Adriano Cecioni to Silvestro Lega, with his Curiosità, or again to Giuseppe De Nigris with La mano del ladro, as suggested by Valente (I. Valente, in La scena illustrata 1995, p. 414). After all, it is «one of the situations most suited to the narrative of everyday life» (ibidem), a theme that Toma succeeds in doing well and that balances the sense of familiarity with theatrical rigor.
Exhibitions: Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Lecce-Rome 1954; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto-Naples-Lecce 1995-1996; L’Ottocento napoletano, Modena-Naples 2003; Ottocento in collezione, Novara 2018-2019.
Essential Biography: Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954a, p. 35 n. 33; Maltese 1954, pp. 51-68, p. 62 fig. 17 ill.; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 10 n. 17; Crispolti 1958, p. 58; Schettini 1967, I, p. 319 ill.; Galante 1975 p. 42; L. Martorelli, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 65 n. 24 ill., p. 108 n. 24; I. Valente, in La scena illustrata 1995, pp. 414-415, tav. f.t.; Cassiano 1996, pp. 11, 20 n. 20 ill.; Marini 1999, p. 701; L’Ottocento Napoletano 1999, p. 72, fig. 26 ill.; L’Ottocento napoletano 2003, pp. 38-39, tav. 19; Caputo 2017, pp. 107, 109; L. Martorelli, in Ottocento in collezione 2018, n. 28 (con ill.).
Rosanna Carrieri
SHEET 24
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
La messa in casa
1877
Oil on canvas, 83 x 130 cm
Signed and dated lower left: G. Toma / 1877
On the back, scrolls: 1) “Modern Contemporary Italian Art Exhibition”, Berlin 1937; 2) “19th Century Italian Exhibition in Germany”, undated; 3) “Gioacchino Toma” Exhibition, Spoleto 1995; 4) “Masterpieces of the 19th Century in Naples” Exhibition, Civic Museums, Monza 1997.
Naples, Civic Museum in Castel Nuovo, inv. 155
The painting was presented by Toma, together with l viatico dell’orfana and La guardia alla ruota dei trovatelli, at the third National Exhibition of Fine Arts held in Naples in 1877. The work belongs to the full artistic maturity of the master and is among his most famous masterpieces, in which his personal intimate poetics is fully manifested, expressed with strong emotional participation, compositional and lighting expertise. However, the painting did not gain the favor of contemporary critics, as it was not in line with the hedonistic tendencies of painting in vogue at the time, characterized by the search for pleasant pictorial effects in compliance with public tastes. In La Messa in casa the painter does not fall into easy sketchiness, interpreting the religious subject that gives the painting its title in a completely unconventional way. Toma, in fact, leaves the altar and the officiating priest out of the field of vision, concentrating the representation on the different states of mind of the members of a noble family during the celebration of the domestic mass and on the realistic rendering of the environment in which the scene takes place.
In the work, according to some scholars (Guardascione, Bojano), the members of the family of Count Gaetani, protector and patron of the artist during his youthful exile in Piedimonte d’Alife in the province of Terra di Lavoro (now Caserta), would be portrayed, captured in the intimacy of a richly furnished room in their palace. The characters are set against two large paintings of sacred subjects, a true example of skill, which help to truthfully characterize the scene of an aristocratic interior. The diagonal cut of the composition brings out only the lower part of the two paintings: in particular, in the one on the left we can see a crouching figure, perhaps a saint in the act of suffering martyrdom, and in the one on the right we can see the wing of an angel kneeling before a figure in a rich blue cloak, probably a Madonna.
The measured dialectic of light and shadow enhances the expressiveness of the entire representation, in which Toma displays all his perspective and chiaroscuro technique. The scene is divided into two parts thanks to the use of light, which highlights the main characters characterized by behaviors, moods and feelings oscillating between the nonchalant chatter of the master of the house in a dressing gown and slippers, the composed concentration of his wife in an elegant white lace dress, the placid relaxation of the thriving nurse breastfeeding the couple’s baby, the devoted concentration of the woman on her knees dressed in black and the drowsiness of the man sitting with his arms folded. In the dim light of the left part of the scene, in studied contrast with the brightness that pervades the rest of the painting, the servants, also variously participating in the mass, appear at the door of the room, physically distanced from the family to demarcate the separation, also of a social nature, between the two groups.
The painting became part of the art collection of the Municipality of Naples in 1878 thanks to the purchase, made by the institution, of the winning ticket of a national lottery that, organized to encourage artists, had put up for grabs the unsold works of the National Exhibition of 1877, among which was also La messa in casa. The work was exhibited in the municipal headquarters of Palazzo San Giacomo until its transfer to the Civic Museum of Castel Nuovo in 1990. Highly appreciated by critics of the last century, it has participated in several retrospective exhibitions on its author and on nineteenth-century painting. Of particular interest, as it has still been little investigated by Toma scholars, is its participation in the Exhibition of Contemporary Modern Italian Art, held in Berlin between October and November 1937, as attested by the label on the back of the frame.
Exhibtions: Esposizione Nazionale, Naples 1877; Società Amatori e Cultori, Rome 1905; XVI Esposizione Internazionale, Venice 1928; Mostra d’arte italiana, Berlin 1937; L’arte nella vita del Mezzogiorno, Rome 1953; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Lecce-Rome 1954; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Naples 1955; Cento dipinti, Naples 1974; Capolavori Negati, Naples 1989; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto-Naples-Lecce 1995-1996; Capolavori, Monza 1997.
Essential Biography: Abbatecola 1877, pp. 232-233; De Zerbi 1877, pp. 35-36; Esposizione Nazionale 1877, p. 30, n. 395; Netti 1877, p. 59; Yorick 1877, pp. 116-117; Società Amatori e Cultori 1905, p. 11; Tesorone 1906, p. 103;Guardascione 1924, pp. 80-82 ill.; XVI Esposizione Internazionale 1928, p. 52, n. 240; Biancale [1933], pp. 63-65, 116-117, tav. XXVIII; De Rinaldis 1934, pp. 52, 54-55, tav. XXII; L’Arte nella vita del Mezzogiorno 1953, p. 61; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954c, p. 33, n. 21, tav. 17; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 11, n. 27; Ricci 1955, p. 476; Cento dipinti 1974, p. 60, n. 97 ill.; Causa 1975, pp. 9, 14, 16 ill.; Capolavori Negati 1989, pp. 72 ill., 110; M. Mormone, in Castel Nuovo 1990, pp. 262, 263 ill.; Picone Petrusa, Toma, Gioacchino, in La pittura in Italia 1991, pp. 1043-1044; M. Mormone, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, pp. 11, 13, 23, 30, 71 ill., 108 (con ill.); M. Mormone, in Capolavori 1997, pp. 91 ill., 186-187; De Cesare 2007, pp. 42 ill., 45, 48; Bojano 2017, pp. 97-103, 98-99 (con ill.); N. Bonanomi, Toma, Gioacchino, in D.B.I. 2019.
Rosa Perrotta
SHEET 25
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
L’onomastico della maestra
1879
Oil on canvas, 74 x 113 cm
Signed and dated lower left: G. Toma 1879
Naples, Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts, inv. 156
«The painting entitles Onomastico it is almost a conclusive demonstration of Gioacchino Toma’s art in figurative composition. But it is, at the same time, an unforeseen fact in his painting, a completely new vision of collective and individual femininity […]» (De Rinaldis 1934, p. 57). At the end of the 1870s, Toma returned to collective representations with solutions that attest his never-ending need for drawing. The oil painting – created in 1879, presented at the exhibition of Società Promotrice di Napoli in 1880, purchased by the Ministry for 3000 Lire (Società Promotrice 1880) and donated to the Academy of Naples (De Gubernatis 1889, p. 512) – depicts a piece of intimate daily work: in a school interior, two groups of students, one held back by the desks placed in perspective, the other crowded near the door, give a floral tribute to the teacher who has arrived from the entrance, while «a harmonious gaiety of colours completes with its special note the naive character of the celebration» (G.d.C. 1880b, p. 2). The stylistic and chromatic choices define a Toma who, although tied to his elegiac vision as an internist painter, at the same time proves to be a profound researcher of modern solutions capable of de-crystallizing that critical silence to which Netti had relegated him by passing unnoticed the review of his works exhibited at the National Exhibition of Naples in 1877. The artist manifests that desire to research a hedonistic and at times anachronistic genre painting which, in a period of prevailing Morellism, was read by the critics of the time as a manifesto of his pictorial solitude.
The gestation of the work is therefore placed in a complex period of his production, as proven by the double version of the subject (see the introductory essay by I. Valente in this volume), of which there is also a study for two figures. From the comparison between the two autograph versions, sometimes erroneously identified as one a sketch of the other, one can grasp «the document of critical clarification in the artist’s conscience» (Causa 1955, p. 48). Regarding the canvas, first owned by the collector and lawyer Emanuele Fiano, then in Stramezzi collection and subsequently merged into the Prada collection in Milan, the critic Somarè asserted that it was «a persuasive example of that gentle primitive tale in which the most beautiful art of Gioacchino Toma consists, which breaks away from the Neapolitan school» (Somarè 1933, p. 23), tying in with the contemporary position of Emilio Cecchi, who attributed to it «a chromatic sweetness and a softness of impasto that, later, Toma replaced with a more disdainful manner» (Cecchi 1933, p. 718). The two versions are identical in size and composition, but differ in pictorial texture: the synthetic and materially intense brushstroke of Prada collection version – which was present in the artist’s 1954 retrospective – is flanked by the structurally compressed, linear and at times affected brushstroke of the Academy version, which, with its evident tonal breaks, necessary for the dialectic of light, but not very inclined to the painter’s nature, acquires a tight compositional rhythm, which is more tempered and fluid in the Milan version. The clear difference between the two works, however, is resolved in the same spatial construction: the interior is not presented as a mere stage backdrop, but, as is usual in Toma, develops through the interpenetration of mobile planes.
It is in this structural unity that objects and figures, with their arrangement, become participants in a chromatically constructed but content-measured vivacity, such as to push the critic Raffaele Carrieri, on the occasion of the 1938 La mostra della pittura napoletana del XVII-XVIII-XIX, in which the Academy’s painting was exhibited, to affirm that «Gioacchino Toma has an enchanting modesty and delicacy» (Carrieri 1938, p. 732).
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1880; La mostra della pittura, Naples 1938; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto-Naples-Lecce 1995-1996; Lavoratori a Napoli, Rome 1995; Gioacchino Toma, Lecce 1996.
Essential Biography: G.d.C. 1880b, p. 2; Società Promotrice 1880, p. 12 n. 208; De Gubernatis 1889, p. 512; Biancale [1933], pp. 48-50, 114, tav. XV; De Rinaldis 1934, pp. 55-57, 237, tav. XXIV; La mostra della pittura 1938, pp. 270 ill., 309 n. 3; Causa 1966, pp. 70-71; Corbi 1971, pp. 360-361; M. Mormone, in Caputi, Causa, Mormone 1972, pp. 84-85, 124 n. 654, tavv. XC, XCI; Causa 1975, p. 14; F. Capobianco, in Lavoratori a Napoli 1995, II, p. 222 (con ill.); M. Mormone, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, pp. 72 ill., 110 n. 32 (con ill.); Gioacchino Toma 1996, p. 13 n. 31.
Santina Serraino
SHEET 26
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
La confessione in sagrestia / La confessione del prete
1880
Oil on canvas, 68 x 106 cm
Signed and dated lower left: G. Toma / 1880
On the back stamp impressed on canvas: “Louis Pisani’s / Picture Galleries / Piazza Manin Florence”
Private collection
The painting was presented at the IV National Exhibition of Turin in 1880, together with two other well-known masterpieces by the artist, La pioggia di cenere, eruzione del Vesuvio (28 April 1872) and Le educande al coro.. Filippo Filippi, composer and music critic, commenting on the Turin exhibition, thus evaluated the work in question: «Toma is not a colorist: he is right, he is in tune, but he is not warm and always remains in grey, cold tones; to be convinced of this, it is enough to look at his other two paintings, beautiful in composition, observation, intonation, but a little dull in colour: […] La confessione in sacristia, is also very true and pleasant, with those two priests, the old man who confesses the young man, in the evening quiet of a deserted sacristy» (Filippi 1880, p. 151). The critic Luigi Chirtani (alias Luigi Archinti) added that the painting «by Toma, also a faded painter but notable for his delicacy of feeling» is «a somewhat small thing, but fine and witty, and which represents a sacristy in which there are two old priests, one of whom is kneeling and confessing to the other» (Chirtani 1880, p. 158). About the topic of confession in 1889 it was recalled that Toma was a «painter of scenes of the sacristy, of convents, of nuns, of boarders, of scenes of the shadows of the choir enlivened by the flashes of reddish light of candles and lamps; he is a master in capturing the ecclesiastical physiognomy of people and things, and in making us feel the sense of the sacred place in which the smell of incense is diffused and the light regulated by the large curtains» (De Gubernatis 1889, p. 512).
The painting, one of the great masterpieces in the artist’s catalogue, disappeared from the exhibition scene after Mostra di Gioacchino Toma of 1955 (p. 12 n. 34bis), until, quite recently, it was tracked down by the writer and brought to the Roman exhibition (Napoli Ottocento 2024). Confirmation that it is a true masterpiece is given both by its publication in the well-known Milanese periodical «L’Illustrazione Italiana» (a. XIV, n. 15, 10 April 1887, p. 272), and by its ancient ownership, Galleria Pisani in Florence, whose stamp appears on the back, printed directly on the canvas. It was in Pisani collection in 1905 when it was exhibited at Società Amatori e Cultori of Rome (p. 57 no. 1038) and, although Sergio Ortolani refers it to the same owner in his 1934 volume (Ortolani 1934, plate 8), the work was in the collection of the lawyer Leone Augusto Senigallia of Naples since 1928, when it was sent to the XVI International Exhibition of Venice (XVI Esposizione Internazionale 1928, p. 52 n. 242, such as La confessione del prete)). Biancale also documents it in the latter collection in 1933 (Biancale [1933], plate XXXIV), as does the catalogue of the so-called “three centuries” exhibition of 1938 (La mostra della pittura 1938, pp. 268 ill., 339). Since the mid-1950s the painting was in the collection of the engineer Antonio Limoncelli of Naples (Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 12 n. 34bis), from which it passed to the current owner in more recent times.
In the setting of an old Neapolitan sacristy, which Ezechiele Guardascione recognizes as the church of Santa Chiara (Guardascione 1924, p. 117), a scene of minor realism is framed, apparently without importance, the confession of a priest. We know well how much Toma had insisted on this topic, and in general on scenes and figures inserted in liturgical environments. Toma’s world is silent, inscribed in perspective compositions in which each element is measured in relation to the context. The compositional structure echoes the 1864 masterpiece Un rigoroso esame del Sant’Uffizio, but with a significant innovation: there the composition is broader and more majestic, in line with the historical theme, here the focus is narrowed on the intimate conversation. Toma had in fact moved on to be interested in particular human situations that he could encounter in the real life of his time. The works of these years are psychological stories that almost always take place in an interior that accompanies them, completing their meaning. The painting is constructed with an analytical eye, but far from the linguistic Flemishism of the Sixties. The brushstroke is always precise, but spread out in spots, sometimes inconclusive with respect to the contours of the objects, whose tactility is rendered mainly by using very short rises of light. The light, which comes from the left, from below, is the true constructive element of the entire composition; it gradually enters that small space, illuminating with great truth some details: the open doors of the wooden wardrobes, within which a baroque reliquary can be glimpsed, the object of an independent study already in Casciaro collection (De Rinaldis 1934, plate XXVI), and the splendid still life piece of sacred objects (the sumptuous chasuble, with the silk stole whose translucent weave is defined even by the white dress edged in pink, the chalice covered by its green-blue cloth, the sacred books and the polychrome Crucifix). The kneeling priest is confessing, presumably before dressing to celebrate the rite of the Holy Mass of the Third Sunday of Advent of the liturgical calendar in anticipation of Christmas, as the colours of the sacred vestments would suggest. The dark mass of wooden cabinets forms the background, the upper doors of which have carved and sculpted frames, the same ones found in the lower part of the cabinets in Un rigoroso esame del Sant’Uffizio. In the middle of the last century, some studies of these cabinets were known, executed as if by a «master of woodwork» (ibid., p. 58): a Choir, 35×28 cm, from the painter Ezechiele Guardascione, to whom it was dedicated by Gustavo Toma, then in De Angelis collection (L’Ottocento napoletano 1939, plate 57) and finally in Antonio Mazzotta collection of Milan (Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954c, p. 35 n. 28, plate 39); two studies, one owned by Mazzotta and the other formerly in Casciaro collection, later belonging to the painter Franco Girosi, were exhibited in Naples in 1955, together with the definitive work (Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 12, nn. 33bis, 34, 34bis), while two others were in the collection of the painter Carlo Siviero (De Rinaldis 1934, p. 239).
Exhibitions: IV Esposizione Nazionale, Turin 1880; Società Amatori e Cultori, Rome 1905; XVI Esposizione Internazionale, Venice 1928; La mostra della pittura, Naples 1938; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Naples 1955; Napoli Ottocento, Rome 2024.
Essential Biography: Chirtani 1880, p. 158; Filippi 1880, p. 151; IV Esposizione Nazionale 1880, p. 102 n. 795; La confessione 1889, pp. 165 ill., 167; Società Amatori e Cultori 1905, p. 57 n. 1038; Tesorone 1906, p. 103; Gioacchino Toma 1919, tav. f.t.; Guardascione 1924, pp. 117-118; XVI Esposizione Internazionale 1928, p. 52 n. 242; Ojetti 1929, p. 224 ill.; Pasquè 1929, p. 9; Biancale [1933], pp. 73-75, 106, 118, tav. XXXIV; De Rinaldis 1934, pp. 57-59, 232, 239, tavv. XXVII-XXVIII; Ortolani 1934, tav. 8; La mostra della pittura 1938, pp. 268 ill., 339 n. 4; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, pp. 7, 12 n. 34bis, p. 17; Picone 1955, p. 174; Galante 1975, p. 41; Catalogo dell’arte italiana 1984, p. 417 (con ill.); A. Coppola, in Napoli Ottocento 2024, p. 246 ill., p. 378 n. 157.
Isabella Valente
SHEET 27
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Napoli, 1891)
Luisa Sanfelice trasportata da Palermo a Napoli il 2 settembre per essere decapitata
1884
Oil on canvas, 114 x 177 cm
Signed lower right: G. Toma / 1884
Naples, Intesa Sanpaolo Collection, Gallerie d’Italia
The painting is presented as the pictorial epilogue of the story of Luisa Sanfelice. Toma returned to the theme about ten years after the two versions of the woman in prison, but he did not choose to depict the tragic and bloody death of the condemned woman, executed by the inexperienced hands of an improvised executioner, but rather the moment before, when the conspiring noblewoman was taken to Palermo so that the doctors of King Ferdinand IV could confirm her pregnancy and her execution could be postponed until after the birth.
Once again, the artist’s emotional capacity shines through, intimately linked to the topic of Risorgimento and the resistance to monarchic absolutism, but consciously rendered with a human touch. Luisa Sanfelice, before being socially labeled as a political martyr, is for Toma a woman «who seems to be sitting in a carriage, kind, delicate and sad» (De Rinaldis 1934, p. 71). Moreover, it is interesting to highlight that the gestation of the work takes place in a period in which the artist opens up to external, scenographically suggestive landscape depictions, immersing himself in the rendering of reality with a different texture of chromatic mixtures: from the cold light inside the cell we move to a cumbersome and Dantesque theater of waves and clouds. «The greyish fourteenth-century intimate» (Guardascione 1924, p. 54) here smoothes the chromatic range of a shiny and transparent black, which contrasts with the clear colour choices of the blue uniforms, the red cockades and the white belts of the six gendarmes, participants in the pity of the event, but with that detachment, mindful of the lesson of Bernardo Celentano, which allows Toma to «soberly modulate the variations of a unique feeling» (Biancale [1933], p. 84).
Everything converges on the figure of Luisa: with her bowed face, sad gaze and tied hands, Sanfelice embodies the ineluctable destiny that awaits her, and her almost monastic attitude seems to evoke a silent acceptance of fate. It is in the paradoxical semantic and chromatic reversal of Morelli’s painting (Domenico Morelli, La barca della vita, 1859, GNAM Rome) that the slow flow of the vessel on a murky cerulean sea takes place, outlined by the weak and pale twilight of the sky, partially and symbolically hidden by the hull of a Bourbon ship, cut in perspective. There is a harmony of contrasts, resolved with the conscious adoption of exquisitely Neapolitan chiaroscuro. The pictorial material bends, expands and contracts, following the emotional substratum of a political event, historically documented, which is humanized here.
The work was presented at the National Exhibition of Turin in 1884 and the following year at the 21st exhibition of Società Promotrice di Napoli with the title Luisa Sanfelice trasportata da Palermo a Napoli il 2 settembre per essere decapitata. The pages of the critics of the time read: «Toma is more colorful, but darker. […] Sanfelice recalls with grim shades of color the grim Neapolitan era. It just seems to us that the canvas is cut too severely. […] The restriction of the scene, which pictorially is all reduced to a small boat where Sanfelice is with two henchmen and the large piers of two nearby ships, forces the viewer to immediately conceive what it is about. And the fact of that moment enters the soul too quickly in this way» (Alla Promotrice 1885). In a letter sent to Annibale Sacco, administrator of the Royal House, Toma asked that the painting, considered worthy for the historical subject represented, be acquired for the collection of the Capodimonte Gallery «for six thousand lire, a price much reduced from that indicated at the exhibition» (Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 113). The painting was instead purchased by the Bank of Naples and, for a certain period, entrusted to the Museum of San Martino, as is attested by the catalogue of Mostra dei ricordi storici del Risorgimento nel Mezzogiorno d’Italia of 1912.
Exhibitions: Esposizione Generale, Turin 1884; Società Promotrice, Naples 1885; Mostra dei ricordi storici, Naples 1912; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Rome 1954; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Naples 1955; Capolavori dalle collezioni, Naples 1989; Napoli e la Repubblica, Naples 1989; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto-Naples-Lecce 1995-1996; La Repubblica Napoletana, Naples 1999.
Essential Biography: Esposizione Generale 1884, p. 87 n. 1814; Alla Promotrice 1885, p. 3; Società Promotrice 1885, p. 14 n. 110; La rivoluzione napoletana 1899, p. 50 n. 173, tav. LXXIV; Mostra dei ricordi storici 1912, pp. 60-67; Biancale [1933], pp. 83-84, p. 120 tav. L; De Rinaldis 1934, pp. 70-71, tav. XL-XLI; Molajoli 1953, p. 51; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954c, n. 46, tav. 26; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 51; Causa 1975, pp. 15-16, tav. XV-XVI; Fusco 1984, pp. 208-210; Capolavori dalle collezioni 1989, pp. 21, 112 ill.; Napoli e la Repubblica 1989, p. 170 n. 104 ill.; Picone Petrusa 1989-1990, pp. 395-396; L. Martorelli, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 113 n. 47 (con ill.); La Collezione d’arte 1998, p. 80; La Repubblica Napoletana 1999, p. 152; M.T. Giannotti, in La Collezione d’Arte 2004, pp. 216-217 (con ill.).
Santina Serraino
SHEET 28
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
I sommozzatori
1884-1885
Oil on canvas, 92,5 x 134,5 cm
Lecce, Palazzo Carafa
In the 1919 inventory of the Civic Museum of Lecce, an «oil painting on canvas depicting a seascape by the painter G. Toma placed in a large gilded frame» is mentioned (Inventario Museo Civico 3 febbraio 1919, ASCLe, CAT. IX, cl. 8, fasc. I, b. 10), a gift from Toma family to the municipality of Lecce in 1898. The explanation of the title I sommozzatori is suggested by Biancale, who identifies the characters as «those specialists who on the beach in a gesture of expectation and challenge are ready to dive to fish for shells that they then collect in bags tied to their belts» (Biancale [1993], p. 121). In the last decade of his career, Toma began to perceive the innovations prepared by De Nittis and by Macchiaioli painting, attempting to experiment with a more modern language and new expressive possibilities. In the topics he deals with, the artist engages with the study of landscape, especially aquatic landscapes, as evidenced byMarina della Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome as early as 1882. However, even in the case of natural settings, these are never the result of direct experience, but of a reflection then addressed in the studio, as indicated by the existence of two versions of I sommozzatori. In addition to the one in Lecce, another, almost identical one, is preserved in a private collection, exhibited in Monza in 1997 (M. Mormone, in Capolavori 1997, p. 188), and a further Study for the divers owned by Gallerie d’Italia in Naples, all datable between 1884 and 1885. Toma often worked simultaneously on the drafting of the same subject, testing chromatic choices, combinations of tones and variations of light. His son Gustavo, in a letter to Aldo Vallone, explains: «when in painting Sommozzatori he found himself faced with the difficulty of having to render the immensity of the sea […] he advanced with two canvases in each of which he added the brushstroke he felt by comparing it with that which he had previously fixed on the other canvas» (the testimony, dated 22 August 1945, is published in Romano 1997, p. 69). On the elaboration of the two paintings, Raffaele Causa observes that one of those examples is «conducted with greater quickness of hand, and felt in the contrast of the darks», while the other – probably referring to the one in Lecce – is «more melted and dull, imbued with that “poetry of grey”» (Causa 1966, p. 72) for which he was often recognized. The painter renounces to any detail that might distract the attention from the scene of sea and sky, separated by a clear strip of horizon: there are no rocks or other references. The four men – a couple standing in the foreground, and the other already in the sea – are alone with the grim nature, in a «pantheistic formal representation» (L. Martorelli, in Impressionismo italiano 2002, p. 270). Their faces are sketched, the anatomy of the bodies academic, while the mass of water – which dominates the composition by extension – appears almost immobilized in its wavy motion, in the wrapped crests and in the foam that is produced towards the shore. Toma uses a broad, free and summary brushstroke: «The painter’s human feeling is thus converted directly, without passing through the metaphorical language of nature or fantasy, into the aesthetic feeling that expresses it» (Geraci 1931, p. 200).
Exhibtions: Mostra retrospettiva, Lecce 1939; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Lecce-Rome 1954; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Naples 1955; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto-Naples-Lecce 1995-1996; Impressionismo italiano, Brescia 2002-2003.
Essential Biography: Biancale [1933], pp. 95-96, 121, tav. LXXVII; De Rinaldis 1934, p. 67, tav. LVI; Mostra retrospettiva 1939, p. 50; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954a, p. 23 tav. 42; Causa 1955, p. 49; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 14 n. 54; Causa 1966, p. 72; Causa 1975, p. 15; Galante 1975, p. 25; G. Delogu, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 114 (con ill.); Cassiano 1996, pp. 12, 30 ill. n. 47; L. Martorelli, in Impressionismo italiano 2002, pp. 150 ill., 270; Barilli 2007, p. 148; Farese Sperken 2015, p. 87; G. Lanzillotta, in Arte in comune 2018, pp. 210, 211 ill.
Erika Presicce
SHEET 29
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina 1836 – Naples 1891)
Il tatuaggio dei camorristi
1888-1890
Oil on canvas, 88 x 130 cm
Naples, Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte, inv. O.A. 7723
The painting was part of the artist’s family collection and was donated to Capodimonte Museum by Gustavo Toma in 1961. Painted between 1888 and 1890, it shows Gioacchino’s approach in these years to a painting in spots with low-toned areas and open, quick brush strokes. Renouncing his first, more descriptive and analytical style, he thus achieved effects of greater movement, expressiveness and pathos. The scene develops horizontally and represents a miserable interior rendered with a play of shadows and flashes of light. On the front wall of the room is a chest of drawers, on which various objects can be glimpsed, without the possibility of distinguishing them, among devotional statues under glass bells, according to the typically Neapolitan tradition; the right part of the room is occupied by a bed and some chairs. A young man with an open shirt is lying there, observing a person who is carrying out a tattoo, while another man sitting at the head of the bed supervises the operation while smoking. On the left, instead, we can see a half-open door and a woman with a red scarf tied at her throat, sitting and bent over to spy on the entrance. A veil of light comes from the crack of the shutter in the dark room, but a greater glow focuses on the figure of the young man and his white shirt open on his chest.
The “spot” effect recalls Goya’s 1814 painting La fucilazione del 3 maggio del 1808, of which some engravings were in circulation. Furthermore, according to the 17th-century pictorial tradition, the light and its absence may not have been reproduced in an attempt to achieve a naturalistic result, but rather skilfully constructed to convey a message, and in this case also a socio-psychological condition. The stylistic novelty lies in the effect of the unfinished, in the quick, dashed brushstroke, which supports the intense and realistic outcome of the moment. According to Causa, for this main reason the work could consist of a preparatory sketch for a subsequent creation, which the artist, who died too soon, on January 12, 1891, was unable to complete (Causa 1962, p. 12). In my opinion, however, the painter experiments, as he did previously, with other tendencies, he opens himself to stimuli unrelated to the painting of his own context, driven by the circulation of images from universal and national exhibitions, but also local ones, where exchanges of ideas and techniques took place. He was perhaps also moved by the generational comparison, within the teaching carried out, which led him to adopt in these years a more modern, immediate, undefined and free language. See for this Il bacio della nonna, in which the whole atmosphere seems to be evoked precisely in the play of the unfinished and the emotionally perceived, which gives movement to the action, as can also be appreciated in some of his last portraits. About Tatuaggio, we know the study of the detail of the half-open door, which was in Matarazzo collection in Naples, reproduced in Biancale’s monograph on plate LXXIX. Also in relation to it, Causa hypothesizes that it could be a subsequent draft of the overall sketch, precursor of another more finished version.
Exhibitions: Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Lecce-Rome 1954; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Naples 1955; Acquisizioni, Naples 1975; Lavoratori a Napoli, Naples 1995; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto-Naples-Lecce 1995-1996; Capolavori, Naples 1997.
Essential Biography: Tesorone 1906, p. 104; Biancale [1933], pp. 96-97, 108, tav. LXXVIII; Bottari, 1943, II, p. 555; De Rinaldis 1934, pp. 74, 76, 77, tav. LXI, pp. 233-240; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1954c, p. 39 n. 53, tav. 45; Salerno 1954, p. 23; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma 1955, p. 14 n. 57; Picone 1955, pp. 176, 175 ill.; Lavagnino 1956, p. 759; Causa 1962, pp. 10, 12, 19 n. 13, tav. [4]; Causa 1966, pp. 72-73, 36 ill.; Causa 1975, p. 17, tav. 23; Acquisizioni 1975, p. 86; Galante 1975, pp. 7, 115, tav. 30; M. Mormone, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 116 n. 59, p. 98 ill.; M. Mormone, in Lavoratori a Napoli 1995, p. 224 n. 16, p. 225 ill.; M. Mormone, in Capolavori 1997, pp. 187-188, tav. 132.
Rosa Romano d’Orsi
SHEET 30
Gioacchino Toma
(Galatina, 1836 – Naples, 1891)
Il refettorio delle cieche
Around 1890
Oil on canvas, 77 x 127 cm
Naples, Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte, inv. 7722 O.A.
The work, which entered Capodimonte collection in 1960 together with twelve other canvases by the artist with a donation from his son Gustavo, is one of the last, if not the last, work by Gioacchino Toma. The eight blind women are «one next to the other in slightly awkward and stiffened attitudes; and each is silent in her closed isolation […], some tilt her head slightly to one side» (De Rinaldis 1934, p. 79). Some second thoughts are evident, with slightly larger figures and differently inclined faces. The whiteness that dominates the scene, from the tables to the blind women’s aprons, to the wall, is interrupted by the two women in the foreground on the right, who create a slight contrast by breaking into the static nature of the palette with their chromatically more elaborate clothes. The composition is rigorous, structured around the two rectangular benches and the eight women lined up behind. Il refettorio delle cieche is part of Toma’s late production, in which «the drawing yields to the pressure of the colored material» (Mantura 1995, p. 13) and the brushstroke becomes quicker, with quick touches. De Rinaldis also underlines Toma’s ability not to fall into easy pietisms, «always far from dramatic representations, constantly immersed in the contemplation of dramas fixed in the staticity of their essential terms» (De Rinaldis 1934, p. 78). The subject has a human lyricism typical of the artist from Galatina, who dedicates part of his production to intimate interior scenes, between family affections, imprisonment, meditative solitude and industriousness, closely linked to the social and political context of the time.
The outcome of the work is debated by critics, who do not agree on the level of execution and the state of progress of the canvas: still in draft, unfinished due to his death (M. Mormone, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 116 n. 60), or already almost completed and in line with a more modern painting style (Causa 1975, p. 17). The comparison with contemporary works, such as Il bacio della nonna, Il tatuaggio dei camorristi e Allo stato civile, proves the particular attention dedicated to light by Toma, who also entrusts, in the words of his son, «the explanation of the drama to the strength of the drawing always guided by the spirit» (G. Toma, Lettera ad Aldo Vallone, 7 January 1946, in Romano 1997, p. 71).
The luministic and expressive properties of the painting are widely recognized; Biancale had already highlighted «the clear and calm and soft pulsation of the internal light which in this work is supremely transfigured, becoming ethereal and impalpable, unsuitable to support in its light fabric anything but shadows» (Biancale [1933], p. 99). Moreover, as Schettini underlines, «his pictorial poetry is above all in the evocation of silent and intimate environments» (Schettini 1967, II, p. 326).
Exhibitions: Biennale romana, Rome 1921; Mostra di Gioacchino Toma, Naples 1955; Acquisizioni, Naples 1976; Gioacchino Toma, Spoleto-Naples-Lecce 1995-1996; Napoli!, Bonn 1996; Regina Margherita, Naples 2011.
Essential Biography: Tesorone 1906, p. 104; Biancale [1933], pp. 98-101, 121, tav. LXXXI; De Rinaldis 1934, pp. 74, 78-79, tav. LXIII; Lavagnino 1961, p. 873; La Sala Toma 1962, p. 18 n. 11; Schettini 1967, II, p. 326; Montinari 1972, p. 400; Causa 1975, p. 17, tav. 21; Galante 1975, pp. 27, 38, tav. 27; Mantura 1995, pp. 13, 99 ill.; M. Mormone, in Gioacchino Toma 1995, p. 116 n. 60; Gioacchino Toma 1996, p. 31 n. 49 ill.; G. Toma, Lettera ad Aldo Vallone, 7 gennaio 1946, in Romano 1997, p. 71; Ciapparelli Mormone 1997, pp. 89, 93 ill.; M.E. Maffei, in Regina Margherita 2011, p. 456; Depositi di Capodimonte 2022, p. 229 n. 83 ill.
Rosanna Carrieri
SHEET 31
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832 – Naples, 1894)
Un episodio del 15 maggio 1848
1861
Oil on canvas, 56 x 73 cm
Signed and dated lower right: F. Netti 1861
Naples, Certosa and Museum of San Martino, inv. 7527
Presented during the first exhibition of the Neapolitan Promoter in 1862 (Società Promotrice di Belle Arti 1862, p. 2 no. 11), the painting was purchased by the Museum of San Martino in 1901 at the auction of the prestigious art collection of the patron and collector Giovanni Vonwiller, organized by the Parisian antique dealer Canessa (Catalogue de la Galerie Vonwiller 1901, p. 6 no. 27).
The canvas is among the debut works of the Apulian artist, when, after the initial “anti-academic” apprenticeship with Bonolis, De Vivo and De Napoli and the three years spent in Rome copying classical sculptures, the influence of the painting of his friend and teacher Domenico Morelli became more tangible in Netti.
As can be seen from a letter addressed to his father, the painter initially intended to represent a moment of the popular revolt in Palermo on 12 January 1848, but with a completely unusual approach: not the usual depiction of barricades and armed clashes in the street, but rather what Netti himself defines as a «domestic revolution», also conducted by citizens not involved in the riots, but associated with the fight from inside their homes. «Therefore I would like to paint a family, who has barricaded themselves in the house and is firing from the window, and a woman who helps load the rifles, and everyone who has decided to fight to the end has prepared stones, furniture etc. to use when the ammunition runs out. The painting is of three figures and the main subject is the window» (C. Farese Sperken, in Garibaldi 1982, I, p. 192 n. 7.10). Netti later decided to set the depicted episode during the Neapolitan insurrection of 15 May of the same year, which, with the bloody Bourbon repression and the withdrawal of the Constitution by Ferdinand II, constituted the tragic epilogue of the revolt that began in Palermo.
From the window, through which it can glimpse the upper floors of the buildings and the waving of a tricolour flag among thick curtains of smoke, the light of a warm spring day breaks into the unadorned interior, outlining, with a clever play of light and shade, figures and objects: softer and more delicate on the three characters, in the calculated light reflections on the hat and trousers of the man on the left – waiting to take turns with his companion, who in the meantime leans out pointing his rifle towards the street –, in the intense lights on the woman’s face and on the folds of her apron; clearer and more defined on the chair and on the overturned sofa, to give greater plastic prominence to the true protagonists of the scene, extreme means of struggle.
In this youthful work, Netti has already laid the foundations for that research, in which light and colour define more synthetic and rigorous forms, which he would rework and perfect, on the basis of subsequent experiences, in the works of his full maturity.
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1862; Esposizione Internazionale, Venice 1910; Mostra triennale, Bari 1952; L’Unità d’Italia, Turin 1961; Francesco Netti, Bari 1980; Garibaldi, Rome 1982; Soldati e pittori nel Risorgimento, Turin 1987; 1848 Aufbruch zur Freiheit, Francoforte 1998; La Nazione dipinta, Mantova 2007.
Essential Biography: Embden-Heine 1883, p. 96; Spinazzola 1910, p. 155; Mostra triennale 1952, p. 163; L’Unità d’Italia 1961, pp. 195, 188 ill.; Francesco Netti 1980, p. 43 n. 5; C. Farese Sperken, in Garibaldi 1982, I, p. 192 n. 7.10 (con ill.); Causa 1984, p. 72 (con ill.); L. Di Maio, in Soldati e pittori 1987, pp. 166-167 n. 68 (con ill.); Martorelli 1991, p. 14; M. Mormone, in Lavoratori a Napoli 1995, pp. 208-209 n. 8 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 1996a, p. 9, tav. IV p. 21; Farese Sperken 1996c, p. 66; D. Sogliani, in La Nazione dipinta 2007, pp. 103-104 n. 26 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 2015, p. 73.
Fabio Speranza
SHEET 32
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
Dopo la festa
1864
Oil on canvas, 90 x 131 cm
Signed and dated lower right: F. Netti 1864
Private collection
Dopo la festa is a large canvas, considered among the most extraordinary of Francesco Netti’s production in the 1860s. It deals with the topic of carnival, more frequent in the artist’s works in the early years of the seventh decade, at the end of his stay in France, as can be seen in Orgia e Lavoro (1870, private collection) and in La sortie du bal, rue de l’Academiè de Medicine (cat. XX). Sold in Milan (Della Rocca 1883, p. 96) and then reappeared in the early 1990s, the work is documented in the catalogue of the 1980 exhibition in Bari through a photograph which had been attributed a later date than the one the canvas later revealed (Farese Sperken 1980, p. 14), certainly dictated by the knowledge of Netti’s production with a carnival topic linked exclusively to his Parisian years (1870-1871). Our painting would instead seem to demonstrate a more long-standing interest in such subjects, without excluding the existence of a French example, especially from an iconographic point of view, which brings to mind in particular Jean-Leòn Gérôme, who enjoyed great popularity among Italian artists. His work Il duello dopo il ballo (1857-1859; Jean-Leòn-Gèrôme 2010, pp. 118-120, plate f.t.), a fight scene between a Harlequin and a Pierrot, was one of the most reproduced paintings of the time, and was certainly also known to the Apulian artist, a man of vast culture (Farese Sperken 2017, p. 34). Like the French painter, Netti also describes the interruption of a masquerade ball, but the image he shows in the foreground is rather enigmatic: a Pierrot, stretched out on some chairs, perhaps dead, is mourned by a woman who, wearing her overcoat, ready to leave, has instead turned back, called by the sudden illness of her beloved. Behind them, the rest of the guests crowd towards the exit, creating a sad procession, encouraged by a curious little figure who casts a last glance at the pitiful scene; this character seems to correspond to the one mentioned in the description of a work, La débardeur (c. 1861, unknown location), which Netti provides to his father in a letter: «I am pleased that you like the photograph of my painting. The figure that in the photograph looks like a man is a woman disguised as a débardeur, a very simple costume, consisting of velvet and silk shorts, a shirt and a sash around the waist, and nothing else» (Farese Sperken 1996a, p. 74). Dopo la festa represents a masterpiece of a certain complexity from different points of view, the expressive one, but also the formal one: nothing is left to chance, the setting is studied and created in the smallest details, from the brocade walls, to the hastily abandoned unmade table; the pictorial rendering of the characters is now extremely clear, calligraphic in the description of clothes and attitudes, now imprecise and sketched, especially in the figures in the background, as if to suggest the depth of the environment into which they pour, even more accentuated by two doors open onto other environments.
The painting was executed with a series of expedients that make it extremely modern and that have led, despite the date clearly visible on the canvas, to the reopening of the debate on its possible later chronology. Despite this, one cannot help but consider that the type of interior, the way in which it is made and the romantic tone of the composition can be well related to other works of the same years: think for example of Il conte Lara (1861) or Torquato Tasso legge la Gerusalemme Liberata a Eleonora d’Este (1865, both in Rome, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art) by Domenico Morelli, with whom Francesco Netti established a deep relationship of friendship and professional esteem from the first moments of his stay in Naples (1859-1860).
Exhibitions: Francesco Netti, Santeramo in Colle 2023.
Essential biography: Della Rocca 1883, p. 96; Protomastro 1894, p. 75; Miola 1895a, p. 10; Tesorone 1910, p. 148; Farese Sperken 1980, p. 15, tav. p. 14; Farese Sperken 1996a, p. 10, tav. VI p. 27; Farese Sperken 2015, p. 73 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 2017, p. 35 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 2023, p. 13, tav. 4 p. 25.
Sara Cenatiempo
SHEET 33
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
Dopo il veglione / La sortie du bal, rue de l’Academie de Médicine
1872
Oil on canvas, 46 x 56 cm
Signed and dated lower left: F Netti 1872 [with F inscribed in N]
Naples, Museum and Real Bosco di Capodimonte, inv. O.A. 8340
After his stay in France (1866-1871), upon his return to Naples, Francesco Netti participated in the IX exhibition of Società Promotrice di Belle Arti in 1872 with an oil painting entitled Uscendo dal ballo, to be identified with the work Dopo il veglione (or La sortie du bal, rue de l’Academie de Médicine). The title already suggests the setting, a specific corner of the city of Paris that becomes the setting for the representation of one of Netti’s favourite topics, declined in various versions and more frequently during his last French period: the masked ball, usually shown in its final moments, through which the painter wants to convey a moralistic message, an example of which is the work Dopo la festa of 1864 (see at least Farese Sperken 2017, p. 35).
La sortie du bal should be placed in relation to an earlier version of the topic, Orgia e lavoro (1870). The two canvases, in fact, have almost the same dimensions (C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, pp. 46-47, nos. 21-22), and in both Netti contrasts the street cleaners with a group of masks who retire at dawn after a party. While in the older painting one can perceive the artist’s certainly rigorous and almost polemical tone, also accentuated by a clearer division of the protagonists in space and by the figure of a Pierrot who, placed in the foreground, shamefully covers his face with his hands, in La sortie du bal a decidedly more ironic interpretation of the scene emerges. This reading was also proposed by Giovanna Vittori who, reviewing the artist’s production on the occasion of his commemoration in «Natura e Arte» in 1895, mentioned the composition among «the mischievous paintings» (Vittori 1894-1895, p. 536). The street cleaners sweep away, together with the rubbish, the two masked couples, who «run arm in arm pushed by the wind, wrapped in dust which, skilfully portrayed, rises in clouds and leaves the other street cleaners visible, transparent as a veil» (ibidem). In the cold light of dawn, the vivid and brilliant chromatism with which Netti characterises the group of masks becomes sharp, and the whole painting, «excellently coloured» (G.d.C. 1872, p. [2]), takes on modern characteristics typical of the production following the years spent in France, in line with the ways of Courbet and the Barbizon school.
Today there is no documentation that tells us about the fate of the work after the closure of the Neapolitan Promotrice: the oldest sources date back to the early twentieth century, when La sortie du bal was included in the auction catalogue of Vonwiller collection (Catalogue de la Galerie Vonwiller 1901, p. 51 n. 216). It was then exhibited and awarded the gold medal at the artist’s retrospective organized by Giovanni Tesorone in 1910 in Venice (IX Esposizione Internazionale 1910). Furthermore, its presence is recorded in catalogues of exhibitions held between Rome and Naples between the end of the 1930s and the 1950s of the last century, up until the large exhibition in the Pinacoteca Provinciale of Bari (now Pinacoteca Metropolitana) in 1980 (Francesco Netti 1980), which decreed the opening of new studies on the artistic production of Francesco Netti. Today it is part of the permanent collection of the Museum and Royal Wood of Capodimonte, to which it was donated in 1977 by Ottavio Morisani (Ottocento a Capodimonte 2012, p. 257). It is important to add a further piece to the collection history of the canvas, namely its previous ownership by Matilde Serao (Esposizione della Collezione d’arte 1928), a fact that is not mentioned in the modern bibliography of the work, but which was highlighted in a recent contribution by Isabella Valente on the entire collection of the well-known writer (Valente 2022, p. 414).
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1872; IX Esposizione Internazionale, Venice 1910; Esposizione della Collezione d’arte, Naples 1928; La mostra della pittura, Naples 1938; L’Arte nella vita del Mezzogiorno, Rome 1953; La pittura napoletana, Naples 1958; Francesco Netti, Bari 1980; L’Ottocento Negato, Naples 1991; Lavoratori a Napoli, Naples 1995; Capolavori, Monza 1997; Civiltà dell’Ottocento, Naples-Caserta 1997; Aria di Parigi, Livorno 1998-1999; Da De Nittis a Gemito, Naples 2017; Francesco Netti, Santeramo in Colle 2023.
Essential Biography: G.d.C. 1872; Società Promotrice 1872, p. 10 n. 138; Netti ed. 1895, p. 10; Vittori 1894-1895, p. 536; Catalogue de la Galerie Vonwiller 1901, p. 51 n. 216, tav. f.t.; IX Esposizione Internazionale 1910, p. 149 n. 7, p. 91 ill.; Esposizione della Collezione d’arte 1928, p. 55, n. 110; La mostra della pittura 1938, p. 333 n. 22; L’Arte nella vita del Mezzogiorno 1953, p. 48 n. 5; La pittura napoletana 1958, p. 35 n. 65; C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, pp. 46-47 n. 22; F. Capobianco, in Lavoratori a Naples 1995, II, p. 210 n. 9, tav. p. 211; Farese Sperken 1996a, p. 12, tav. p. 83; R. Catello, in Capolavori 1997, p. 177 (con ill.), tav. p. 128; C. Farese Sperken, in Civiltà dell’Ottocento 1997, II, p. 588 n. 17.217, p. 589 ill.; C. Farese Sperken, in Aria di Parigi 1998, pp. 186-187 n. 89, tav. f.t.; M. Mormone, in Ottocento a Capodimonte 2012, p. 137, tav. p. 120; F. Mazzocca, in Da De Nittis a Gemito 2017, p. 118 ill.; Valente 2022, p. 414, tav. 3 p. 419; Francesco Netti 2023, tav. p. 32.
Sara Cenatiempo
SHEET 34
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
Festa a Grez
1869-1870
Oil on canvas, 45 x 67 cm
Signed lower left: F Netti [with F reported inside N]
Bari, Metropolitan Art Gallery Corrado Giaquinto, inv. 516/581
Netti went to Paris with the intention of updating his pictorial language, encouraged by Giuseppe Palizzi who had been living in France for some time. It was also thanks to the latter, through his acquaintance with Courbet and the Barbizon School, that the artist from Santeramo decided in the summer of 1869 to stay for some time in Grez, a small village located on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest, where Palizzi had an atelier. Netti chose Grez as the ideal place to carry out his studies en plein air and to tackle the topic of landscape, into which he also channeled his interest in the art of Corot. From this experience, decisive in order to clarify his palette, the painting Festa a Grez originated, the gestation of which can be followed. On 13 October of that same year, in fact, Netti wrote to his father: «I am doing a painting of local customs […] Once a year they have a party here on the day of St. Lawrence. […] On the third day they play a game that consists of suspending a goose (already killed) in the middle of the street. The young people who take part in the game start one by one blindfolded from a distance of about twenty meters and followed by two drummers they have to cut the goose’s neck with a sabre, which only happens after countless attempts. The whole village is a spectator, the appearance of this scene when I saw it in real life, was so picturesque, that I thought of making a painting of it, which done on the spot could have a lot of local color. This little painting will be for the Salon» (Francesco Netti 1980, p. 193).
Indicative of his working method – which led him to develop the architectural context in advance, leaving the insertion of the figures to a later stage – a pencil study dated 1869 (ibid., p. 45, no. 12) reproduces the setting quite faithfully, although it does not include yet the series of low, cubic houses, arranged diagonally and flooded with sunlight, a sign of a reflection on Courbet’s work, which Netti appreciated as can be seen from his writings containing observations on two paintings by the French artist exhibited at the Salon of 1870. The motif of the diagonally developed road surrounded by rows of houses is also present in other works by the painter from Santeramo with a typical French setting, such as Barricata in una strada (ivi, p. 46, n. 20) and Dopo il veglione o La sortie du bal, rue dell’Accademie de Medicine (1872, Naples, Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte). Another preparatory study (Francesco Netti 1980, p. 45, no. 13), this time in watercolour, instead depicts two men sitting on the right edge of the painting. Festa a Grez was purchased by the Provincial Administration of Bari, together with Studio per “Riposo in mietitura” in the wake of the success achieved on the occasion of the painting exhibition of Maggio di Bari in 1952 when, with the aim of valorising the artist, a retrospective was set up in the context of which the painting was included, at the time owned by Antonio Benagiano of Bari.
Exhibitions: III Mostra pugliese, Bari 1922; II Mostra Nazionale, Bari 1952; Francesco Netti, Bari 1980; Aria di Parigi, Livorno 1998-1999.
Essential Biography: D. Maselli, in II Mostra pugliese 1952, p. 45, n. 165; Breve guida 1969, p. 61; Belli D’Elia 1972, pp. 17, 15 (con ill.); Le collezioni 1977, p. 69, n. 224, p. 68 (con ill.); Francesco Netti 1980, p. 45, n. 11, p. 75 ill.; Galante 1981, p. 116, tav. VIII; Farese Sperken 1996a, p. 12, tav. XII p. 61; Farese Sperken 1996c, pp. 66, 67 ill.; S. Bietoletti, in Aria di Parigi 1998, p. 168, n. 13 ill.; C. Farese Sperken, in La Pinacoteca Provinciale 2005, pp. 27-28 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 2015, p. 73 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 2017, p. 35.
Lucia Rosa Pastore
SHEET 35
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
Nello studio
1872-1876
Oil on canvas, 58 x 67 cm
Signed lower right: F Netti [with F reported inside N]
Bari, Davide Andriani’s collection
The canvas, recently identified by Christine Farese Sperken on the antiques market, depicts a studio with rather sparse furnishings: in the foreground a desk with lyre feet and a chair, illuminated by a window that opens onto an undefined landscape and whose door casts a shadow on a cabinet with glass doors. On the wall hang two small paintings with barely legible subjects. Due to the concordance of the topic, the work should be placed in relation to the painting Un angolo del mio studio (Importanti dipinti 2019, lot 49), which also emerged in recent years, which represents a part of the artist’s studio, furnished with some of the furnishings that Giuseppe Protomastro, in his Memories, reported having seen when he entered it for the first time in 1886 (Protomastro 1894, pp. 10-16), given that it would also offer the starting point for dating the canvas to the 1880s. In that case, however, the environment is inhabited by a female figure who, sitting on the low sofa, is portrayed while leafing through prints in a large binder. Thanks to the presence on the back of traces of the cartouche of the 1910 Venice International Exhibition, the work must be considered separate from the painting with which it had been erroneously identified at the time of the 1980 Bari exhibition (C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, p. 42 n. 9, p. 70 ill.), an example which, being the only one relating to the topic that had been traced up to that moment, was called Lo studio del pittore o Un angolo del mio studio (around 1864), a title deduced from the catalogue of the Venice exhibition. It is, among other things, an emblematic painting, which, due to the presence in the foreground of volumes, notebooks and a small bottle of ink for an inkwell, sheds light on the artist’s deep interest in literary activities, which materialized in the prolific writing of the very famous pages of art criticism for which Netti was always particularly appreciated, even before his pictorial production. Compared to the variants just described, our unpublished work, Nello studio, presents another interesting element, the window, which it shares with other paintings, such as Rimembranze del 15 maggio 1848 (1861; cat. 31) and La convalescenza (1860-1861; Bari, Pinacoteca Metropolitana), and which links Netti to a whole current of nineteenth-century European painting in which it is often proposed as the main motif.
On the basis of the previous considerations, it would be plausible to date the work in question to the 1860s, excluding the chronological proximity to Un angolo del mio studio (around 1880) both for a chromatic question and for the different compositional complexity; however, Netti seems to show in the canvas a stylistic freedom that is certainly not typical of his production of those years, but later: the light entering from the window, pouring onto the furnishings, projects only the shadows of the large desk against the illuminated wall, excluding instead the chair which, rendered in a summary manner, almost seems to float in the room. The floor is then created with a rather sketchy tone, composed of a quick succession of juxtaposed and vibrant filling brushstrokes. Again, outside the window one would expect a landscape similar to the one created for La convalescenza, detailed and recognizable; instead, the artist unexpectedly uses a palette of clear French origin. All these elements connect the canvas to an expressive phase dating back to the second Neapolitan period and characterized by an interest in rustic interiors and rural subjects (Il traino, Interno di una stalla, Pozzo in un cortile), also characterized by a certain freedom of style. Finally, the signature at the bottom right, which with the descending “i” becomes almost the discriminant for a series of works created precisely in the Seventies, suggests a dating no earlier than 1872, the year that corresponds to Netti’s return from France, and in any case no later than 1876, when he began to dedicate himself to ancient subjects.
Unpublished work
Sara Cenatiempo
SHEET 36
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
La sigaretta post prandium
Oil on canvas, 19 x 24,2 cm
Signed lower left: F Netti
Bari, Metropolitan Art Gallery Corrado Giaquinto, inv. 302/260
A multifaceted and versatile artist in the most varied thematic fields, Francesco Netti also makes a stimulating contribution in the representation of women who emancipate themselves from the stereotypes that force them within the domestic walls dealing with the usual tasks that have always been considered the exclusive prerogative of the female universe. Lying softly on the bed with a naturalness that does not relegate her to a simple object of seduction, the woman is also assimilated to the image of the reader who tries to establish a dialogue of choice with the printed page, heedless of everything around her – La lettrice, formerly in Gallina collection – perhaps while casually and distractedly sipping coffee, as in La lettura of the Metropolian Art Gallery in Bari. An even greater ease, bordering on unscrupulousness, can be seen in Sigaretta post prandium where, in a bourgeois interior, an elegant female figure lying comfortably on a sofa, her left arm resting along the wooden moulding of the backrest, displays a cigarette between the fingers of her right hand. With the environmental notations reduced to a minimum compared to La lettura of the Art Gallery in Bari, attention is focused on the protagonist, with only a few discreet descriptive concessions in the earrings and bracelets. The complexion of the young woman, in which the light gathers at its maximum intensity, stands out within an environment set on refined, carefully calibrated chromatic harmonies: the green of the background, the red of the sofa and the black of the elegant silk dress, slightly enlivened by the sober details of the collar and the white lace cuffs.
The inevitable comparison with La lettrice (1864-1865; Milan, Modern Art Gallery) depicted by Federico Faruffini, while she smokes absentmindedly while reading, with her back turned to the viewer, aims rather to mark the distance with the protagonist of Netti’s painting, very far, the latter, from that fascinating image of a woman captured almost «without her knowledge, as in a snapshot, in the privacy of her room» (Finocchi 1989, p. 109). Differently, the female figure portrayed by the artist from Santeramo offers her satisfied and smiling face to an unknown interlocutor with whom, in that moment of relaxation that follows lunch, she appears to be conversing amiably. The relaxed pose itself, combined with a subtly provocative charm, would seem to establish an even more stringent comparison with the protagonist of the painting Il passatempo by Filippo Carcano (1871; Milan, Istituti Milanesi Martinitt e Stelline and Pio Albergo Trivulzio), undoubtedly painted a few years earlier, which, in the combination of the typically male habit of smoking at the time and the extravagant image of women, re-proposed a topic that had already enjoyed a certain popularity in the previous decade thanks to the spread of the novels of George Sand, who is not coincidentally portrayed, in Josef Danhauser’s Liszt at the Piano (Berlin, Nationalgalerie), with a small cigar between her fingers (S. Regonelli, in Ottocento 2008, p. 282).
Another image of a woman caught in a casual attitude with a cigarette is found in a drawing by Netti (Bari, Pinacoteca Metropolitana) which likely depicts «a Western girl dressed and posed ‘in the Turkish way’», with her gaze «unprejudicedly fixed in the eyes of the person portraying her» (Fusco 1997, p. 232). La sigaretta post prandium made its entrance into the Bari institution thanks to the donation of Riccardo Ferrara in 1936.
Exhibitions: Francesco Netti, Bari 1980; Eroine invisibili, Bari 2010-2011; Passioni di un collezionista, Bari 2010.
Essential Biography: Gervasio 1937, p. 36, n. 69; Le collezioni 1977, p. 71, n. 235 (con ill.); Francesco Netti 1980, p. 54, n. 63, p. 97 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 1996a, tav. XXXIII p. 107; Ead. in La Pinacoteca Provinciale 2005, pp. 36-37 (con ill.); C. Gelao, in Eroine invisibili 2010, pp. 154-155, n. 49 (con ill.).
Lucia Rosa Pastore
SHEET 37
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
Coro antico uscente dal Tempio
1877
Oil on canvas, 207 x 112 cm
Signed lower right: F Netti [with F reported inside N]
Naples, GAN – Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts, inv. 727
Purchased by the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples in 1896 through the artist’s brother, Luigi Netti, the work made a “great impression” on the critics of the time, earning the second prize medal at the National Exhibition of Naples in 1877, where it was placed in the eighth room together with other canvases with a neo-Pompeian theme, including Agrippina che spia il Senato by Giuseppe Boschetto, Episodio dell’ultimo giorno di Pompei by Federico Maldarelli and some views of the excavated city by Enrico Gaeta and Giuseppe Laezza. In Coro antico uscente dal Tempio, Francesco Netti «shows us the life of times gone by so naturally and lively that we seem to relive that distant era», commented Countess Maria Della Rocca, enchanted by the evocative vision of the painting, in which «a poetic tone stands out and the life and customs of the ancients are revealed» (Della Rocca 1883, p. 100). Giovanna Vittori also had a positive opinion, admiring the particular composition and noting «how he – equal to the great masters of the happiest centuries of art – designed the architectural part of his painting, how he did not rely on the intuition of the sagacious admirer, but took care of every detail, the most distant and the closest figures, the main and secondary groupings, the feeling of each person» (Vittori 1894-1895, p. 537). Although the subject is set in the fiction of the ancient world, Netti did not fail to give the scene a true and picturesque character, restoring the image of an equally authentic humanity, full of an ancestral value, recognizable especially in the variety of attitudes of the crowd, who, separated from the sacred enclosure of the sanctuary, watches excitedly as a rite unfolds. «And in that crowd lies the greatest beauty of the painting», Vittori maintained, because, observing carefully, one can see «the sweet abandon of a young woman on the man» turned from behind, «the charming girl who is staring at someone provocatively, challengingly», «the curious woman who is holding on to the column to see the dance more closely (a very difficult pose rendered with mastery)», as well as «old and young, patricians and plebeians, but the painter has been able to imagine a story for each of those figures, he believed he knew their character and has individualised them all» (ibidem). Nevertheless Camillo Miola, also an author of Pompeian scenes and an expert in classical studies, expressed flattering considerations on the work in question, declaring that in it Netti had lavished not only «good studies and such vast readings», but also the love and feeling «of the great poetry of historical topics, and before the noble architecture of Paestum […] he had dreamed of a chorus of women intertwining their arms in a mystical dance, led by an ephebe playing the lyre» (Miola 1895a, p. 11). The dancers, who walk in an orderly fashion in the solemn harmony of the columns, are in fact inspired by the well-known fresco from the necropolis of Ruvo di Puglia, discovered in 1833 and transported to the Archaeological Museum in 1838, where Netti and other artists (including Giuseppe Sciuti) had the opportunity to observe it, reproducing it countless times; the Apulian painter proposed it again in Antico pittore davanti alla sua opera, in Danzatrici at the Civic Museum of Altamura, in his sketch on canvas from a private collection and in five pencil studies of Danzatrici (three of which are unpublished; fig. 1).
With the exception of Modesto Faustini, who judged the canvas to be «not a painting, [but] a large sketch» (Anelli 2006, p. 109), and Michele Uda, who considered the dancers «dry, inexpressive and automatic» (Uda 1877, p. 3), most critics agreed with the opinion of Costantino Abbatecola, who saw in the work «a way of painting very different from the others in the Exhibition» (Abbatecola 1877, p. 242), both for the compositional choices – with a preference for a low and horizontal cut – and for the pictorial execution through the use of a light palette and a decisive application of colour. In fact, the chromatic values are striking, enriched with «warm and harmonising shades», and the modulation of the light which appears «true and different between the columns of the temple and outside in the open air!» (Vittori 1894-1895, p. 537).
The existence of other versions of the work – Coro greco, Festa greca (both in the GNAM of Rome, inv. nos. 5629, 108), Coro di danza antica (Musci Collection of Bari) and two preparatory studies (C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, pp. 51-52, nos. 45, 48) – confirm Netti’s insistence on the same creative idea, rendered in various compositions with «great archaeological and picturesque value» (Miola 1895a, p. 11).
Exhibitions: Esposizione Nazionale, Naples 1877; Circolo Artistico, Naples 1895; Mostra Provinciale, Bari 1900; IX Esposizione Internazionale, Venice 1910; Francesco Netti, Bari 1980.
Essential Biography: Abbatecola 1877, p. 242; Esposizione Nazionale 1877, p. 38 n. 488; Uda 1877, p. 3; Protomastro 1894, p. 76; Vittori 1894-1895, p. 537; Miola 1895a, pp. 11-12; Mostra Provinciale 1900, n. 21; Tesorone 1910, p. 147; Musci 1932; Spinelli 1949, p. 11; Caputi, Causa, Mormone 1971, p. 115 n. 360; Francesco Netti 1980, p. 50 n. 39; Farese Sperken 1996a, pp. 15-20, 95 ill.; Cenatiempo 2023, pp. 379-392 (con ill.).
Rosa Esmeralda Partucci
SHEET 38
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
Il citarista
Around 1877
Oil on canvas, 52,3 x 26 cm
Signed lower left: F Netti [with F reported inside N]
Bari, Metropolitan Art Gallery Corrado Giaquinto, inv. 440/341
Of unspecified provenance, Il citarista is the only painting by Francesco Netti present in the large collection of works by the painter from Santeramo kept in the Art Gallery of Bari that can be traced back to the topic of an ancient subject which, in the artist’s production, is systematically placed within a chronological span between 1875 and 1880, although attention to this motif must certainly be traced back to the previous decade. The oil painting is related to research on the painting Coro antico che esce dal tempio (1877, Naples, Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts; cat. XX), a free evocation of the frieze of a tomb in the Ruvo necropolis admired in the National Museum of Naples and presented in the Neapolitan capital at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1877.
It is known that the artist created four other different versions, of which the most complete is the one included in the 1877 exhibition. One of these, entitled Danzatrici, kept in the Archive-Library of the Civic Museum of Altamura, features a lyre player in the centre, roughly sketched, who appears similar, also due to the pose and the slightly reclined head, to the figure of the lyre player chosen as the protagonist of the painting in the National Museum of Bari. On the occasion of the recent exhibition held in Santeramo, where the work was on display, Farese Sperken pointed out that Il citarista, similarly to Tempio di Apollo a Delfi, another work attributable to the same period, could be «only marginally» linked to the topic of the painting Coro antico che esce dal tempio, demonstrating very clearly «how the artist, with the power of imagination, enters into the spirit and atmosphere of the ancient world, expressing himself with a sketchy painting of broad, synthetic brushstrokes» (Farese Sperken 2023, p. 14).
In fact, the work claims a substantial autonomy that emancipates it from simple study. Against the backdrop of lush vegetation dotted with delicate floral inserts, the young musician, wearing a short tunic soaked in light, advances playing his instrument with an enraptured air. To give depth to the scene, which allows a glimpse of a brief glimpse of sky in the upper left, in which the color seems to flake and become rarefied, there are stone steps in the foreground on which the small feet covered in red shoes rest with singular lightness, the point of maximum chromatic accentuation of the painting. The intent is to give optical truth to the vision in adherence to the well-known Morellian principle of «representing figures and things, not seen, but imagined and real at the same time», aiming for a plausible reconstruction of the past. How this could happen is explained very clearly by Netti himself when commenting on similar subjects created by other artists: «Naturally all investigations, even the most minute, all studies, even the most abstruse, are useful, indeed necessary, to arrive at making some new discovery on the verisimilitude of ancient clothing, but it is not archaeological accuracy that will guide us in examining and appreciating an ancient subject: it will rather be the spirit that dominates it […] and above all it will be the representation of what never changes: human passions and the aspect of nature» (Netti ed. 1895, p. 268).
Exhibitions: Francesco Netti, Bari 1980; Francesco Netti, Santeramo in Colle 2008; Francesco Netti, Santeramo in Colle 2023.
Essential Biography: Gervasio 1936, p. 227, n. 263; Le collezioni 1977, pp. 71-72, n. 236 (con ill.); Francesco Netti 1980, p. 52, n. 51, p. 92 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 1996a, tav. XXIV p. 91; C. Farese Sperken, in La Pinacoteca Provinciale 2005, p. 29, n. 29 (con ill.); Farese Sperken 2023, p. 14; Francesco Netti 2023, p. 38 ill.
Lucia Rosa Pastore
SHEET 39
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
Tempio di Apollo a Delfi
Around 1884
Oil on panel, 24 x 41 cm
Inscription and signature lower right: Tempio di Apollo a Delphi / F Netti
Inscription on the back: “dedicated to Paolo Rotondo / F Netti”
Private collection
Presented for the first time at the exhibition Francesco Netti. Ritorno a Santeramo in 2023, the panel is likely the preparatory sketch for a work that has not been identified yet or, perhaps, never been created. It could in fact be a memory of the painter’s visit to Greece, which took place at the time of his trip to the East in the summer of 1884, with the company of Camillo Miola and Eduardo Dalbono, all guests of Giuseppe Caravita, Prince of Sirignano. As known, the group of friends set sail from the port of Bari aboard the yacht Rondine owned by the Prince and, before reaching Constantinople, landed in Athens and sailed along the Archipelago, as Protomastro recalls (1894, p. 80). It is during that brief stay in Greece, Netti went as far as Delphi and had the opportunity to revisit the ruins of the Temple of Apollo, whose suggestions would be at the origin of the work in question, which would therefore represent an important pictorial testimony of that stay. The journey was «undertaken to make specific studies of the places», which would have had a great effect on Netti’s production «for the naturalness and faithful reproduction of the subjects, taken from life» (ibidem). In the painting we can recognize some characteristic elements of the Apollónion, such as the high enclosure of the sanctuary and the steps from which the man dressed in yellow stands, captured in a declamatory attitude and turned towards a following of listening faithful. In the distance we can see the profile of another temple, perhaps invented, which stands out in the mist illuminated by the rising sun, rendered with a thick brushstroke and an iridescent tint. These elements agree with the words of Miola who, referring to the paintings of this period, recognized in color the most eminent quality and «the main force from which emotion springs in these as in almost all the works of our late painter» (Miola 1895a, p. 13). A further element of considerable significance is the presence of the inscription on the back «dedicated to Paolo Rotondo», which links the painting to the name of a great patron and promoter of many renowned artists of the second half of the nineteenth century, whose entire collection of paintings, sculptures and sketches was donated to the Museum of San Martino in Naples in 1911. It is curious to note that in the list enclosed with Rotondo’s will and published in the «Rassegna pugliese» (Beltrani 1911) no work by Francesco Netti appears, despite their common origins (the collector was in fact born in Molfetta), and that instead there are mentioned canvases by other Apulian artists, including Giuseppe De Nittis and Saverio Altamura, the latter with the famous Trionfo di Mario. There is also another tablet, known by the title Harem, found on the antiques market (Capitolium Art Casa d’Aste, 14 June 2018, lot 346), also dedicated to «the eminent friend Paolo», who can be identified precisely with Paolo Rotondo.
At the current state of studies, there is no further information on the relationships between the painter from Santeramo and the patron from Molfetta, nor has it been possible to reconstruct the collection passages of the work in question in order to trace its first owner, perhaps the illustrious dedicatee of the inscription.
Exhibition: Francesco Netti, Santeramo in Colle 2023.
Essential Biography: Farese Sperken 2023, p. 14, tav. 12.
Rosa Esmeralda Partucci
SHEET 40
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
Odalisca
Around 1884
Oil on canvas, 46 x 61 cm
Private Collection
Appearing on the market in the mid-1990s, the most exuberant of Francesco Netti’s orientalist paintings was published for the first time in 1995, with the title Nudo, by Mariantonietta Picone Petrusa, who noted its location in a private Neapolitan collection; in Christine Farese Sperken’s 1996 monograph, in which it acquired its current title, it is instead attested in a collection in Santeramo in Colle. On that occasion, the scholar defined l’Odalisca as the «libertine sister of the chaste Siesta», noting how its eroticism was «condescending towards the taste of a certain bourgeois clientele» (Farese Sperken 1996a, p. 26). Collecting interested in exotic subjects – and such uninhibited figures – had grown considerably during the second half of the nineteenth century, and with it the number of artists who explored the East in order to draw themes, colours and atmospheres from it. Francesco Netti also left, reaching Turkey in the summer of 1884 and staying there for two months as a guest of Prince Giuseppe Caravita di Sirignano, in the company of the painters Camillo Miola and Edoardo Dalbono. Netti returned to Italy with some studies done from life and, above all, with a baggage of fabrics, lanterns, hookahs and various jewels that would allow him to recreate, in the privacy of his Neapolitan studio, the images he had gathered in his memory. Giuseppe Protomastro described his atelier as a dreamlike place, difficult to reach with imagination alone, so overwhelming that it made him forget for a moment the scenic deception and ask «Are we in a truly oriental room?» (Protomastro 1894, p. 15). Netti then confessed that, among all the bizarre objects he owned, only the large carpet did not come from Turkey, but had been woven by his sister Marianina to his precise design. In Odalisca all the opulence of that place finds its rightful place, becoming a protagonist on a par with the human figure. The pearly nude of the woman adorns the room as do the enameled lanterns, the inlaid furniture and the elaborate fabrics: like them, she is nothing more than an exotic symbol – even though she is most likely a Neapolitan model – made precious by a very pale complexion that seems to shine, competing with the gold of the sheet on which she lies; her jet black hair has been gathered with bright jewels, and gold pendants hang from her ears. The scene is all the more intriguing because of the spontaneity with which the young girl engages in a silent conversation with the little red ibis perched on the edge of the bed, to whom she directs the delicate gaze of a curious child.
In the eyes of Western man who had never been there, the Orient must have appeared an enigma that only art could reveal. Odalisca is exactly this: the echo of a distant civilization in which fantasy and reality mix and merge. The geographical, cultural and anthropological distance allowed for a certain freedom of images and colors to be experimented with, and even to depict a young naked concubine in the harem, waiting: from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres to Eugène Delacroix, up to, in Neapolitan territory, Domenico Morelli and Edoardo Tofano, odalisques were among the most appreciated orientalist subjects, both by artists and by the market.
In the paintings he made after his stay in Turkey, Netti never attempted to recreate the aesthetic and cultural framework of the places he visited, preferring instead to evoke the sensations he himself felt when discovering that world. In this regard, what he wrote about ancient subjects – distant, in that case, also in time – is enlightening, namely that he did not want to pursue historical truth at all costs, shunning any attempt at “archaeological accuracy”, but rather seeking «what never changes: human passions and the aspect of nature» (Netti ed. 1895, p. 268). Similarly, Odalisca does not want to tell the story of the East, nor its at times incomprehensible customs, but to arouse the wonder that only the unveiling of a mystery can grant. So far, the presence of the canvas has not been found in national exhibitions of those years, and this leads us to suppose, pending further studies, that it may have had an international destination or that it was made on commission or purchased early.
Exhibitions: Civiltà dell’Ottocento, Naples-Caserta 1997-1998; Incanti e scoperte, Barletta 2011; Orientalisti, Rome 2011; Francesco Netti, Santeramo in Colle 2014; Francesco Netti, Santeramo in Colle 2023.
Essential Biography: Picone Petrusa 1995, p. 251 ill.; Farese Sperken 1996a, pp. 25-30, 127 tav. LIV; C. Farese Sperken, in Civiltà dell’Ottocento 1997, p. 590 n. 17.222, p. 593 ill.; E. Angiuli, in Incanti e scoperte 2011, pp. 202 ill., 223 n. 76; Orientalisti 2011, tav. f.t.; Francesco Netti 2014, p. 11, tav. f.t.; Caputo 2017, p. 156 ill.; Francesco Netti 2023, pp. 14, 48 tav. XVIII.
Luisa Sefora Rosaria Puca
SHEET 41
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
La siesta
1884
Oil on canvas, 65 x 91,5 cm
Signed and dated on the right towards the center: F Netti 1884 [with F reported inside N]
Bari, Metropolitan Art Gallery Corrado Giaquinto, inv. 40/349
«A painting that also cost me a lot of work, and unspeakable patience, was Siesta»: with these words Netti responded to his nephew, Giuseppe Protomastro, his future biographer, who asked him to indicate the works he considered most successful. The fact that the painter was particularly fond of that painting is demonstrated by the fact that in the year of its creation, 1884, he had sent it to the National Exhibition of Turin together with In Corte d’Assise (1882, Bari, Metropolitan Art Gallery). Siesta was sold on that occasion, at least according to what De Gubernatis reported; in any case, it would have been re-proposed at the 1885 Exhibition of Promotrice of Naples. In that very year the painting was chosen as the cover image of the July 5 issue of «L’Illustrazione Italiana», in which its author was recognized for having «treated an old subject making it interesting and almost new, thanks to naturalness and grace» (La siesta 1885).
Referring to the trip made in the summer 1884 to the Eastern Mediterranean, guest of the yacht Rondine of Giuseppe Caravita, Prince of Sirignano, together with the painters Camillo Miola and Eduardo Dalbono, the painting was nevertheless executed upon his return, in the Neapolitan studio at Arco Mirelli transformed into a vaguely oriental-flavored environment, in which the scenic carpet in the background, the large damask cushion and the bronze candlestick stand out. It is known that during this trip, which involved a stay for several weeks in Therapia, on the Bosphorus, and almost daily trips to Constantinople, Netti produced some sketches, drawings and oils in a significantly smaller number than those executed in the studio. Among the first should be included Studio per “La siesta” which, if it reserves only marginal attention to the female figure, is much more careful in the definition of the Moorish interior. Many details would later disappear in the final version, replaced by the red carpet that was spread out on the floor in Studio. The banana plant – it is known that Netti’s studio housed a kind of greenhouse –, depicted in all its luxuriance, would later be resized also because of the more accentuated horizontal development impressed on the canvas. But it is above all the buxom, sensual female figure wearing a vaporous nightgown soaked in light that contradicts, with its features, supposed oriental origins. Previously belonging to Berlingeri collection and then to Calcagno, both Neapolitan, La siesta, of which another version exists (1884, private collection) with significant variations, was purchased by the Provincial Administration of Bari from the “Fratelli Fraia” art gallery following a recommendation by the sculptor Pasquale Duretti in 1927. The work was placed in the Archaeological Museum and then transferred to the Provincial Art Gallery at the time of its institution.
Exhibtions: Esposizione Generale, Turin 1884; Società Promotrice, Naples 1885; Francesco Netti, Bari 1980; Il secondo ’800 italiano, Milan 1988; Civiltà dell’Ottocento, Naples-Caserta 1997; Da Museo Archeologico, Bari 1999; Eroine invisibili, Bari 2010-2011.
Essential Biography: Botazzi 1884; Esposizione Generale 1884, p. 68, n. 1329; La siesta 1885; Società Promotrice 1885, p. 11, n. 62; De Gubernatis 1889, pp. 326-327; Protomastro 1894, pp. 78, 90; Gervasio 1930, p. 26, n. 18, p. 25 ill.; Gervasio 1936, pp. 243-244, n. 272, p. 241 ill.; Le collezioni 1977, pp. 69-70, n. 226 (con ill.); Francesco Netti 1980, p. 61, n. 95, p. 117 ill.; Farese Sperken 1996a, p. 25, tav. LI p. 124; M.A. Fusco, in Lo sguardo della mezzaluna 1998, pp. 95, 97, tav. 56 p. 93; C. Gelao, in Eroine invisibili 2010, pp. 118-119, n. 31 (con ill.); Francesco Netti 2023, tav. XVII p. 46.
Lucia Rosa Pastore
SHEET 42
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
La siesta
Around 1884
Oil on canvas, 23 x 39 cm
Private collection
In 1884 Francesco Netti set sail from Bari aboard the yacht Rondine towards Orient, together with Edoardo Dalbono and Camillo Miola, all invited by the patron Giuseppe Caravita, Prince of Sirignano. After staying in Therapia (in Bosphorus) for two months, a period of which two watercolours have been preserved today (Musci 1932; C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, p. 60 nn . 91-92, plate 92 p. 114, plate 91, p. 115) – among the few examples of painting from life from that period, appreciable for the typical immediacy of the brushstroke and the freshness of the colours – Netti returned to Naples «not only with his eyes full of luminous visions, but with a treasure of watercolours, sketches, pen and pencil drawings of landscapes, buildings, figures and furnishings. Only those who have seen this treasure of documents captured by a precise eye, reproduced by a very skilled and diligent hand, can understand how Netti was able to paint oriental pictures in his highly original studio at Arco Mirelli» (Musci 1928). The dense collection of materials found during the trip was in fact used to set up a real oriental room inside his Neapolitan studio (Protomastro 1894, pp. 13-14), furnished with local objects, but also with others made specifically and inspired by the drawings made by the artist on spot (ibid., p. 14), and this meant that his pictorial compositions relating to those topics always appeared credible, recreated by his imagination, but still true to reality. Striking examples of this procedure was the painting La siesta, the first version of the subject, and a whole series of contemporary studies. Even the painting presented here is a delightful variation, but smaller in size. A quick brushstroke, with a clear sketchy tone, and a closer cut only partially show what is the meticulously studied and represented scenography in the first draft. Here the arboreal element is only hinted at, and some points of the foliage, rendered in a less approximate way, give the idea of what in Bari work is a luxuriant banana tree, combined with a verdant climbing plant; even the warp of the carpet that acts as a backdrop to the young woman, sweetly asleep on the low oriental sofa, can only be perceived from the golden geometric motif that delimits the central section. Finally, «the hookah and the satin and gold slippers» (Protomastro 1894, p. 14) take shape only thanks to short white and gold brushstrokes.
Lacking an older bibliography, the painting was exhibited for the first time in 2011 in Barletta and was listed in the catalogue as Studio per la“Siesta” (Incanto e scoprire 2011, p. 205, plate 79), and was thus identified in the catalogues of the exhibitions in which it was exhibited in the following years. However, although the work fits well into the set of studies conducted in the context of La siesta at Metropolitan national Museum in Bari, sharing with it, at least formally, the sketchy tone – a factor that probably led to the initial mistaken belief that it was one of the many tests made by Netti – it is necessary, on this occasion, to underline that it is a second variant of the subject, as Christine Farese Sperken also pointed out in the new edition of the volume La pittura dell’Ottocento in Puglia of 2015.
Exhibitions: Incanti e scoperte , Barletta 2011; Orientalisti , Rome 2011-2012; Francesco Netti , Santeramo in Colle 2014; Francesco Netti , Santeramo in Colle 2023.
Essential bibliography : Incanti e scoprire 2011, plate p. 205; Orientalisti 2011, plate 65 p. 176; Farese Sperken 2014, p. 10, plate p. 34; Farese Sperken 2015, plate 91 p. 76; Farese Sperken 2023, p. 14, plate 17 p. 47.
Sara Cenatiempo
SHEET 43
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
Riposo in mietitura
1893-1894
Oil on canvas, 59,5 x 82 cm
Signed lower left: F Netti [with F reported inside N]
Santeramo in Colle, private collection
First chapter of “mietitori” cycle, consisting of Il pasto dei mietitori e La messe (cat. 44), the painting Riposo in mietitura occupied Netti from 1893 onwards and for much of the following year, as indicated by the testimony of Giuseppe Protomastro, who saw the work on two occasions, in January and May 1894. His Ricordi records the progress of the execution, and from them we learn that: «Last January, when I visited it, […] in a temporary studio […] there were various sketches scattered around, among which I remember a group of reapers eating; an immense oak trunk stretched out on the ground; a boy blowing the wind under the boiler; a peasant sitting with a bowl on his legs; a half-cut wheat field. And on the canvas of the easel the whole subject had already been sketched out, which can be called “Riposo in mietitura”» (Protomastro 1894, p. 84). During the second visit, this time in Naples, he found «the painting of “Riposo in mietitura” […] on the easel, and almost complete, the finishing touches were missing» (ibid., p. 85). In the work we can observe some elements dear to the author, taken from the countryside of his hometown and the fields of his farm, which would also have been recognized by his nephew, such as the oak trunk and the tent that Netti used to pitch in the prairies to «breathe, with full lungs, that air, which he lacked in his studio in Naples» and to «study the arcane phenomena» of nature, suggested by the dazzling vision of the expanses of wheat on the horizon and the slopes of the hills, teeming with pastures (ibid., p. 82).
The production of this subject, replicated in a smaller version (C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, p. 63 n. 104), involved a vast quantity of sketches, preparatory studies and, nevertheless, photographic finds, which reveal a scrupulous attitude in investigating the salient moments of rural life, raised to iconic models of an epic tale, which combines the archaic dimension of the fields with the desire to escape from the alienating effects of a corrupt civilization. «Netti’s peasants work or rest happily in the sun, they are happy, not with the false happiness of Arcadia, but with that which their honest faces and the abundance with which the simple and ancient generosity of their master fills them» (Miola 1895b, p. 16).
Although devoid of socialist pretensions and polemical intentions, the painter seems to have taken into account «the iconographic models reminiscent of the repertoire of Jean-François Millet, with whom Netti also seems to be in line in terms of character, seriousness and rigor», as Isabella Valente observed (2024, p. 263). Linked to the canvas are the small sketch in the Provincial Art Gallery of Bari (C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, no. 105), the study of a reaper blowing on the fire under the boiler in the Civic Museum of Barletta (ibid., no. 106), the painting in Palazzo Pitti Paesaggio della Murgia – Studio per “Riposo in mietitura” (inv. Giorn. 1963; Farese Sperken 1996b, p. 136 ill.), also faithfully borrowed from the photograph Riposo in mietitura in a private collection (ibid., no. 113), which served as a model for the entire composition.
It must be assumed that the canvases of the cycle were separated very soon after. The first to be sold was probably Riposo in mietitura, the only one sent to the Venice exhibition of 1895 (Prima Esposizione Internazionale 1895, p. 117 n. 243). This is probably the reason why the work was not mentioned by Giovanna Vittori, who in the article published following the exhibition of the Neapolitan Artistic Circle, inaugurated in 1895, only mentioned the «two paintings» of the series exhibited on that occasion.
Exhibitions: Prima Esposizione Internazionale, Venice 1895; Mostra Provinciale, Bari 1900; IV Mostra del Sindacato, Bari 1937; II Mostra di Pittura, Bari 1952; Francesco Netti, Bari 1980.
Essential Biography: Protomastro 1894, pp. 84-85; Prima Esposizione Internazionale 1895, p. 117 n. 243; Mostra Provinciale 1900, n. 13; Musci 1932; Spinelli 1949, pp. 12-13; II Mostra di Pittura 1952, n. 180; Luciani 1974, ad vocem; Farese Sperken 1979; C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, pp. 62, 120 n. 101; Farese Sperken 1996a, pp. 30, 141; Farese Sperken 1996b, p. 465; Farese Sperken 1996c, p. 76 (con ill.); Valente 2024, pp. 262-263 (con ill.).
Rosa Esmeralda Partucci
SHEET 44
Francesco Netti
(Santeramo in Colle, 1832-1894)
La messe / I mietitori
1893-1894
Oil on canvas, 183 x 281 cm
Naples, GAN – Gallery of Fine Arts Accademy, inv. M 349
With La messe, «the last page, the sad page of Netti’s life» has been closed. It was in fact «the painting on which he placed his brush for the last time», leaving the work unfinished (Vittori 1894-1895, p. 538). Together with Il pasto dei mietitori (perduto) and Riposo in mietitura (cat. 43), the canvas is part of a trilogy of works dedicated to the “harvesters”, to the «eternally beautiful spectacle of work in the fields, of rest during the harvest», which is lovingly investigated and rendered by Netti according to different aspects and «in various compositions of perfect beauty» (Miola 1895a, p. 15).
As Giuseppe Protomastro reported in his Ricordi, the artist had poured «the lust for his work» onto the large canvas nailed to the walls of his studio, painting about twenty reapers: «the first, standing, the others prone on the field of wheat to be cut, with their backs to the sun, […] with his leather apron […], he drinks avidly from a tub to quench his burning heat» (Protomastro 1894, p. 107). In this figure, the only one well-defined and life-size, emerges «all the soul, all the effort of Netti, who feels his life failing him, and seeks any kind of relief» (ibidem), retiring to his farms in Santeramo to enjoy the calm serenity of the fields. Here, in the epilogue of his life, the country scenes suggested to the artist existential reflections and visions projected into the eternal horizon of life, in which the unfolding of human existence, although consumed between hard toil and longed-for rest, culminates in the flagrancy of reality and in moments of auratic understanding, offered by nature. Foreboding «of his imminent end», the author strove to fix «the ideas to be translated onto the canvas in writing», such as the pencil annotation «very blue shadow», which appears on a preparatory sketch of the reaper drinking (C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, p. 64, n. 109), also remembered by Protomastro (1894, p. 107). Far from any socialist sentimentalism, completely alien to the nature of the painter (who, moreover, belonged to the rich landed bourgeoisie), as well as from any intent to investigate the conditions of rural life, of which Netti, however, shows full awareness, the cycle of the “mietitori” reveals with “surprising truth” the contours of a peasant humanity that has been ignored for too long, and now also investigated with the support of photography, with which the artist loved to record the different moments of work in the fields and the spontaneous attitudes of the peasants. In the canvas in question Netti focuses on the figure of the man in the foreground, who with the pose of a “thirsty beast” reinforces the effectiveness of the vision, thus offering a model later adopted also by other Apulian artists, such as Bartolomeo and Hero Paradiso.
Like Protomastro, Giovanna Vittori also saw the preparatory sketches shortly after the author’s death, most likely not in the artist’s studio, but in the rooms of Circolo Artistico of Naples, where they were exhibited in 1895 and “placed along the same wall” as the painting; the scholar suggested viewing them to anyone who wanted to draw from the school of truth, because they contained «the scrupulous design of each figure portrayed in multiple poses to then choose the most suitable one to embody the thought» (Vittori 1894-1895, p. 539). Among these, in addition to the pencil sketches (C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, p. 64, nn. 110-112), there was a small sketch on canvas (ibid., n. 108) depicting five figures of reapers, barely stained, placed in the background and submerged among the thick ears of wheat, inflamed by light. Another small oil sketch on canvas (22.5 x 32 cm), was repeatedly sold at Sotheby’s auction in Milan in 1993 (18 May, lot 625; 5 October, lot 772, Farese Sperken 1996b, pp. 465, 472 ill.). This would be the preparatory study for La messe, as suggested by the compositional structure itself, characterized by the adoption of the close foreground, which in this case is occupied by sickles, placed next to each other, which stand out on the vast expanse of wheat in which a standing reaper appears in the distance.
While Riposo in mietitura was exhibited in Venice in 1895 (First International Exhibition 1895, p. 117 no. 243), in the same year La messe and Pasto dei mietitori were included in the commemorative exhibition at Circolo Artistico napoletano, following which they were both sold by Luigi Netti, the first to the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples (which purchased it in 1896) and the second (now lost) to the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome.
Exhibitions: Circolo Artistico, Naples 1895; IX Esposizione Internazionale, Venice 1910; Mostra della Pittura Napoletana, Naples 1922; Francesco Netti, Bari 1980; Lavoratori a Napoli, Naples 1995; Napoli Ottocento, Rome 2024.
Essential Biography: Protomastro 1894, pp. 107-108; Miola 1895a, pp. 15-16; Vittori 1894-1895, pp. 538-539 (con ill.); Tesorone 1910, p. 148 n. 1; Mostra della pittura 1922, pp. 67, 91, n. 59; Caputi, Causa, Mormone 1971, p. 115 n. 361, tav. LXXVII; C. Farese Sperken, in Francesco Netti 1980, pp. 63, 122 n. 103; M. Mormone, in Lavoratori a Napoli 1995, II, p. 212 n. 10; Farese Sperken 1996a, pp. 33, 141 ill.; Farese Sperken 1996b, pp. 465, 471 n. 8 ill.; Farese Sperken 1996c, pp. 75-77 ill., n. 82; C. Farese Sperken, in Civiltà dell’Ottocento 1997, p. 593 n. 17.223; Mormone 2007, pp. 29, 43 ill., 132; Caputo 2017, p. 128 ill.; Farese Sperken 2023, p. 16, tav. p. 17; S. Cenatiempo, in Napoli Ottocento 2024, p. 375 n. 166; Valente 2024, pp. 262-263 (con ill.).
Rosa Esmeralda Partucci
SHEET 45
Giuseppe de Nigris
(Foggia, 1832 – Marano di Napoli, 1903)
La mano del ladro
1864
Oil on canvas, 157 x 104 cm
Signed and dated lower left: G. De Nigris 1864
Naples, Città Metropolitana, inv. 1971 n. 72
A contemporary description of the work, little remembered in recent studies, is offered by Giuseppe Amati, who reviewed it the day after the third exhibition of Società Promotrice di Napoli in 1864, where it was presented together with Le impressioni di un quadro. In the text, Amati insisted on the effectiveness of the subject, rather unusual, in which we see the hand of «a thief [who], having put his arm through a small door, tries with an iron he holds in his hand, to remove the lock on the door of a house. And having become sure of the silence that reigns there, that there is no one to hear or to be on the lookout, he wants to enter the rooms to steal at his leisure. But his plan fails, because the watchful custodian is not lacking […], a dog, hearing the noise, […] pounces on his arm; and biting him so hard that blood spurts out, deprives him of movement». «The contracted nerves of the hand vividly demonstrate the patient’s pain and the anguish he endures in the hope of freeing himself from the hidden enemy and saving himself before anyone else arrives» (Amati 1865, p. 17).
This was not, in fact, the only painting in the Neapolitan exhibition dedicated to this subject, since Filippo Palizzi had also proposed a watercolour entitled Mastino collocato a custodia d’una abitazione, perhaps a variant of the canvas, signed and dated 1856, which appeared on the antiques market (Pandolfini auction in Milan, 8 November 2023, lot 47) and comes from the collection of Count Paolo Gaetani of Naples. A closer comparison could be made with Studio di cagnetta per “L’attesa” by the Abruzzese painter, datable between 1864 and 1867, in which the white and brown spotted dog, for defence, stands on the wall, beyond which the head of a frightened child appears (Greco, Picone Petrusa, Valente 1993, plate 335; Picone Petrusa 2002, p. 49).
Although La mano del ladro was received with general critical acclaim, soon becoming part of the collection of the Provincial Administration (in whose inventories it appears since 1875), some critics expressed a subtle disappointment in noting that the painting lent itself to a too easy reading, as Carlo Tito Dalbono noted (1864, p. 21). For his part, Francesco Netti warned the public not to linger in front of the painting «more than five minutes at a time, if you want to preserve the impression», because staying longer could reveal – in his opinion – some defects in execution and proportion visible in the dog’s build (Netti ed. 1938, pp. 7-8). On the other hand, Amati expressed himself more than favorably, seeing in de Nigris the merit of having treated a subject that qualified him «not only as a censor of crime, but also as an excellent artist in portraying animals» (Amati 1865, p. 17). Dalbono also agreed with this, and he grasped the expressive potential of the work precisely in the figure of the faithful animal, a recurring element in his genre production, affirming that «the singularity of his painting is the dog: the dog does justice and punishes the thief, not the magistrate who is a man» (Dalbono 1864, p. 21).
For his part, Francesco Netti warned the public not to linger in front of the painting «more than five minutes at a time, if you want to preserve the impression», because staying longer could reveal – in his opinion – some defects in execution and proportion visible in the dog’s build (Netti ed. 1938, pp. 7-8). On the other hand, Amati expressed himself more than favorably, seeing in de Nigris the merit of having treated a subject that qualified him «not only as a censor of crime, but also as an excellent artist in portraying animals» (Amati 1865, p. 17). Dalbono also agreed with this, and he grasped the expressive potential of the work precisely in the figure of the faithful animal, a recurring element in his genre production, stating that «the singularity of his painting is the dog: the dog does justice and punishes the thief, not the magistrate who is a man» (Dalbono 1864, p. 21). Although severe in his technical judgment, Netti also appreciated the ingenious choice of subject, completely «new and clearly conceived», in which «the author wanted to produce a surprise […]; and one of the things best understood about that subject was to have painted it life-size, because that is what produces the effect» (Netti ed. 1938, pp. 7-8). It is no coincidence that the canvas was positioned at the entrance to the first room of the Promotrice, producing a trompe-l’œil effect that was not only visual, due to the calligraphic rendering of the details, but also conceptual. In fact, the work lends itself to a further, more witty and satirical reading, determined by an ironic vision of an everyday episode, chosen as an expression of a common feeling on the theme of justice, which prompted the following considerations in Amati: «I had not understood the concept well. The picture is sublime in its purpose, and we shall not see the thieves punished unless a Ministry of dogs comes to power…» (Amati 1865, p. 17). This is also confirmed by the English critics of the time, who, referring to the sense of private justice, judged the subject “altogether […] a pretty piece of poetic justice” (Blanc 1880, II, p. 83).
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1864-1865; La collezione d’arte, Naples 2001; The Naples Collection, Tehran 2002; Viaggio tra paesaggio e memoria, Tianjin 2006; L’altro Ottocento, Naples 2016.
Essential Biography: Dalbono 1864, p. 21; Società Promotrice 1864, p. 3 n. 21; Amati 1865, p. 17; Blanc 1880, II, p. 83; Netti ed. 1938, pp. 7-8; G. D’Alessio, in Greco, Picone Petrusa, Valente 1993, p. 121, tav. 142; D’Alessio 2001, p. 134; G. D’Alessio, in La collezione d’arte 2001, pp. 94-95, tav. 31; The Naples Collection 2002, n. 24; Viaggio tra paesaggio e memoria 2006, p. 30; W. Prevedello, in L’altro Ottocento 2016, pp. 72-75.
Rosa Esmeralda Partucci
SHEET 46
Giuseppe de Nigris
(Foggia, 1832 – Marano di Napoli, 1903)
Les merveilles du chassepot
1870
Oil on canvas, 80 x 160 cm
Signed and dated lower left: De Nigris / 1870
Napoli, Città Metropolitana, inv. 1971 n. 246
Exhibited at VII Promotrice in Naples, together with the painting Bersagliere sui spaldi, Les merveilles du chassepot is the presentation of a contemporary historical event, steeped in anticlerical dissent. During the nineteenth century, many artists actively participated in the battles of Risorgimento, which soon became frequent subjects of their works. De Nigris himself, who took part in the riots of ’48 and served in the National Guard, produced many compositions dedicated to Garibaldi and Garibaldi’s ideals. In this vein, the decision to narrate the battle of Mentana, which took place on 3 November 1867, was made. The artist does not depict a moment of heated combat or retreat, but rather a lugubrious ferrying of lifeless bodies, piled one on top of the other on a cart pulled by two pairs of horses, whose original function was to contain the equipment of the French army, as can be seen from the inscription on the side of the vehicle. «The cart is of an extraordinary material truth; and then it walks, it moves in front of you. You hear the heavy, alternating pace of those horses; you hear the creaking of those iron-shod wheels, you hear the jolt that a depression in the ground, a pebble, a ditch, gives to that great machine, and you see that pile of corpses collide and fall apart» (Innominato 1870, p. 1).
A transit that occurs in the presence of a cross and a friar with a plump appearance and a sly look, “about to take snuff” (G.d.C. 1870), completely untouched by the scene that runs before him, “whose only appearance, so ruddy and cheerful, is an insult to pain and humanity” (Florenzano 1870, p. 1). Precisely that appearance, his being a “repulsive figure” was a reason for criticism, because art feeds on “nature as a rule, not on nature as an exception”, which is precisely a priest “with his face in the air, somewhere between stupid and ferocious” and “ugly pictorially” (Innominato 1870, p. 1). Only the bowed heads of the two soldier-coachmen and the presence of a dog, who, following the carriage, proceeds in a funeral march, manage to restore humanity to the entire composition. “He was able to give the painting a feeling of melancholy and sadness that lingers and pleases. From a cross stuck in the ground near Mentana moves a wagon [sic] of Garibaldi’s victims harvested by the chassepot rifle. The horses are driven by two melancholic and sad French soldiers, and so does a dog who, with his tail drooping and his muzzle lowered, shows himself tired from the long journey but unable to rest because that funeral wagon is carrying his master to his final resting place. A priest looks at the funeral convoy with satisfaction and exclaims: “Les merveilles du chassepot“.
De Nigris wanted to demonstrate that if with other paintings he was able to make people laugh, with this one he was able to make people cry” (Princi 1870, p. 92). They seem to echo the verses of Victor Hugo: «Caldi i cannoni sono ancor; l’han fatto / il lor dover – Tutte le sue promesse / la mitraglia invocata ha mantenuto. / Ora è finita – I morti sono morti / puoi dir la messa. Però bada o Prete / nel prender l’ostia asciugati le dita / altrimenti tu insanguini il Signore» (Hugo ed. 1872, p. 4). The defeat of Mentana was accompanied by the cynical statement of General Pierre-Louis-Charles Achille De Failly: «Nos fusilis Chassepot ont fait merveille» (De Calonne 1867, p. 159). From that comes the irreverent title chosen by the artist, who wanted to show the true wonders of the new breech-loading chassepot rifles, namely the bodies of Garibaldi’s men who fell under their fire.
Garibaldi’s desire to annex Rome, still under the dominion of the Papal State, to the United Italy determined a bitter defeat in Mentana due to the lack of support from the Italian state, called to respect the convention of 1864, due to the intervention of Napoleon III in favor of the papacy. The attempted annexation of the papal territory suffocated in blood leaves the ecclesiastic, emblem of the entire Church, indifferent to the pain caused. Mindful of Filippo Palizzi’s research, the tonal accords restore the freshness of a landscape from life, which in the distance reveals the city of Mentana, while the spatial arrangement of the priest figure and the road, which tangentially divides the canvas, recalls the painting Ozio e Lavoro by Michele Cammarano. Reviewed with great interest in the articles describing the exhibition of VII Promotrice, Les merveilles du chassepot was purchased by the Province of Naples for the amount of 850 lire (Atti della deputazione provinciale 1870, p. 242).
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1870; La collezione d’arte, Naples 2001; Garibaldi il mito, Genoa 2007-2008; Il Risorgimento a colori, Rome 2010; I capolavori della città metropolitana, Naples 2015.
Essential Biography: Atti della deputazione provinciale 1870, p. 242; Florenzano 1870, p. 1; G.d.C. 1870; Innominato 1870, p. 1; Princi 1870, p. 92; Società Promotrice 1870, p. 8 n. 31; Elenco degli artisti s.d., pp. 9, 51; Della Rocca 1883, p. 109; G. D’Alessio, in Greco, Picone Petrusa, Valente 1993, p. 121; Greco, Picone Petrusa, Valente 1993, tav. 141; G. D’Alessio, in La collezione d’arte 2001, tav. 12, p. 86 n. 12; L. Martorelli, in Garibaldi il mito 2007, p. 119 ill., p. 211 n. 130 (con ill.); C. Virno, in Il Risorgimento a colori 2010, pp. 98 ill., 146 n. 49 (con ill.); Valente 2012, p. 152, 154-155 (con ill.); I capolavori della città metropolitana 2015, p. 79 n. 12 (con ill.); Valente 2016, p. 14.
Fedela Procaccini
SHEET 47
Giuseppe de Nigris
(Foggia, 1832 – Marano di Napoli, 1903)
Natura morta con gatto [Un gatto ladro?]
Around 1872
Oil on canvas, 64 x 77,5 cm
Naples, Certosa e Museo di San Martino, inv. 14582
The painting became part of the collections of the Museum of San Martino in 1929, the year in which it was sold to the State by the antique dealer Giovanni Fraja together with another canvas by de Nigris, Natura morta con agnello, signed and dated 1859 (Causa 1955, pp. 40 ill., 42), for the total sum of six thousand liras (Historical Archive of the Management of the Museum of San Martino, A I 478). In the genre scenes and still lifes the painter’s very personal production is close to Toma, also thanks to the exchange of mutual influences between the two artists, which imply a common reference to the models of Neapolitan painting of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, «translations in a courtly form of the most current eighteenth-century Neapolitan examples, in particular by Giacomo Nani», as Causa wrote about the two still lifes just mentioned (Causa 1966, p. 76 note 16). With an accurate and shrewd investigation from life, to which he owes much of the teachings of Domenico Morelli and Achille Vertunni, the master from Foggia depicts a truthful still life of extraordinary pictorial strength, a quality that has always been recognized by the still too scant critical literature on his work and which justifies the wide public success achieved by de Nigris, especially in this kind of representation and in popular sketches (Lorenzetti [1952], p. 267; Causa 1984, p. 72).
The protagonist of the composition is a cat, who, with a greedy expression, sniffs a plate of sardines, almost incredulous at finding himself in front of an unexpected, yet delicious, opportunity of a succulent meal. At the center of the table, a woven wicker basket contains an abundance of lunch ingredients, ready to be cooked in the large copper and wrought iron cauldron in the background: a pack of spaghetti, several tomatoes, a bunch of celery and some aubergines. On the right, a white melon, the epilogue of lunch, completes the scene, whose micrographic rendering, pushed to the point of trompe l’oeil, while dragging the viewer’s eye into the illusionistic game generated by the pictorial virtuosity, does not deprive the composition of a certain immediacy and inventiveness with the extemporaneous presence of the cat. The painting, most likely identifiable with a very successful subject from de Nigris’ production, Un gatto ladro, remembered by Lorenzetti ([1952], p. 267) and presented by the artist to Promotrice of 1872 together with two other still lifes, ’Na Verdummara e alla Pompeiana (Società Promotrice 1872, p. 6 n. 36), finds its counterpart in the canvas, of the same dimensions, which passed on the American antiques market in 2006 (The dinner dispute, Dog’s in Art auction, William Doyle, New York, 14 February 2006, lot 3086, p. 18).
Exhibtions: I colori del gusto, Naples 2008.
Essential Biography: Causa 1955, pp. 39 ill., 42; Causa 1966, p. 76, nota 16; L. Martorelli, in Il patrimonio artistico 1984, p. 190; L. Soravia, in La pittura in Italia 1991, II, p. 800; G. D’Alessio, in Greco, Picone Petrusa, Valente 1993, p. 121.
Fabio Speranza
SHEET 48
Giuseppe de Nigris
(Foggia, 1832 – Marano di Napoli, 1903)
Un medico in erba
1875
Oil on canvas, 70 x 48 cm
Signed and dated lower left: de Nigris 1875
Naples, Michele Gargiulo’s collection
Inside a bourgeois home, a childish scene unfolds, giving back an anecdotal narrative. The protagonist of the painting is man’s best friend, a dog, who, lying supine on an armchair, receives cuddles from his little owners. The game played is to pretend that the furry friend is sick and therefore in need of treatment. «It’s a holiday, mom doesn’t want us to leave the house, we need to have fun with the family; there are three of them, and four with the dog. They improvise a farce. They have seen the grandmother, the father or the mother, someone in the house sick; here is the ready-made theme. The dog has let himself be laid on the cushions of the armchair and has understood his part very well; he has added his own tail that falls limply down without energy, without life; there is no doubt about it, he is a consummate artist, and he could not be more compliant; he lets the little boy chase away the flies and waits for the cordial greeting from the distressed nurse, while the doctor in spectacles feels his pulse with a doctoral self-assurance that could not be better imitated» (Il cane ammalato 1876, p. 327).
The room is finely furnished: the wallpaper is interrupted at the top by the lower edge of a long golden frame, the seats, placed against the wall, give us the consistency of the fabrics, while the Persian carpet interrupts the happy perspective of the tiles that design the floor. The artist lingers with equal mastery in the rendering of the children’s clothing, evoking those fashion models that could be found leafing through the pages of magazines, and with Flemish attention he represents on the chair some vases, a saucer and a cute little music-making monkey.
Considered unpublished until this occasion of study, the painting was reproduced in «L’Illustrazione Italiana» with the erroneous attribution to Vincenzo Montefusco. The magazine itself corrected this mistake, citing as its reason the confusion generated by the fact that Montefusco was the creator of the engraving reproducing the work of art (usually signed, in the periodical, also by the person who made the drawing on the matrix; Belle Arti 1876, p. 354). Furthermore, thanks to the discovery of a contemporary source, which, while reviewing the works exhibited at XII Promotrice di Belle Arti in Naples in 1875, focuses on this painting, we can state with certainty that the painting can be identified with the one presented in the catalogue with the title Un medico in erba (Società Promotrice 1875, p. 7 n. 48), «a graceful painting full of light and whose accessories are diligently executed» (G.d.C. 1875, p. 2).
In addition to his works of historical subjects of patriotic value and his juicy still life pieces, De Nigris created many genre scenes: a restitution of the truth, sometimes imbued with melancholy, which often placed children and their world at the center of the representation. The dog also becomes recurrent in the artist’s compositions: the one portrayed is probably the family dog, white, with long hair and spotted with brown spots, the same one we find in La mano del ladro (cat. 45) or in Les merveilles du chassepot (cat. 46).
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1875.
Essential Biography: G.d.C. 1875, p. 2; Società Promotrice 1875, p. 7 n. 48; Belle Arti 1876, p. 354; Il cane ammalato 1876, pp. 327-328 (con ill.).
Fedela Procaccini
SHEET 49
Giuseppe de Nigris
(Foggia, 1831 – Marano di Napoli, 1903)
L’ultima messa
1877
Oil on canvas, 83 x 60 cm
Signed and dated lower left: G. de Nigris 1877
Naples, private collection
In 1877 de Nigris took part at the third National Exhibition of Naples with four paintings: La canzone d’amore, Le cieche operaie, Vino e donna e L’ultima messa, the latter set up in room XI (National Exhibition 1877, p. 55 n. 726). The same title appears on four other following occasions: at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1878 (Exposition Universelle 1878, p. 226 n. 55, La dernière messe), at Promotrice in Turin in 1879 (Società Promotrice 1879, p. 12 n. 144), at the one in Naples in 1880 (Società Promotrice 1880, p. 9 n. 130) and at the Universal Exhibition in Melbourne in 1880 (Esposizione universale 1880, p. 60 n. 42), always with the title L’ultima messa. There are certainly two paintings, both signed and dated 1877 and of the same size: the one in question is believed to be the first version presented at the National Exhibition of Naples in 1877, where it was certainly sold as it was not present in the list of works drawn (because unsold) in the lottery held at the end of the exhibition. The second, made, perhaps, because of the success it encountered and in the hope of an immediate sale, is the one presumably sent to Paris in 1878, and, one imagines, then exhibited at Promotrice of Turin in 1879, at the Universal Exhibition of Melbourne in 1880, where it was accompanied by nine paintings, and finally at Neapolitan Promotrice of 1880, where it was purchased for the collections of Capodimonte Museum of Naples (inv. P.S. 262), and today placed in temporary storage at the Chamber of Deputies in Rome. On these last two occasions the work was set at the same price of 1,500 liras, which was much higher than the average of the other works present in both exhibitions. A rare period photo allows us to visualise de Nigris’ painting in the context of the Melbourne World’s Fair: there it is, up there, above Giulio Montevedere’s Il Genio di Franklin di Giulio Montevedere.
The scene takes place in the fourteenth-century church of San Giovanni a Carbonara in Naples, which allows us to recognize its ancient portal with part of fresco of the lunette almost completely deteriorated, portrayed by Georg Sommer in a photograph contemporary with the painting, where we can see both the cross nailed to the door and the heavy curtain.
Regarding the canvas exhibited in Naples in 1877, the painter and critic Costantino Abbatecola evaluated the work as a true piece of “artistic bravura” (Abbatecola 1877, p. 255), while Francesco Netti focused on some precious details: «The little church is so packed with late devotees that the last ones to arrive are forced to remain on the threshold, and with their shoulders they inflate the red tire, which serves as a door: their legs can be seen underneath. Meanwhile, a peasant, a street vendor who goes shouting through the streets with his donkey, loaded with cabbages, unable to enter the church with the animal, unable to part with it, and unable to miss the mass, reconciles everything by staying to listen to it right outside the door, always holding his companion by the halter, who for his part attends the divine office with great compunction» (Netti 1877, p. 60). Paul Lefort speaks of the Parisian example: «Une bonne peinture encore, c’est la Dernière Messe, de M. de Nigris, d’une bien jolie couleur et d’une facture qui ne manque ni d’imprévu ni d’originalité» (Lefort 1879, p. 195).
Even when it was exhibited at the XVI Promotrice in 1880, critics noted the painting: «It is a scene probably taken from life, so much is its naturalness, seconded by the good execution of the figures and the well-designed door of the church» (G.d.C. 1880a). Of the «truly beautiful» painting, obtained according to a chronicler by means of the camera obscura, some characteristics were highlighted: the air, the exact distribution of light, the «elevation of the church», the «door blanket lifted by the crowd», the «protrusion of the villagers’ heads outside to look inside», up to the «elderly woman who, not having the strength to stand, and to interfere with the crowd, has beautifully sat on a step of the parish, and says the rosary with her good bone crown» (Succini 1880). De Nigris tells a real-life episode: to describe everything in detail he uses two types of brush strokes, one more calligraphic and defined, the other more macchiaiola and synthetic, used above all for the figures in the shadows or in the background. The narrative details, typical of de Nigris’s painting which followed a precise taste of the collectors in that time, are not lacking: from the red curtain worn at the edges, badly nailed to the ancient wooden door, to the crowd of men and women, old people and children, bourgeois and commoners, including the «verdummaro», the greengrocer highlighted by Abbatecola and Netti, are all gathered in silence listening to the last mass of Sunday: «it is a scene easy to occur in Neapolitan customs, which can be seen every Sunday, and de Nigris has rendered it with rare perfection without embellishing it and without spoiling it» (Della Rocca 1883, p. 109). The detail of the old commoner sitting on the first step of the short staircase is very beautiful, and follows the model by Achille d’Orsi of the small statuette Sulla fossa, dating back to 1876 (Valente, in Il Bello o il Vero 2014, pp. 215-217).
Exhibitions: Esposizione Nazionale, Naples 1877; I grandi maestri, Naples 1998.
Essential Biography: Abbatecola 1877, p. 255; Esposizione Nazionale 1877, p. 55 n. 726; Netti 1877, p. 60; Della Rocca 1883, p. 109; Vittori 1893-1894, pp. 194-195; I grandi maestri 1998, pp. 54-55; Marini 2000, p. 269; La collezione d’arte 2001, p. 114; Ottocento 2001, p. 179; Sotheby’s 2002; Caputo 2017, pp. 206 ill., 423 nota 146.
Isabella Valente
SHEET 50
Giuseppe de Nigris
(Foggia, 1832 – Marano di Napoli, 1903)
La processione di Sant’Antonio Abate – Ricordi del passato / Porta Capuana
1883
Oil on canvas, 90 x 71 cm
Signed and dated lower left: DE NIGRIS 1883
Naples, private collection
A plurality of religious and devout souls advance among the people poured into the streets and leaning out of the balconies to watch the procession in honor of Sant’Antonio Abate, which still takes place in Naples every year on January 17, passing through the streets of the homonymous village, also known as Buvero di Sant’Antuono. The scene is depicted by the artist with a strong folkloristic character and captures the excited moment of the passage of the processional statue, supported by a group of collators, through the arch of the triumphal arch of Porta Capuana, still equipped with the votive aedicule on the attic with the fresco of L’Immacolata tra gli angeli, created by Gennaro Maldarelli in 1837, also documented by Giorgio Sommer’s albumin no. 1115, datable around 1880 and preserved at Getty Museum (inv. no. 84.XP.1430.25). The two images show the state of the places before the twentieth-century urban redevelopment and are in fact superimposable; it cannot be excluded that De Nigris used a photographic support, as often happened in the last decades of his production. In both views, in fact, one can see the buildings crowded on the sides of the two towers, today instead «free from the agglomerated hovels, which hide them», as Alfonso Miola had hoped (1895b, p. 19); the spontaneous vegetation greens the walls of the fifteenth-century monument; the hanging curtains of the shops and the sign of “Trattoria del Leone sfrenato” express the lively sense of a teeming and busy humanity, concocting a vision that mixes together the sacred and the profane. While in the background of the canvas the mendicant friars collect alms and donations from those who chant mottos of invocation to the saint, still alive in today’s popular tradition, in the foreground the so-called rite of “ ‘O Cippo ‘e Sant’Antuono” takes place, which includes the blessing of the animals and the preparation of the pyre, with old furniture and other wooden objects piled up, ready to burn as a symbol of purification and propitiatory renewal.
An element of particular interest is the half-length statue of the saint, which slavishly reproduces the reliquary bust cast in silver located in the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, recognisable by the particular expressiveness of the modelling, by the stick with a τ-shaped handle, held in the right hand, and by the evangeliary in the left hand.
The work, signed and dated 1883, was sold on the antiques market at Vincent Auction House in Naples on 15 December 2012 (lot 158), under the title Porta Capuana.
However, it should not be confused with the canvas of the same subject exhibited at the XVII Exhibition of Fine Arts of Società Promotrice of Naples in 1881, entitled La Porta Capuana a Napoli (Società Promotrice 1881, p. 8 no. 102), of which there are no traces. Instead, it should be assumed that the painting in question is to be identified with La processione di Sant’Antonio Abate – Ricordi del passato, presented at the Napoletana Promotrice in 1883 (Società Promotrice 1883, p. 11, no. 89), due to the clear reference of the subject to the patronal feast. It should also be underlined that, in the exhibition catalogue, the monetary value attributed to the latter is much higher (2500 Lire) than that suggested for the 1881 painting (500 Lire): this difference suggests a considerable compositional or format diversity between the two works, as well as the insistence on devotional topics linked to the saint, also witnessed by another painting, La distribuzione del pane di Sant’Antonio, presented at Promotrice di Napoli in 1897. The pecuniary aspect was also underlined by the painter himself, who, in a letter sent to Annibale Sacco on 12 July 1883 and reported by Mariantonietta Picone Petrusa, proposed a reduction in the price «to have a greater probability of sale» (1990, II, p. 398 n. 19). From the letter we also learn that the canvas was much appreciated by the famous Dutch artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema, who «when visiting the exhibition stopped in front of my large painting and praised it» (ibidem).
Exhibitions: Società Promotrice, Naples 1883; Opere d’Arte Moderna, Naples 2012.
Essential Biography: Società Promotrice 1883, p. 11 n. 89; Picone Petrusa 1989-1990, II, p. 398 n. 19; Opere d’Arte Moderna 2012, lotto 158; Caputo 2017, p. 205 ill.
Rosa Esmeralda Partucci
SHEET 51
Giuseppe de Nigris
(Foggia, 1832 – Marano di Napoli, 1903)
L’ultima risorsa
1887
Oil on canvas , 71 x 106 cm
Signed and dated lower right: G. DE NIGRIS / 1887
Naples, private collection
In 1887 Giuseppe de Nigris presented at the National Exhibition of Venice and later, in 1891, at the XXVII Promotrice di Belle Arti in Naples, a painting entitled L’ultima risorsa, a work that could be identified with the one that joined Intesa Sanpaolo collection in 2002 (information reported to the writer by M. Cascella, dated 3 March 2025; see also G. Cristino, in Ottocento Novecento 2003, pp. 8-9; Farese Sperken 2015, p. 36). The critics, describing the composition, highlighted how touching the moment represented was. If in the several exhibition reviews the figure of the man has often been identified with the father of the family, we can plausibly assume that he is in reality a hair merchant, considering the more refined clothing compared to the worn one of the other figures and the presence of a hat and an umbrella, still dripping, just placed on the chair. In a poor interior, the merchant is in the act of cutting the long braid of a young woman, who sits before him with a humble air. A child, like a modern angel called to stop the killing of Isaac, squeezes his arm, his gaze begging her not to commit that act. A little further away, a little girl observes the scene. The insertion of a modest partition divides the humble room into two spaces, placing in the background, stretched out on the bed, the figure of a sick woman. «Perhaps there is nothing left in that room that can be sold to make a little money […]. In a moment the braid will fall cut, because poverty has something terrible in itself that recalls the inexorable Fate, the mysterious and feared divinity of the ancients» (Savi Lopez 1887, p. 128).
That was the reality of the humble, the need to face the burdens of life with the few material goods they possessed. Extremely similar to the work in the collection of the former Bank of Naples is the version on display today, whose most significant difference can be found in the absence of the sick woman. It is precisely this lack that allows us to exclude the participation of this canvas in both Nazionale of Venice and Promotrice of Naples, since the sources traced always mention the presence of that figure (ibidem; Paoletti 1887, p. 281; Della Sala 1891, pp. 58-59). The dating of our canvas to 1887, the year of the Venetian exhibition, the very similar dimensions (85×120 cm are those of the work in the Intesa Sanpaolo collection), the finished appearance of our painting, which therefore does not allow it to be considered a sketch, suggest that it was the first version made by the artist, who, to give greater narrative clarity, then decided to execute a new composition. Other similarities can be seen by observing the two paintings; the few furnishings, although changed in arrangement, can be recognized in the humble room: the glove maker’s vice, the brazier, the chair on which various objects are leaning, the religious prints and the newspaper pages attached to the dividing wall, which in our case occupy the entire surface, even the terracotta insert of the floor is common in both versions. Other differences can be found in the age of the man who is about to cut the braid and in the chosen framing, which, if in our case appears frontal, is foreshortened in the work in the public collection. Made using a dull palette of greys and browns, L’ultima risorsa falls into that genre of «tearful painting» (Uda 1900, II, p. 82) to which other paintings by the artist also belong, such as La sventura oltraggiata, a young beggar being harassed in the presence of a blind musician, probably her father (Imbriani 1868, pp. 87-88), Il Banco de’ Pegni del Monte della Pietà, «which reveals misery and suffering, vice and shame» (de Sterlich 1869, p. 86), or Le cieche operaie. It is in these compositions that de Nigris shows that he is looking at the reality of the suffering, frequently represented by his friend Gioacchino Toma.
Unpublished work
Fedela Procaccini
SHEET 52
Giuseppe de Nigris
(Foggia, 1832 – Marano di Napoli, 1903)
I giochi dei ricchi
1888
Oil on canvas, 80 x 50 cm
Signed and dated lower right: DE NIGRIS / 1888
Rome, Giuseppe Guerriero’s collection
After the veristic revolution, which radically changed the subjects of painting and sculpture, artists began to look with interest at the people and the reality of the less well-off. If only sporadically the representation of the humble was a vehicle for a clear message of social denunciation – think, as far as the artists of the Neapolitan school are concerned, of the Patinian trilogy, L’erede, Vanga e latte e Bestie da soma, and Proximus tuus –, more frequently the criticism of class inequality was implicit, as in this painting. From a newly constructed Umbertine building, two children appear, who, hiding their faces from the observer, lean out brandishing their rich weapons towards a group of children of the people. «We must keep the rebels away, show them that there are boundaries to be respected», they seem to want to say with their brazen attitude. While on the windowsill the little girl jealously holds her doll, the crowd of poor people raises their arms in vain to evoke the generous bestowal of the play object. In the dim light of the bourgeois interior, the figure of a plausible wet nurse emerges, who, holding a newborn baby in her arms, supervises the unfolding of the action.
Starting from the theories of John Locke in the second half of the seventeenth century and those of the Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, during the nineteenth century the importance of childhood in the formation of man was recognized and consequently the awareness of the usefulness of play grew, as it trained boys to take on roles of command (this explains the spread of toy soldier battles) and girls to prepare, with the help of dolls, to be good wives and good mothers. However, if this occurs in wealthy contexts, the reality of poor children is very different, who, coming from poor families, are forced to wear adults’ clothes too soon, to take on work responsibilities and to contribute to the support of the family unit. For them, toys do not exist, and when, instead, they have them, these are obtained with the humblest materials. If much can be staged with the imagination, in the city squares it is common to witness the widespread shows of “guarattelle” (puppets). Paintings and sculptures bear witness to some of these simple games: spinning tops, swords, handcrafted musical instruments, soap bubbles, or even the game of “blind man’s buff” (Farese Sperken 2015, p. 80; Il Bello o il Vero 2014, p. 305; Caputo 2017, pp. 173, 204, 219).
The «precise and Lilliputian minuteness» of de Nigris’s painting is evident in this work (Pofere Maurizie 1875). The details of the sword hilt, the definition of the two puppets, one of which represents Pulcinella, an ancient mask of Neapolitan culture, the transparencies of the curtain, in which the lace workmanship is also rendered, are expressions of a great technical ability, equally evident in the skilful plastic and chiaroscuro construction of the figures, especially in the rendering of Les Miserables in the foreground. The small poster affixed to the wall of the house with its inscription reveals an unspoken political message, an expedient that is also found in other works by the artist, such as Il gioco del lotto, or in other compositions by contemporary artists, such as Tempi grami by Marco de Gregorio.
Essential Biography: Caputo 2017, p. 218 ill.
Fedela Procaccini
SHEET 53
Giuseppe de Nigris
(Foggia, 1832 – Marano di Napoli, 1903)
Un idillio in cimitero – Venditore di libri e stampe sui gradini della chiesa, in via Costantinopoli
Around 1893
oil on canvas, 22 x 16 cm
Naples, Certosa and San Martino Museum, inv. 14276
In the artistic production of Giuseppe de Nigris, alongside the depictions of historical and religious topics, a significant space is reserved for still lifes, popular sketches and domestic scenes, all works of small size, intended for the more intimate and direct market of art sellers and private clients. This series includes a painted panel with the depictions of Un idillio in cimitero on one side and, on the other, of Un venditore di libri e stampe sui gradini della chiesa in via Costantinopoli in Via Costantinopoli. The work, preserved in the Cabinet of Drawings and Prints of San Martino Museum, comes from the little-known but interesting and conspicuous collection donated by Commendatore Luigi Gamberini to the museum in 1923 (ASDMSM, Atto di Donazione 1923, p. 16). The small panel is inserted, protected by two glasses, inside a frame equipped with two pins, which, joined to two chains, allow the painting to be suspended on the wall or, if desired, to be turned over to see both scenes.
Un idillio in cimitero presents an unusual subject, derived from Neapolitan folklore and typically romantic. The scene is set in the underground of Naples, probably in a hypogeum cemetery or in one of the many catacombs located between Stella and Sanità districts, where de Nigris had his own home in the street «Fontanelle 64» (Società Promotrice 1864, p. 3). In an earthy-colored space, lit by candles, an intimate conversation takes place between two young people.
Considering the tools they are holding in their hands, a shovel and a basket, it is assumed that they stopped for a moment from their work, now intent in an amorous conversation.
On the side wall you can see what appears to be a tomb or a drain, where those skulls, called “capuzzelle”, are piled up, belonging to the proverbial “anime pezzentelle” or “anime dimenticate”, symbols of an ancient rite, which some Neapolitans still practice with affection and devotion: the cult of the souls in Purgatory.
The second episode takes place en plein air, in front of the church of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli, overlooking the street of the same name, which the painter probably walked along every time he went to Real Istituto di Belle Arti, where he was a honorary professor. A street vendor, stretched out on the steps to the left of the main entrance to the church, has occupied a large part of the steps with his prints for sale, and observes a prelate intent on evaluating the purchase of one of the books he has taken from the basket on the sidewalk. The sketchy rendering and the vibrant color, enhanced by the wooden support, expertly convey the sense of light and material of the objects on display, capturing the extemporaneity of an everyday gesture. This composition could be traced back, as a preparatory study, to the painting Meditazioni, presented at XXVIII Promotrice di Belle Arti in Naples in 1893 (see the essay by R.E. Partucci in this volume), which would constitute the terminus ante quem for the dating of the work, allowing it to be placed in the years in which de Nigris was particularly interested in subjects with religious topics, as can be seen from works such as Processione di penitenza nelle catacombe di Napoli (1880) and Il campanello della parrocchia (1885).
Essential biography: ASDMSM, Atto di donazione 1923, p. 16.
Miriam Li Donni