19th Century, Portraits Of Women

19th century

Portraits of women

(2) Oil on board oval cm 37 x 28.5 cm

Frame, cm 40.5 x 31

This pair of portraits shows two women directly facing the viewer. The winky and decisive look is reinforced by the used brush, snarling and participated, of vibrant intensity. The artist has decided to use a dark red background for one, golden for the other. A calcato chiaroscuro exacerbates the portraits of dramatic intensity, placing them in the groove of 19th century Verista production. The artist’s desire to represent women with vivid realism stands out in the smiling dimples of one and the intense gaze of the other.

The practice of portraiture took a decisive turn in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the establishment of the bourgeois class. Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Adriano Cecioni and others, as Diego Morbelli later wrote, enriched the centuries-old tradition of the formal bourgeois portrait with a renewed psychological introspection in the aesthetic and perceptive rendering of the people portrayed. The renewed interest for daily life, recalling the characteristic tradition folcklorica, knew a wide diffusion both through the private studio of the artists, and for a new collection research carried out by the most brilliant and innovative minds of the time. Second portraitists such as Emilio Longoni, active at the turn of the next century, collected the sparkling legacy of these light years, increasing their significance committed to a more decisive dramatic introspection.