Catalogue-2014-Jean-Luc-Baroni

Filippo Palizzi
Vasto 1818-1899 Naples
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Il Corricolo Napoletano: The Carriage between Naples and Vietri
Oil on cardboard, laid on board. Signed and dated lower right Fil. Palizzi / 1849 Vietri
26.8 x 38 cms. (10 ½ x 15 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, Paris.
Filippo Palizzi and his brother Giuseppe were early leaders in the move to realism in Italian art of the
19 th Century. Filippo began his career in his home town on the Adriatic as a sculptor of crib figures. On
moving to Naples in 1837, he apprenticed himself to the neoclassical painter Costanzo Angelini and
Camillo Guerra, a professor of the Academy. His own inclination led him, however, towards landscape
painting and the observation of real life. Filippo was an intense and serious minded character, increasingly
political but averse to the limelight; he also disliked showing his work to fellow artists and generally
avoided visits from painters travelling to Naples from abroad, such as Schedrin and Corot. In 1842 Palizzi
first began travelling, initially to Moldavia; he then stayed in Naples whilst his brother moved to Paris,
allying himself with the artists of the Barbizon
School. But over a decade later, Filippo went
to Paris himself, travelling through France,
Belgium and Holland and returning to Naples
via Rome and Florence. Palizzi was one of the
very first painters in Italy to become interested
in photography. Already in the 1850s, he was
using photographic images as models for his
paintings. He developed a very precise and
highly detailed technique and became well
known for his extremely accomplished views
and depictions of the more rustic elements
of Neapolitan life. Palizzi also developed a
speciality in painting animals and continued
to model figures and works in ceramic and
maiolica. His paintings can be seen in the
Galleria d’arte moderna, Rome, the Galleria
Carruti, Milan and in the Instituto di Belle Arti
and the Galleria d’arte moderna in Naples.
actual size detail
This skillfully and highly detailed oil by Filippo
Palizzi is a splendid example of the artist’s
realist approach. It appears to be an early
example of a subject which he returned to
repeatedly in drawings and in an engraving 1 ;
a larger less hectic version of the scene, oil on
canvas, dating from 1856, is in the collection
of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome 2 . Here,
in the present panel, we see the galloping
horse, straining at the reins, the dust rising
from the wheels, the passengers clinging on to
any available post, a second driver brandishing
a whip. In the distance, the bay of Naples can
be glimpsed.
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