Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

Gaetano Gandolfi
Bologna 1734 - 1802
9
A Young Woman in Profile, her Hair Braided, one Hand held to her Forehead (St. Mary Magdalene)
Oil on canvas.
48 x 37.5 cm (18 ½ x 14 ½ in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, France .
Of superb quality, this intense character study belongs
with the small but precious group of works in this
vein, which form a fascinating aspect of the great art of
Gaetano Gandolfi, the artist who, perhaps better than
any other in Italy, represents the style and eloquence
of the pictorial culture during the closing years of the
ancien régime.
Gandolfi’s formation took place in Bologna during the
1760s, the lively and stimulating years of the papacy
of the Bolognese Pope Benedict XIV. As a result of the
latter’s reformatory work, this period saw the emergence
of a taste and culture refashioned along classical lines,
in contrast to the rococo art of the previous decades.
Benedict XIV endowed the Academy of Fine Arts
of his birthplace, the Accademia Clementina, with
the instruments that made it possible to highlight the
value of a pictorial art based on the inheritance of the
previous centuries, the glorious school of the Carracci,
and of the study of ancient Greek and Roman statuary.
Gandolfi, with his extraordinary insight and outstanding
talent, was able to make use of all the stimuli provided
by the institution, not least the important opportunities
offered by contact with the Academicians of the other
Bolognese centre of learning, the prestigious Istituto
delle Scienze. Gandolfi’s well-documented stay in
Venice in 1760, backed by a generous patron, allowed
him to broaden his culture by becoming acquainted
not only with the great art of the painters of the Veneto:
Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese and above all Tiepolo, but
also with one of the most cosmopolitan centres for the
artistic developments of the period 1 .
Thanks to his quick-wittedness and unquenchable thirst
for knowledge, which were accompanied, throughout
his life, by a sort of modesty that never allowed him to
give up his desire to learn and improve, he acquired
a style that was unique and almost unrivalled, even
1. Gaetano Gandolfi, Portrait of the artist’s children,
Private collection.
2. Gaetano Gandolfi, Two young women (detail), Private
collection.
36