Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

considering the achievements of his pupils and of his son Mauro,
also a talented painter who felt the need to distance himself from his
formidable father. Gaetano Gandolfi soon became famous in Italy and
later just as celebrated in England, Russia and the United States; but he
always refrained from adopting the easy solution of having assistants
help him in the execution of the enormous number of paintings he
was asked to make for churches, palaces, private collections and
connoisseurs. To the last, he preserved the purity of his passion for
art, in spite of the fact that the events of his time caused him many
difficulties and he never swerved from his course as a free man, averse
to any sort of servility to wealth or power.
All this is corroborated by the character study presented here: it is an
exemplary proof of Gandolfi’s attention to veracity. In realising other
similar ‘portraits’ of unknown individuals, rich in psychological and
physiognomic observation, and different from the work of his brother
Ubaldo, who himself, as early as 1935, in the words of Roberto Longhi 2 ,
had been identified by the critics as one of the most compelling artists
of his time, Gaetano created works of an astounding quality. To name
a few: the Bust of a Youth, maybe an errand boy, from 1767, presented
at the recent exhibition of Gandolfi’s portraits held by the Fondazione
Franco Maria Ricci 3 ; the Head of a Man in Profile, which could be a
portrayal of a pensive, abstracted, mournful Christ, exhibited on the
same occasion 4 ; the double portrait, presumably of Gaetano’s own
children, titled Bust of a Young Woman with Coral Necklace and a
Little Boy 5 (fig.1), from the late 1770s; and the study for the faces
of two young mothers 6 (fig.2) for the magnificent painting of 1788,
done for the Duomo of Pisa, The Blessed Vernagalli Founding the
Hospital for Orphans, a fascinating work whose masterly technique
and composition show that it is the fruit of cultivated and mature
experience.
This lovely canvas belongs to the particular period of the later 1780s. It
has been painted with great directness, in the rendering of the sleeve,
made from a rich linen, of the long hair which escapes from its braids,
of the soft skin of the shoulder which catches the light and the bare
breast, a daring feature unusual in this painter’s work. The painting
recalls another Magdalen figure, the beautiful Magdalen of the
Crucifixion of the Cappuccini 7 , which in her attitude and in the falling
neckline of her dress, is imbued with a similar languid sweetness.
The young woman’s posture in the present painting and her
disconsolate expression, indeed seem to suggest that this work was
conceived as a depiction of the Saint in a state of repentance, in
keeping with her hagiography: a poor prostitute who has understood
the error of her ways and meditates upon her sins. The particular
balance of the colours, expressed in a narrow range of hues which
are nevertheless admirably juxtaposed, convey the woman’s yearning
mood; this palette is lit up only by slight rosy touches in her cheek,
ear and fingers, and the bright red of her lips, leading us to realise
that this is a work from the period during which Gandolfi showed, in
his paintings, that he was aware of the developments taking place in
European art: he accepted the challenge of this evolution, remaining
fully consistent with the demands of his own culture, and revealing, as
always, his extraordinary quality as a painter.
Translated from a text by Donatella Biagi Maino
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