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 38
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Mauro Gandolfi Bologna 1764 - 1834
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Vincenzo Gemito Naples 1852 - 1929
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INDEX OF ARTISTs Baglione, Giovanni
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