XV - Works On Paper - Marty de Cambiaire (English)

Mauro Gandolfi
Bologna 1764 – 1834
24
Head of a Young Woman Wearing a turban
Graphite and watercolour, oval
110 x 95 mm (4 5 /16 x 3 11 /16 in.)
The elder son of a widely recognized and
admired painter Gaetano Gandolfi, from whom
he received his first training, Mauro Gandolfi was
a draughtsman and engraver more than a painter.
He led an adventurous life which he narrated in
his Memoirs written in 1833 1 . Mauro Gandolfi had
a passionate and lively temperament, and he left
Bologna for France at the age of 18 in order to enlist
in the army. He stayed there for five years travelling
between Strasbourg, Arras, Lyon and Paris. Upon
his return to Bologna, he resumed painting in his
father’s studio and was admitted to the Accademia
Clementina, where he was appointed professor of
figure drawing and worked from 1794 to 1797. In
his Memoirs, Mauro states that, having devoted
himself, during his French years, to portrait painting,
which he executed “a lapis di piombo con tocchi di
carminio e fulgine” he decided in his father’s studio
to “seriously dedicate himself to oil, limewash and
fresco painting”. During this period of collaboration
with his father, he recorded that he produced “5
altarpieces, 6 ceiling decorations, 28 small sacred
and secular oil paintings, 20 ink drawings, 40
capricci in ink for the decoration of snuffboxes,
8-10 miniatures and 100 nude studies” 2 . He also
worked successfully on the decoration of carriages,
from drawing bronze ornaments and gilded wood to
painting scenes on the doors 3 .
The French occupation in June 1796 and the
suppression of religious corporations were hardly
favourable to the artistic production of most artists.
However, Mauro Gandolfi, very much involved in
the political life and particularly in the establishment
of the Italian republic, received a commission for a
Trionfo della Repubblica Cispadana for the audience
hall ceiling in the Palazzo Pubblico in Bologna 4 .
To make up for the lack of artistic activity and thus
of income, he opened a chalcography workshop;
he saw such good prospects in this activity that
he went to Paris to perfect his printmaking. There
he participated in Robillard-Péronville’s Musée
Français, recueil complet des tableaux, statues et
bas-reliefs qui composent la collection nationale,
published in Paris in 1803. In 1816, after the death of
his son and the marriage of his daughter, he decided
to leave for America. He spent four months there
and made an entertaining account of the journey,
partially published in 1842 5 . Upon his return, he
went to Florence to work with Luigi Bardi, then
settled in Milan for five years, and finally returned to
Bologna for good. Printmaking remained his main
activity until the end of his career.
An excellent draftsman endowed with great finesse
and elegance, Mauro Gandolfi continued the graphic
tradition mastered in the paternal studio, while
enriching it with the neo-classical tendency of his
time and his engraving technique. Paradoxically, his
drawings are quite rare on the market. His portraits,
such as the present one that Donatella Biagi is going
to publish in Mauro Gandolfi’s catalogue raisonné,
are always meticulously and finely executed.
Circular and of small size, the present portrait
almost belongs to the art of miniature that the artist
certainly mastered, although few traces of it remain.
It is perhaps one of the “ritrattini” mentioned in the
inventory of his succession made in 1833, probably
intended for snuffboxes. By its technique it is
reminiscent of the touching portrait of his father in
the Regia Pinacoteca, Bologna (Inv. 3832, 160 mm).
The young woman in the present portrait reappears,
between two other female figures and with some
subtle differences of expression in another Mauro’s
drawing 6 , which was also copied, albeit with less
finesse, by his daughter Clementina 7 . Less known
than his father and his uncle Ubaldo, Mauro deserves
further study. Prolific and impetuous, his artistic
skill did not only develop in graphic arts, but also in
music and writing. His interest in politics, his liking
for travelling and his somewhat chaotic personal
life, all contribute to his appealing personality.
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