Winter 2023

Below, left: Silvestro Lega’s
Maternity (1881-82)
Below, right: Luciano Ricchetti’s
Two Little Mothers (c. 1940)
maintain her previous success, Lednicka-Szczytt
committed suicide in 1947. Lednicka-Szczytt’s
authorship of The Black Angel – which for
decades was as overlooked as the artist herself
– was rediscovered in 2013 by scholar Gioia Mori,
after being incorrectly attributed to De Lempicka
in the 1990s.
Mothers and matrons
The show’s more traditional section ‘Domestic
Dimensions’ starts with a lovely 1881 work called
Maternity. Salvatore Lega portrays his sister-inlaw
and nephew, drawing on one of Western Art’s
most iconic themes: mother and child. Although
the lady pictured has all the traditional sweetness
of a Madonna, the discreet movement of her
hand, as she re-fastens her collar post breastfeeding,
brings the work into the modern realm
of discrete realism.
Le due mammine, authored by Luciano
Ricchetti in 1940, is interesting from a historical
perspective. Its protagonist looks like an ancient
Roman matrona in modern garb, holding a wellfed
infant on her lap. This matron and child
share the scene with a much younger little
mamma – as the painting’s title suggests – who
is sitting in the lower left corner, caring for her
baby doll. Ricchetti’s painting is best read in
the context of the Battle for Births [1925-1938],
a propaganda-based operation and economic
incentives campaign spearheaded by Mussolini,
which strove to increase Italy’s population
from 40 million, in 1927 to 60 million by 1950.
A nation, to be strong, needed many men; and
women could participate in Italy’s new-fangled
imperial expansionism by bringing many souls
into the world.
28 Restoration Conversations • Winter 2023