Egisto Sarri

Egisto Sarri (Figline Valdarno 1837 – Florence 1901), “First Steps”, 1884. Oil on canvas, cm. 60 x 73 Signed "E. Sarri / Florence 1884" lower right The canvas depicts an interior scene from the cycle Daily Life in Pompeii. The subject that gives the work its title, “First Steps”, offers us an intimate and serene vision of what motherhood could have been for a Roman matron, obviously reimagined by the artist. Inside the airy spaces of the domus depicted here, the walls frescoed with grotesques are tinged with dark, muted colors, which contrast with the light grayness of the marble floors. The rather bare room is decorated with a few objects: a small black and gold stool in the lower right, near the signature; on the opposite side, a light blue amphora decorated with blue figures, with a decidedly anachronistic appearance; finally, a wooden basket full of fruit, including apples and perhaps peaches. It is precisely an apple that attracts the infant on the right, portrayed standing and slightly wavering, as he walks towards the female figure holding the fruit, whom we identify as his mother. Dressed in a white tunic and a pink palla, she is sitting on a bright red cushion, decorated with golden embroidery; this last detail, together with the precious bracelet that adorns the woman's wrist, clarifies her social rank. The little child waves his chubby hands upwards with the intent of grabbing the fruit, and in the meantime takes timid and uncertain steps; the fingers of the very young handmaiden, recognizable by her "slave" sandals, hold the child by a piece of cloth. Next to the mother and with an almost resolute air, a slightly older child watches the scene. The two children with very blond curls frequently reappear in other works by the artist, such as in The Playtime and in Woman with Two Children, both part of the same pictorial cycle. BIOGRAPHY Luigi Egisto Sarri was born in 1837 in Figline Valdarno, in the province of Florence. From a poor family, Sarri attended one of the schools dedicated to the less well-off of the pedagogue Lambruschini; in the meantime, he helps his father Raimondo, a painter, in his work. At just eleven years old, he showed a marked aptitude for painting and drawing and, encouraged by his parents, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 1850. Admitted to the School of Drawing and Figures thanks to his sheet depicting the Ecce Homo by Guercino, he settled permanently in Florence to continue his studies, supported financially by the community of Figline and by the Misericordia brotherhood. In 1854 he enrolled in the painting school of the romantic artist Giuseppe Bezzuoli (1784-1855), and then, after his death, passed under the guidance of the Italian-Swiss painter Antonio Ciseri (1821-1891). Despite the prizes and commendations from the teachers, Sarri's economic situation continued to be precarious, forcing the young artist to work on poorly paid commissions. In 1857 he painted Lorenzo de' Medici Escaping the Dagger of the Conspirators in the Sacristy of the Florence Cathedral for an Academy competition, with which he unfortunately did not rank among the top positions, as his master Ciresi notes with regret in his Diary. At the solemn exhibition of the Promoting Society of Fine Arts of 1861, Sarri exhibited a canvas executed a few years earlier, depicting Lorenzo de' Medici, later purchased by a local gentleman. During his youth, the artist reconciled Ciresi's teachings with the realistic but less academic approach of the Neapolitan School, following in the footsteps of Domenico Morelli. In 1863 King Vittorio Emanuele II commissioned him the painting Corradino of Swabia Listening to the Death Sentence, on which he experimented a lot with light and color without obtaining the desired results, to the point of leaving it unfinished. In the same year he began the prolific activity of portrait painter, sometimes making use of photography, as in the Portrait of Gioacchino Rossini of 1866, in the portrait of Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoy of around 1870, now in the Palatine Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, and Giuseppe Verdi, the latter made from photographs by the Alinari brothers. In 1865 he executed the frescoes on the main floor of the Crispi house in Florence; however, just two years later he withdrew more and more into his studio, excluding himself from the more worldly Florentine artistic panorama. Following the French and English market, Sarri began, from 1875, a fruitful series of paintings depicting Pompeian scenes with a domestic theme, which continued until at least 1887 and which earned him a decent economic success. Towards the end of the Seventies, critics rediscovered an interest in historical subject painting, as demonstrated by the National Exhibition of Turin in 1880; for the occasion he created the canvas Jacopo Guicciardini Reproaching Clement VII for the Siege of Florence, which however was not accepted at the Exhibition. From the same period is Alessandro de' Medici Kidnapping a Nun, now kept in the praetorian palace of the municipality of Figline Valdarno. In addition to illustrious portraits, the painter was commissioned to create curtains and frescoes for some theaters in the Florentine province, as well as a series of religious canvases for monasteries and minor churches. In 1900 he participated in the competition promoted by Vittorio Alinari with the painting Apotheosis of the Madonna, now in a private collection, and in 1901 he finished his Self-Portrait, now at the Uffizi. He passed away in November of the same year; his son Corrado (1866-1944) became a painter in his own right and especially an illustrator of books for children and youngsters.