19th century
Female portraits
(2) Oil on oval panel, 37 x 28.5 cm
Frame, 40.5 x 31 cm
This pair of portraits depicts two women directly facing the viewer. The alluring and decisive gaze is reinforced by the brushstroke used, sharp and involved, of vibrant intensity. The artist decided to use a dark red background for one, and a golden one for the other. A heavy chiaroscuro exacerbates the portraits with dramatic intensity, placing them in the wake of 19th-century veristic production. The artist's desire to represent the women with vivid realism stands out in the laughing dimples of one and the intense gaze of the other.
The practice of portraiture underwent a decisive turning point in the second half of the 19th century, with the affirmation of the bourgeois class. Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, Adriano Cecioni, and others, as Diego Morbelli later wrote, enriched the centuries-old tradition of the formal bourgeois portrait with a renewed psychological introspection in the aesthetic and perceptive rendering of the people portrayed. The renewed interest in daily life, recalling the characteristic folkloric tradition, became widespread both through the private study of artists and through a renewed collecting research driven by the brightest and most innovative minds of the time. Secondary portrait painters such as Emilio Longoni, active at the turn of the following century, collected the sparkling legacy of these light years, increasing its committed meaning towards a more decisive dramatic introspection.
