Callisto Fine Arts

CALLISTO FINE ARTS 17 Georgian House 10 Bury Street London SW1Y 6AA +44 (0)207 8397037 [email protected] www.callistoart.com Antonio Mancini (Rome, 1852-1930) Portrait of woman Pastel on paper applied on canvas, 75 x 60 cm Signed on the top left corner: A Mancini Exhibitions: Galleria Milano, Arte Moderna, Milano 1932, n. 4395 (label on the back) The work is archived in the Archive and Catalogue of Paintings by Antonio Mancini, with n. 56(1)0220 AV Our elegant Portrait of a Lady is one of the marvellous large pastels applied on canvas made by Antonio Mancini at the apex of his career as portraitist. The technique closely resembles that of his well-known oil paintings, revealing the mellowness of the medium chosen by the artist and a sapient use of colours – in our Portrait, an ochre-black palette, lightened up by the luminous whites and the few colourful details in the woman’s dress and make-up. White is also used by Mancini to draw the essential elements of the room CALLISTO FINE ARTS 17 Georgian House 10 Bury Street London SW1Y 6AA +44 (0)207 8397037 [email protected] www.callistoart.com in which the lady, wearing festive clothes in the Belle Époque fashion, is sitting gazing at the painter. The beholder perceives the portrait as particularly ephemeral because of the pastel technique which is characterised by swift and unruly touches. However, Mancini manages to imprison the essence of his model. Her talking eyes, half-closed lips and her fiddling with her fur, indeed, reveal an intimacy which was probably evident to those who knew the beautiful woman, and which still creates a strong bond with those admiring her nowadays. One of the most important and experimental painters of the Italian nineteenth century, Antonio Mancini was born in Rome in 1852. At a very young age, he moved to Naples with his family, where he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti trained by Domenico Morelli and where he shared a studio with Vincenzo Gemito, who was one of his closest friends. During his apprenticeship, Mancini accurately studied the works of seventeenth-century Neapolitan and Flemish artists, especially for their vivid subjects and their luminist solutions. He embraced the Verismo movement that was establishing itself in the last decades of the nineteenth century, but he always maintained a peculiar autonomy in his choices of humble subjects (i.e. scenes of Neapolitan life inhabited by ‘scugnizzi’) and in his dark palette, which made him unpopular between Italian patrons and critics. On the contrary, he was immediately appreciated by foreign collectors who were entrusted by Mancini, being very shy and experiencing periods of mental instability, with the management of his production. Among his most important patrons, there were the Belgian musician Count Albert Cahen d’Anvers, the well-known French dealer Alphonse Goupil and the Dutch painter Hendrik Willem Mesdag, who bought more than one hundred paintings from Mancini and dedicated an entire room to the Italian artist in his museum at The Hague. In the 1870s, thanks to these important contacts, Mancini travelled a lot around Europe, visiting Venice, where he studied the colourism of Venetian art, and Paris, where he met De Nittis, Boldini, Meissonier and Gérôme. Most importantly, Mancini was in contact with Mariano Fortuny before the Spanish painter’s death in 1874 and was crucially influenced by him especially in the brightening of his palette, which acquired a marvellous luminosity. Mancini moved to Rome in 1883, where he worked predominantly for Marquis Giorgio Capranica del Grillo and for the American family resident in Venice, the Curtis, becoming famous as portrait painter. The Curtis family introduced Mancini to the American painter John Singer Sargent, who stated, talking about Mancini, ‘I’ve met in Italy the most important living painter’. Thanks to Sargent, Mancini started working for the English market as portraitist for important families and visited London multiple times (e.g. Portrait of Mary Hunter, Portrait of Mathilde Hirsh, Portrait of Mrs. Shine, Portrait of Lady Gregory – now in private and public collections). Famous and highly appreciated in the international market, Mancini worked mostly as portrait painter for the German Baron Otto Messinger (1900-1911) and for the Italian French entrepreneur Fernand Du Chène De Vère (1911-1918). In 1920, the Venice Biennale dedicated a monograph exhibition to Mancini, crowning the results of his long career. Antonio Mancini died in Rome in 1930. In 2019, Cinzia Virno published a catalogue raisonnée of Mancini’s oil paintings. Virno is now working on the painter’s catalogue of drawings and pastels, which will include our splendid Portrait of a Woman. .

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