ESCUELA ITALIANA S. XIX

During the NINETEENTH century, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe, the painters turn their gaze to the past, rediscovering aesthetic, until then, relegated to oblivion and extracting models from different eras and sensibilities, with the aim of creating a new language based on the study of their predecessors. The painting that we present here is located fully in this context, and in it converge the influences of the baroque naturalist and mannerism rafaelesco. The composition is of a huge sobriety, presenting the figure of the bust, in the first term, strongly illuminated and silhouetted on a dark background and neutral that emphasizes his physicality. This way of conceiving the image is derived directly from the models of Caravaggio and his followers, as well as the female model, fixed gaze and deep, and expression is introspective and serious. However, in the face we appreciate the persistence of the model classicist roman; a solid figure, despite the fact that we see only a part of it, of contours well defined, and volumes of sculpture, dominated by a beauty regular and proportionate, markedly classical.