60 - Ernesto Marchesini (1944)

Ernesto Marchesini (1944) Transparency, 1983 Oil on canvas 70 x 50 cm Signature: “E Marchesini” on the front Date: “‘83” on the front Distinctive features: on the stretcher, two printed labels with information regarding the artist and his artistic career; label with the title, year, medium, and dimensions of the work Provenance: Veneto Banca SpA in LCA Condition. Support: 95% Condition. Surface: 95% For direct WhatsApp assistance before and during the live auction: +39 346 12 999 80 // Direct assistance via WhatsApp before and during the auction: +39 346 12 999 80 An artist of prodigious talent and a favorite student of Pompeo Marino Molmenti at the Academy of Venice, Ettore Tito (Castellammare di Stabia 1859 – Venice 1941) was one of the leading figures in international painting at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He received awards in Paris in 1887 for “Pescheria vecchia” and in Munich in 1891 for “Lavandaie nel Garda”; in the 1890s he worked as an illustrator for the renowned British magazine *The Graphic* and for the American publishing house Scribner’s, and frequented the most exclusive and cosmopolitan salons in Venice. In 1895, he was appointed to the organizing committee of the first Venice Biennale, where he would play a leading role for many years. At the turn of the century, he alternated between lively scenes of Venetian life and social themes. “The Wheel of Fortune,” exhibited at the 1895 Biennale, is one of the first canvases to reveal a new Symbolist trend within a Neo-Renaissance context, “whose influences lie between Sartorio and the Germans, particularly in a reinterpretation of motifs popularized by Böcklin” (Ferdinando Mazzocca, “The Fortune of Ettore Tito: Tiepolo’s Legacy in Cosmopolitan Venice,” in Alessandro Bettagno (ed.), “Ettore Tito 1859–1941,” exhibition catalog, Milan 1998, pp. 15–, p. 18), which reached its peak in “Amore e le Parche” (Palermo, Empedocle Restivo Civic Gallery of Modern Art), presented at the 1909 Biennale. It is a painting that enchants, as Ettore Cozzani wrote in 1928 in “L’Eroica,” a painting made of flickering light and shadow; “it was life lived with grace and joy: when he painted, he had to confess himself through things […]. His technique was rooted in sincerity and spontaneity. […] Certain figures are immersed in vast expanses dominated by color and the breath of air and water; certain scenes are so complex that the individual forms almost elude you, and at first glance you perceive nothing but the swarm of a crowd or the contortions of a struggle; certain lyrical groupings entangle human and animal bodies in such a flurry of lines that, at first glance, you appreciate nothing but the tumult” (Ettore Cozzani, “Ettore Tito,” in *L’Eroica*, IX, 1928, 118, 118, pp. 27–37, p. 31). Vitalism is indeed the central theme of the Symbolist works of the 1910s and, in particular, of a series of paintings with pastoral subjects populated by nymphs, satyrs, and centaurs. Nymphs are spied upon as they bathe in a tranquil body of water (“Il bagno,” 1909, Paris, Musée d’Orsay; “Ninfee,” 1912, Piacenza, Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art) or threatened by centaurs, as in the case of the work under consideration, “The Abduction” (1913), and the 1914 painting on a similar subject (private collection).