30 - Enrico Benetta (1977)

Enrico Benetta (1977) Three Trees Acrylic, enamel, and sand on paper mounted on canvas 150 x 150 cm Signature: “Enrico Benetta,” “EBenetta,” “EB” on the reverse Other inscriptions: “Certified as authentic,” “Three Trees… Like islands in a magical sky… Sap is poetry… Music is dance… And love! And hearts are born…” Provenance: Veneto Banca SpA in LCA Certificates: photocertificate signed by the artist and stamped by the Martinazzo Art Gallery, Montebelluna (undated) 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 Trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (1859–1865), Noè Bordignon later traveled to Rome on a scholarship, where he became acquainted with the style of purist painting. Upon his return to Veneto in 1869, he lived and worked between Castelfranco and Venice, creating, from the start of the new decade, numerous fresco cycles in churches throughout the hinterland, while in his easel paintings he explored genre themes inspired by local folklore, which, between the late 1870s and the turn of the century, were well-received at major Italian and international exhibitions. “Two Compatriots of Canova” belongs to this prolific period of the artist’s career; it can be dated to 1882 based on its exhibition that same year at the Erste Internationale Kunstausstellung in Vienna, re-exhibited in 1883 first at the Exhibition of Fine Arts in Rome and then in Milan at the Brera Academy, and subsequently in 1884 at the Promotrice in Turin, where it was purchased by an English buyer. The work depicts a conversation between two Venetian peasants—Canova’s two compatriots, from whom the title is derived — and three young women against the backdrop of the monument to Canova in the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, designed by Canova as a cenotaph for Titian but completed posthumously by his students to honor his memory and house his heart. The compositional choice is remarkable, with the luminous and imposing mass of Canova’s monument magnifying and ennobling a moment of daily life, captured with that snapshot-like freshness typical of the artist. Contributing to the immediacy of the scene is the meticulous drawing, rooted in the Purist tradition, which renders a hyperrealistic depiction that does not even spare the chipped edges of the steps in the foreground and distinguishes his work from the looser, more rapid style of other leading figures in Venetian genre painting, such as Giacomo Favretto and Luigi Nono. The depiction of the clothing is also meticulous—an aspect to which Bordignon, the son of a tailor and a seamstress, has always attached great importance —with the clear, vivid colors of the three girls standing out against the glow of the background, while in the foreground a more modestly dressed girl with a small child lying beside her stares directly at the viewer, thus contributing to the image’s authenticity. Sabrina Spinazzè