139 - Unknown Artist (20th century)

Unknown Artist (20th century) Country Life, 1935 Oil on panel 48.2 x 66.3 cm Signature: "MgRonchi" on the front Date: "35 XIII" on the front Distinguishing features: label from the Cassa di Risparmio di Fabriano e Cupramontana with inventory references; similar anonymous label Provenance: Cassa di Risparmio di Fabriano e Cupramontana; Veneto Banca SpA in LCA Condition. Support: 85% Condition. Surface: 75% (impact damage, abrasions, and scratches; yellowed varnish) 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 Luigi Serena, the painter of choice for the Treviso bourgeoisie at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, had no direct students, but he was admired by younger artists for his bohemian and anti-bourgeois spirit—and as a moral guide—becoming a cornerstone of the artistic landscape of the Marca. It was the avant-garde artists, led by Arturo Martini, who organized Serena’s posthumous exhibition shortly after his death in 1911. Although he worked primarily in the province, the artist successfully participated in the most important exhibitions of the time: in Venice (1881), Milan (1883), Turin (1884), Florence (1886), Paris (1888), and Munich (1890). She was among those invited to the 1897 Venice Biennale (Eugenio Manzato, “Treviso,” in *La Pittura in Italia. L’Ottocento*, Milan, 1990, p. 213). “Mercato in sosta” is part of Serena’s mature body of work, characterized by a naturalistic style and set in fairs, markets, and streets of the Treviso area, in which the artist’s confident mastery of technique allows him to freely express his feelings; yet at the same time, a certain stiffness is perceptible, perhaps due to the arthritis that afflicted the artist in 1888. As Ottorino Stefani notes in his 2006 monograph, “in ‘Mercato in sosta’ (a work painted between 1887 and 1889) Serena manages to free himself from certain academic conventions (posed figures) to bring to life a scene that possesses its own narrative and atmospheric logic, dictated by an intelligent ‘direct capture’ of reality. A reality firmly grounded in a “ritual” marked by precise and identical events. The horses’ rest allows for a calm reflection on the theme of the animals’ repose, captured in a pose of great “conversational” naturalness, with the figure approaching the cart while the wheels serve as an ideal structure that sets the compositional rhythm of the work: especially in the echo reinforced by the canopies of the large trees, a clear expression of the artist’s emotional impulses, capable of exalting his own image of the world in a positive and solemn manner” (“Luigi Serena. 1855–1911,” Ponzano Veneto, 2006, pp. 61–62: due to a layout error in the publication, the locations of the work in Plate 45 (Veneto Banca) and Plate 46 (Treviso Civic Museums) have been swapped). Stefani notes in the certification note that “the painting stands out for its internal balance between painterly texture and luminous atmospheric transparency, which envelops the depicted world with truth and with moving poetry of an anecdotal-folk character.”