Self-Portrait of Insanity (1881-1882)

Exhibitions: Galleria Guglielmi, Turin, 1927.

Bibliography: C. Virno, Antonio Mancini. Catalogo ragionato dell’opera. La pittura a olio (Catalogue raisonné of the work. Oil painting), Rome, De Luca Editori d’Arte, 2019, no. 276; previous biography.

Provenance: private collection

For most of his life, Antonio Mancini, a brilliant, bright and tormented painter, devoted himself to the portrait and self-portrait genre, manifesting a strong interest in the introspective and psychological investigation of the human figure. After his stay in Paris in 1878, in which the artist lives with Vincenzo Gemito, he returns to Naples due to some disagreements with his friend and the surfacing of his first mental health problems. The so-called cycle of portraits of insanity begins precisely in this delicate phase, lasting about two years: from the moment he is admitted to the Ospedale degli Incurabili (Hospital for the Incurables) – a psychiatrist facility located in Naples – in October 1881, until he is discharged in February 1882 and moves to Rome the following year. “Almost as if wanting to capture the shadow of his own insanity”[1], the painter, in this specific Self-portrait of insanity completed between 1881 and 1882, applies a near-monochrome, condensed, broad and expressive brushstroke, which results in a deliberate unfinished effect, leaving space to the chromatic value of the cardboard that emerges from the background and that makes up the space of the bust, of which we notice the white shirt and tie.

As in the other self-portraits belonging to the same theme, painted in 1882, Mancini concentrates all his attention on the frontal position and on the intense, hallucinated gaze that characterises his face during those years of hospitalisation. In this intense period and situation, he never stops painting and, on the contrary, perhaps the production of self-portraits with a strong cathartic implication alleviates his inner turmoil. The investigation of the external and introspective reality coincides with a confident expressive vigour, which in this specific portrait appears more pronounced as the face emerges in a disturbing way from the shadow with a distorted smile, as if it were dimly lit by a candle. The connection with Luminism’s sensibility and the dramatic results of Caravaggio’s and the Caravaggisti’s painting is clearly noticeable. Painters such as Jusepe de Ribera and Battistello Caracciolo, whom Mancini knows well since his youth in Naples: a strong chiaroscuro light effect, with a symbolic value, which draws attention to the glow of the face, while leaving the rest in the shadow. An aspect that, moreover, recalls Théodore Géricault’s series of portraits called Les Monomanes (psychiatric patients suffering from monomanias), from which emerge disorientation, participation, exhilaration, madness.

This phase of the painter’s life will also be analysed by Michele Sciuti, director of the hospital at the time, who in 1947, will publish a study on the numerous self-portraits made by Mancini in the mental institution, when “he comes and goes relentlessly in front of the canvas, nervously delivering three or four strokes of the brush and then moving back to assess the result”[2]. Many self-portraits painted in this period remain missing, and for this reason it is important to emphasize the importance of the painting under examination, not only because it enlightens us on an important phase of the author’s biographical and stylistic history, but above all because it represents a valuable fragment of this production that has survived to this day, in which “Mancini renounces any formal solicitation to bring the turmoil of the soul back to the canvas”[3].

Antonio Mancini, born in Rome in 1852, spends his childhood between Terni and Narni, with the Piarist fathers. He follows his family to Naples in 1865 and enrols at the Institute of Fine Arts very early, where he meets and becomes close to the sculptor of the same age Vincenzo Gemito (1852-1929). Pupils in the workshop of Stanislao Lista (1824-1908), they both begin drawing from life and copying from antiquity. At the same time, Mancini is encouraged by Domenico Morelli (1823-1901), head of the Academy’s School of Painting, to study the Neapolitan Masters of the seventeenth century and to move towards a style of painting with strongly anti-academic tones, as can be seen in Lo scugnizzo (The Clever Urchin).

He makes his debut with Mio padre (My father) at the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti (Society to Promote Fine Arts) in Naples in 1870, the year in which he settles, together with Gemito and other artists, in the former monastery of Sant’Andrea delle Dame. L’ultima medicina (The last medicine) and Per un fiore (For a flower) were exhibited at Società Promotrice in 1871. Noticed by the French Count and collector Albert Cahen, he begins to receive his first private commissions from what will become his personal patron. Street urchins, poverty-stricken girls, the last and dispossessed are the main subjects of Antonio Mancini’s first production which, far from any anecdotal intent, uses a palette focused mainly on dark tones of seventeenth-century matrix. Encouraged by Cahen, in the seventies, he exhibits at the Parisian Salons, where he achieves immediate success with the public and critics. He meets Mariano Fortuny in 1874, and although that is the year of his death, in his last days in Portici, together with Francesco Michetti (1851-1929) and Edoardo Dalbono (1841-1915) he succeeds in transmitting to Mancini some new chromatic and luminist values: Il saltimbanco dopo lo spettacolo (The Acrobat after the Performance) is the work that marks the author’s stylistic change. Between executive refinement, quick touch and impeccable quality, light emerges from obscurity and impresses the Parisian merchant Adolphe Goupil, who immediately offers the artist a contract.

In 1878 he lives for a period in Paris with his friend Gemito, but the first signs of mental illness soon bring him back to Naples. During this stage, he spends a lot of time in the psychiatric hospital in Naples, from 1881 onwards. Yet, he never stops painting: it is the time of the “portraits of insanity”, very intense and hallucinated self-representations. Having recovered, he takes part in the National Exhibition in Rome in 1883, and he relocates to the Italian capital, where he attracts the attention of Marquis Capranica del Grillo, his new patron and affectionate protector, who provides him with many contracts from both American and European collectors. In the second half of the 1980s he begins to use the so-called “graticola” technique, a grid pattern that allows him to keep his shapes stable, despite his characteristic flaky colouring. With the help of John Singer Sargent, he paints portraits for the English and French aristocracy. Very active in exhibitions, he participates in the National Exhibition of Venice in 1887 and then in the Biennale, where he is present from its first edition in 1895 to that of 1930.

There are also a succession of solo exhibitions and great achievements connected to his various stays in London in the early years of the twentieth century. He signs contracts with important dealers, including Messinger and Du Chêne de Vère for whom he produces large canvases. Despite being bound to the creation of neo-eighteenth century scenes, light genre subjects and female portraits, he displays a brilliant and concise technique, in which the painting often results textured. He achieves his definitive recognition at the 1920 Biennale, where he holds a solo exhibition, followed by one at Galleria Pesaro in Milan in 1925. He continues to paint and exhibit throughout the 1920s, while living in Rome, in his nephews’ house, where he dies in 1930.

Elena Lago

[1] A. Schettini, Prima mostra della raccolta Casella, Milan, Galleria dell’Esame, 1941

[2] M. Sciuti, la malattia mentale di Antonio Mancini (The mental illness of Antonio Mancini), Naples, 1947, p. 228.

[3] G. Guida, Profilo di Antonio Mancini. La Fiorentina Primaverile (Profile of Antonio Mancini. The Florentine Spring), Florence, 1922.