Anna La Selva

private collection

Signed lower right: “F. P. Michetti”

Bibliography: F. Benzi, G. Berardi, T. Sacchi Lodispoto, S. Spinazzè , Francesco Paolo Michetti. General Catalogue. Volume 2, Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana Editoriale, 2024, p. 138 n. 77.

The portrait of a peasant woman, recently found and unpublished until the recent publication of the second volume of the General catalogue of Francesco Paolo Michetti, is a variant of the painting published as Anna La Selva for the first time in 1910 by Ettore Janni ( E. Janni, F.P. Michetti, in “La Lettura”, X, 1910, 11, pp. 961-973, p. 697) and Ugo Ojetti (U. Ojetti, Artsti contemporanei. F.P. Michetti, in “Emporium”, XXXII, 1910, 192, pp. 403-428, p. 415) and again in 1914 by Tommaso Sillani (T. Sillani, Artisti contemporanei: Francesco Paolo Michetti, in “Nuova Antologia”, CLXIX, 1914, pp. 56-72, p. 70). In 1881 Michetti, after achieving success with La processione del Corpus Domini in Chieti (private collection), presented a series of twelve heads of various ages at the Turin Exhibition, which formed the basis of the great Abruzzese cyclical poem of which his works are the various “canti”. If with Corpus Domini, Sillani noted, the artist “had given his people exterior poetry”, two years later with Il Voto (Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna) “tragedy would appear” (T. Sillani, Artsti contemporanei… , cit., p. 65). Within a few years, Michetti’s gaze became sharper and more penetrating, also thanks to the tool of the portrait. Refining that research on the face that he had been carrying out since the beginning, as d’Annunzio noted in a fundamental essay in 1896, through “the analysis of human physiognomy, the master sought, found, knew how to extract the type” (G. d’Annunzio, Nota su F. P. Michet, “Il Convito”, 1896, 8, pp. 583-592, p. 589).

A new series of faces, this time all female, were produced between 1887 and 1888 in black and white or in almost monochrome compositions orchestrated around a single dominant colour in a continuous and close dialogue with the photographer. Included in this peculiar research are a series of works in which the artist revisits themes and subjects already treated by using a reduced chromatic range, often dominated by the use of yellow and gold as in the case of this portrait of Anna La Selva, but also a superb female bust that constitutes a variation on the theme of the Daughter of Jorio. In both works, the composition is closed at the bottom by the bodice on which the bust stands supporting a statuesque head to emphasise the innate and ancestral beauty of the Abruzzese people. Anna La Selva’s rosy-skinned face, set against a yellow background, is lit up by reflections of golden-brown hair, the golden pearls of the necklace and the bodice illuminated by threads that are also golden. The bodice, which can barely be glimpsed at the bottom to mark a boundary between the interior and exterior of the work, is added in this second version and constitutes an important element of spatial caesura inspired by the pictorial tradition of the Renaissance according to that substratum of modernity and tradition proper to Michelotti’s language.

Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto