Curly-haired Girl (1881)

Signed lower right: “F. P. Michetti”

Provenance: London, private collection

Exhibitions: National Exhibition of Fine Arts, Milan 1881 (?); XVIII International Biennial Art Exhibition, Venice 1932.

Bibliography: G. d’Annunzio, Francesco Paolo Michetti, “La Tribuna Illustrata”, IV, 1893, 5, s.p.; A. Ferraguti, Francesco Paolo Michetti, “Il Secolo XX”, X, 1911, 6, p. 483; P. Scarpa, La morte di F. P. Michetti, “Il Messaggero”, 6 March 1929; T. Sillani, Francesco Paolo Michetti, Milan-Rome, Treves – Treccani – Tumminelli, 1932, panel XLVII (Il fanciullo ricciuto. Studio per il Voto); XVIII Esposizione biennale internazionale d’arte. Catalogo, exhibition catalogue, Venice, Ferrari, 1932, no. 26; E. Zanzi, F. P.Michetti il grande pittore abruzzese, “Gazzetta del Popolo”, 29 July 1938; F. Benzi, G. Berardi, T. Sacchi Lodispoto, S. Spinazzè, Francesco Paolo Michetti. Catalogo generale Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana Editoriale p. 205 no. 303.

A protagonist of international painting in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and a source of inspiration for generations of artists, Francesco Paolo Michetti (Tocco da Casauria 1851 – Francavilla al Mare 1929) took his first steps in Naples, where he was a pupil of Domenico Morelli, and then established himself in Paris in the 1870s and became the official painter of the kingdom of Italy in the following decade. Having achieved success at the Naples National Exhibition in 1877 with La processione del Corpus Domini a Chieti (private collection), an explosive work that went beyond the confines of the frame, dragging the public into a festive and unexpected scenario. At the Milan National Exhibition in 1881, under the generic title of Studi a tempera, he presented works depicting landscapes, scenes of rural life, studies of flowers and twelve heads from real life. It was a universe of characters, which formed the basis of research that was increasingly directed towards the face. “By analysing human physiognomy, the master looked for, found and knew how to extract the type […]. Some of those heads are prodigies of psychological penetration and workmanship”[1], d’Annunzio commented in a fundamental essay on the artist in 1896. Among these twelve works, there was probably the painting in question, in which a young female model that was also used in subsequent years appeared for the first time. The curly-haired girl with big blue eyes also impersonated the shepherdess leading the sheep to pasture in one of the works that appeared in the Milanese exhibition room carefully described by Luigi Chirtani: eleven paintings of rural life followed the stages of life starting from a boy herding sheep (fig. 1; St. Gallen, Kunstmuseum) to a young woman lying on the grass surrounded by daisies (private collection, Francesco Paolo Michetti. General catalogue, p. 184 no. 222).[2] Further confirmation of this hypothesis is provided by the 1881 dating written by Michetti on a postcard reproducing this mixed technique (fig. 2). If some of the heads created by Michetti during the ‘80s express a photographic spontaneity and look, others appear statuesque, immobile like ancient busts, underlining the classic beauty of the people in Abruzzo. In Fanciulla riccioluta, the whiteness of the complexion is counterpointed by the red of the lips, the blonde of the hair and the intense blue of the eyes, which allow us to identify the model as the young woman also portrayed in 1883 (fig.3; Francesco Paolo Michetti. General catalogue, p. 241 no. 472) and in 1887 (fig. 4; Francesco Paolo Michetti. General catalogue, p. 216 no. 354). Studies, drawings, faces and images collected in the early ‘80s constitute the substratum of Il Voto, a choral masterpiece presented at the 1883 International Exhibition in Rome and immediately purchased by the National Gallery of Modern Art. In the crowd gathered in the church of St. Panteleimon in Miglianico is a little blonde girl kneeling behind the crucifer on the far left of the canvas (fig. 5), whose pose and features resemble the head created a couple of years earlier, which cannot be considered a study for Il Voto, as indicated in the artist’s monograph compiled by Tommaso Sillani, but rather an autonomous work by Michetti according to the modus operandi of his circular thinking through which the protagonists of the Abruzzo epic were inserted both within complex compositions and portrayed individually in a continuous, silent exchange between the collective and the individual. The fascination exercised by this image on Michetti is also demonstrated by a pencil on paper version preserved in a private collection (fig. 6; Francesco Paolo Michetti. General catalogue, p. 205 no. 304). Published by Sillani as Il fanciullo ricciuto, the work, reproduced for the first time in 1893 in a fundamental article dedicated to Michetti by Gabriele d’Annunzio in the columns of “La Tribuna Illustrata” in 1932, was owned by Ercole Micozzi, an interesting exponent of the Roman bourgeoisie in the early twentieth century, director of the Ministry of Postal and Telegraph Communication, as well as councilor of the municipal council and chairman of S.S. Lazio. The Micozzi collection included numerous works by Michetti, sold in part in 1922 to the National Gallery of Modern Art, with some being displayed at the Mostra retrospettiva di F.P. Michet exhibition organised during the 1932 Venice Biennale.

Francesco Paolo Michetti was born in Tocco Casauria on 2 October 1851, completed his initial artistic studies in Chieti and then moved, thanks to a grant given to him by the city in Abruzzo, to Naples in 1868 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. In the Neapolitan city, he was attracted above all by the realism of Domenico Morelli, the Palizzi and the painters of the Resina school. Despite his occasional attendance of academic courses, in 1869 he twice won the encouragement award for the best students. In 1871, he became involved, probably through Giuseppe De Nittis, with the merchant Friederich Reitlinger, for whom he painted works for the international market. This year also saw his works being exhibited at the Nineteenth Annual Winter Exhibition of the French Gallery in London, while the following year he presented Ritorno dall’orto and Sonno dell’innocenza, purchased by the influential dealer Adolphe Goupil in order to reproduce them in print, at the Parisian Salon. An artist on the rise, he attracted the attention of critics and won one of the two awards for painting at the Naples National Exhibition of 1877 with a work entitled La processione del Corpus Domini. At the end of the decade, participation in important exhibitions became increasingly intense. In 1882, he illustrated Canto Novo by Gabriele d’Annunzio, published by Angelo Sommaruga. The following year marked a turning point in the artist’s work. The monumental painting Il Voto, presented at the International Exhibition in Rome, struck the critics and the public for the realism with which the feast of St. Panteleimon in Miglianico was portrayed. The work, reviewed by d’Annunzio on the pages of “Fanfulla della Domenica”, became part of the collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art. In that same period, Michetti purchased the convent of Santa Maria Maggiore in Francavilla, where he repeatedly hosted his friends Costantino Barbella, d’Annunzio, Matilde Serao, Edoardo Scarfoglio and Francesco Paolo Tosti. The new house was a centre of attraction for artists such as Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Guido Boggiani and Basilio Cascella, who spent long periods there painting in each other’s company. There was a particularly close relationship with d’Annunzio, who wrote Il piacere (1883-84), L’innocente (1890-92) and part of Trionfo della morte (1889-94) in Francavilla. Accompanied by d’Annunzio, Barbella and the local folklore scholar Antonio De Nino, the artist visited the most remote places in Abruzzo to create photographic features on the dates of traditional festivities, collecting the rich iconographic material later used in the monumental canvases Le serpi and Gli storpi (both in Francavilla a Mare, Museo Michetti) presented in 1900 at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. In 1895, the painting entitles La figlia di Jorio (Pescara, Palazzo della Provincia) won an award at the 1st Venice Biennale. In the last thirty years of his life, he worked in a cyclically on the themes of Abruzzo, capturing the ultimate essence of reality through a painting style consisting of increasingly abstract lines and marks. Appointed Senator of the Kingdom in 1909, the following year he agreed to send fifteen landscapes of Abruzzo to the Venice Biennale, displayed in a single room. It was his last public outing, followed by vain attempts to convince him to once again present his works to the public. In 1912, he nevertheless agreed to be part of the commission which authorised the National Gallery of Modern Art and, in 1921, of the commission which purchased that same institution. He passed away from pneumonia in the convent in Francavilla on 5 March 1929.

Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto

[1]          G. d’Annunzio, Nota su F. P. Michetti, “Il Convito”, 1896, 8, pp. 583-592, p. 589.

[2]          L. Chirtani, Paolo Michetti all’Esposizione Nazionale, “L’Illustrazione Italiana”, VIII, 1881, 37, p. 174.