Self-portrait (recto); Female head (verso) (1888)

Signed lower right “Michetti self-portrait 88”

Provenance: Berlin, Ernst Seeger

Exhibition: Gemälde und Studien von Francesco Paolo Michetti, Berlin, Akademie der Künst, 21 December 1898 – 31 January 1899 (?); Gemälde und Studien von Francesco Paolo Michetti, Wien, Künstlerhaus, 12 February 1899 (?); Francesco Paolo Michetti, Rome, Palazzo di Venezia, 6 March – 1 May 1999, Francavilla al Mare, Museo Michetti, Palazzo San Domenico, 25 May – 30 August 1999.

Bibliography: Gemälde und Studien von Francesco Paolo Michetti, exhibition catalogue (Berlin, Akademie der Künst, 21 December 1898 – 31 January 1899), Berlin 1898, p. 3 no. 5; Gemälde und Studien von Francesco Paolo Michetti, exhibition catalogue (Wien, Künstlerhaus, 12 February 1899), Verlag der Genossenschaft Bildender Künstler, Wien 1899, p. 26 n. 223; Afran, Che ricorderanno nella sua terra il pittore della gente d’Abruzzo, in ‘La Tribuna’, 28 July 1938; Francesco Paolo Michetti. Dipinti, pastelli, disegni, exhibition catalogue (Rome, Palazzo di Venezia, 6 March – 1 May 1999; Francavilla al Mare, Museo Michetti, Palazzo San Domenico, 25 May – 30 August 1999), Electa, Naples 1999, p. 159 n. 29; V. Moretti (ed.), Francesco Paolo Michetti. Inediti, Noubs, Chieti 2001, p. 50; F. Di Tizio, Francesco Paolo Michetti nella vita e nell’arte, Ianeri, Pescara 2007, p. 185; F. Benzi, G. Berardi, T. Sacchi Lodispoto, S. Spinazzè, Francesco Paolo Michetti. Catalogo generale, Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo 2018, p. 224 n. 397; F. Benzi, G. Berardi, T. Sacchi Lodispoto, S. Spinazzè, Francesco Paolo Michetti. General catalogue. Volume 2, Silvana Editoriale, Cinisello Balsamo 2024, p. 139 n. 79.

The face is one of the main themes in the production of Francesco Paolo Michetti, carried on from the very beginning and with particular constancy from the 1880s onwards. In this context, a privileged area is occupied by a series of self-portraits with a strong introspective value, which follow the development of the painter’s personal and artistic story from the bold Young Self-portrait (fig. 1) of 1873 in which the dishevelled, nude artist, wearing a heavy gold necklace around his neck, shamelessly addresses the viewer. The vitality, flair and indefatigable joie de vivre shine through in Michetti’s self-portraits and also in the “cameos” included in the great choral works that had ensured his success. The artist is the man bursting firecrackers seated on the steps of the cathedral in La processione del Corpus Domini a Chieti (private collection), the work that had consecrated him at the 1877 Naples Exhibition. Dating from this same year are a series of self-portraits made at a key moment in his life, marking the transition from youth to adulthood. The young gypsy of 1873 became an elegant dandy with a monocle in the self-portrait preserved at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles (fig. 2). Hats, handkerchiefs and colourful fabrics characterise this series of works, such as the orange cloth thrown over the head in a sort of Egyptian nemes in the portrait of Amonasro (fig. 3), in which reality and theatre overlap. The artist’s feverish dynamism struck his contemporaries: “two large round eyes, slightly feline black irises, very mobile, standing out against the clear blue cornea like enamel, without the eyelids ever covering them out of tiredness. Ecstatic eyes as if at the vision of dreamlike images, or proud for rapid and changing impulses, which two thick eyebrows frame and protect as if to gather and guard the light. And under these eyes a strongly camouflaged nose between two very protruding cheekbones, which together with the cut of the tumid mouth and the course of the small beard, give him a character that is distinctly oriental, Arab, particularly. In his small person, but of regular proportions, he seems to contain the vitality of ten men, so prevalent in him is the movement, rapid action and rare the attitudes of rest. His body could be said to be a small tangle of muscles and tendons barely covered by the necessary tissues and epidermis, so that he can undertake and physically accomplish everything without the slightest apparent effort” (A. Ferraguti, Francesco Paolo Michetti, in “Il Secolo XX”, X, 1911, 6, pp. 484-499, p. 485).

After this first series of self-portraits made between 1877 and 1878, Michetti abandoned the subject for a decade, until 1888 when he produced four new paintings, which show him more mature and composed and with his head covered, perhaps to cover an incipient receding hairline. A straw hat appears in three paintings (fig. 4-5), the same hat also worn in the photograph accompanying the article that appeared in 1911 in ‘Il Secolo XX’, and in a fourth with a headdress (private collection).

The paintings were produced at another key moment in the artist’s life. He had been commissioned by King Umberto I to paint his portrait and that of Queen Margherita and had moved, not without reluctance, to Rome, where he had been offered the Coffee House at the Quirinale as a studio. Here he had been joined on 29 May by the news of the birth of his first son, Giorgio, and he had made the self-portrait with a headdress (fig. 6) to fix his own image on a crucial day for him. This is probably the first in a series of self-portraits, of which the one in Capodimonte is a variant. The other two known self-portraits show Michetti in three-quarter profile looking to the right. The use of monochrome and the cut of the work attest to the artist’s close relationship with photography. The contrasts and the play of light and shadow push the hat and the very pale face forward against an abstract background, against which the black of the eyes, moustache and beard stand out. The painting under scrutiny, which bears the date 1888 and is titled Self-Portrait as is the alredy mentioned Self- Portrait of 1873, should be the prototype of the latter also by virtue of the fact that it is painted on a canvas on the back of which a female portrait is sketched. The self-portrait was most likely part of the nucleus of works purchased by the dealer Ernst Seeger and exhibited by him in Berlin.

Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto