Mariano Fortuny y Marsal

Master of international fame and at the height of his career, residing in Rome but well established in Paris, capital of luxury and fashion , Mariano Fortuny moved in the summer of 1874 , a few months after his unexpected death , in a villa in Portici near of Naples. There was of course in contact with those artists who since the beginning of the ’60s had elected those places as the center of their research.

Collected in the school of resin , and guided by the determination of character Marco De Gregorio, sought an alternative route is against excessive analysis of the poetic realist Palizzi literary Morelli , admittedly in a direction realistic but sensitive to chromatic clarity and simplicity Structural Member1 . It is therefore no coincidence that element common to the best interpreters of the magisterium Fortuny , by Edward Dalbono to Francesco Paolo Michetti , it was his militancy in resin , resulting in aspiration to the news that entailed.

The particular mindset of Fortuny , receptive to new things in Paris and Madrid, London or Naples , propelled him to confront the reality Neapolitan artistic . An example of this is pensions [1 ], the most challenging part of the work period , where you can see it is a gimmick perspective typical of De Gregorio in the long wall in the background, is the central figure in the quote intent to sew the well-known Luisa Sanfelice in prison ( Naples, Museo di Capodimonte) , exhibited at the Promoter of 1874 by Joachim TomA2 . Of course, the relationship was certainly not one-sided : the encounter with the work of the Spanish was for some Neapolitan masters , who shared both the attendance of Portici that a talent out of the norm , a rare opportunity to come in contact with the latest trends of European art.

Fortuny , in fact , was not only an impeccable author of vibrant tableutins in eighteenth century costume highly appreciated by the international market but also an extraordinary experimenter informed on Japanese art , the lessons of the great old masters such as those contemporanei3 . From these interests comes the brand new naturalism of the period porticese characterized by bright colors and cold , lack of perspective – think of the children of the painter in the Japanese room (Madrid , Prado, Cason del Buen Retiro ) – the invoice and an impromptu extraordinary natural reading of the data , factors found in The Butcher (Coll. private ) and Naked on the beach of Portici ( Madrid, Prado, Cason del Buen Retiro ) .