Cinzia Virno
Antonio Mancini was born in Rome on 14 November 1852 to parents of humble origins from Umbria: Paolo from Narni and Domenica Cinti from Terni. The family tried, unsuccessfully, to improve their financial circumstances in Rome through his father’s work as a tailor, and so they returned to Narni, where his father worked in a wool mill and opened a wine shop in their home. Antonio studied intermittently with the Piarist Fathers at the Church of Sant’Agostino and served as an altar boy at San Domenico. His artistic talent manifested itself at an early age. He himself recalled that, in Narni in 1862, a troupe of acrobats sparked his imagination, and he produced sketches and drawings of them. From that moment on, convinced of his abilities—also by the judgement of the Marquis Giovanni Eroli—his father sent him to work as an apprentice to a gilder. Betting everything on Antonio’s artistic talents, in 1865 the entire family—comprising the artist himself, his parents and his two younger brothers, Giovanni and Angelo—moved to Naples, where some Umbrian relatives were already living, including the Campriani family, of whom Alceste was a member, having also become a painter.
His early days in Naples were marked by profound poverty and hunger; to support himself, the young man once again took up work as a gilder at the Arenella. He then enrolled at the school run by the fathers of the Oratory of the Gerolamini, whilst in the evenings he attended the free drawing classes for workers held by Stanislao Lista. It was on this occasion that he met, among others, the future sculptor Vincenzo Gemito, with whom he would form a close friendship. On 3 July of the same year, he enrolled at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts (later the Academy), initially studying under Raffaele Postiglione and Federico Maldarelli. In 1866, he won the prize for the second class of figure drawing. He painted his first portraits of Academy models and children, whilst simultaneously beginning to produce small-scale views and landscapes.
1868 marked a real turning point thanks to the appointment of Domenico Morelli as director of the painting school at the Institute of Fine Arts. Mancini developed an absolute devotion to him, becoming one of his favourite pupils alongside future great artists such as Francesco Paolo Michetti. On his master’s advice, he began visiting museums and churches to study the masters of 17th-century Naples, including Caravaggio, Ribera and Mattia Preti, who would profoundly influence his intense use of light.
It was in 1868, whilst working in a cramped attic near San Gregorio Armeno, that Mancini painted his first major oil canvas: Love thy neighbour as thyself (also known as The Third Commandment or The Street urchin). The work was so extraordinary that masters such as Filippo Palizzi, Stanislao Lista and Morelli himself visited his modest studio to admire it. Standing before the painting, Morelli uttered a famous phrase in dialect, admitting he had nothing left to teach that child prodigy: To this street urchin, I tell you, I really don’t know what else I can teach him. The canvas has a strong autobiographical value, so much so that Mancini would later confess: I was the street urchin.
The final years of the decade marked important milestones: he formed a close friendship with the painter Gaetano Esposito and met ‘Luigiello’, a very young orphan from Abruzzo who, for the next ten years, would be his model par excellence. At the Institute of Fine Arts, in 1870, he won the fourth-class prize, tying for first place with the Sicilian Paolo Vetri, who later became Morelli’s son-in-law. During this period he painted, among other works, the famous Carminella (Rome, National Gallery of Modern Art) and Prevetariello (Naples, Museum of San Martino). He also took part in the Neapolitan Promotrice exhibition with a youthful portrait of his father, which was purchased by Count Guglielmo Capitelli. Together with Gemito, he began to roam the Neapolitan slums in search of common folk and street urchins to portray. The arrival of the acrobats from Emilio Guillaume’s famous circus, which had set up near the Bellini Theatre, caught the attention of the two young men. The memory of the circus performers, whom he had already admired in Narni, would inspire the painter to create several paintings featuring acrobats and musicians.
In 1871, he won first prize for figure drawing, worth 250 lire, with the large drawing Vestire gli ignudi (Naples, Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts). Following this success, the prefect granted him the use of some rooms as a studio within the Medical College (located in the old buildings of Sant’Andrea delle Dame). The arrangement was facilitated by Dr Antonio Lepre, the Mancini family’s doctor and a professor of anatomy. Gemito and the Sicilian sculptor La Spina were also hosted in the makeshift ‘atelier’. It was in this year, and on the occasion of the Promotrice Exhibition – as recalled in an autograph document in the painter’s archive – that he befriended his first patron: the Belgian musician and count Albert Cahen D’Anvers, resident in Paris: Alberto Cahen d’Anvers, whom I met in Naples through the Promotrice, where a certain De Blor… (De Blori?)had bought one of my early ‘head for a flower’ works for 100 lire, and Cahen Albert wanted it for himself, so I made another one for 50 lire. The two works are now in a private collection and at the Honolulu Academy of Art respectively. It was Cahen himself who opened up the French market for him, having works sent to him to put on sale as early as the end of that year and introducing him to the French art dealers Portier and Rey, but above all to the far more famous Adolphe Goupil of the renowned auction house. As early as 1872, two of his works were exhibited at the Salon: Dernier sommeil and Enfant allant à l’école.
In May of that year, frightened by the terrible eruption of Vesuvius on 23 April, the painter joined Cahen in Venice, where he visited museums and churches, becoming fascinated by sixteenth-century painting. Here he copied a detail from Paris Bordon’s La consegna dell’anello al doge, whilst Cahen began work on his first painting, Jean le Précurseur. Between late August and mid-September, the painter was in Ischia with Gemito. On 27 September he wrote to his parents from Milan, where he had gone to see his paintings on display at Brera. During this period he began painting La verità, a work featuring a half-naked boy which he would revise and complete only in 1878 (Pescara, Museo dell’Ottocento, Fondazione Di Persio – Pallotta).
In 1872, following Lo Scugnizzo, he painted the large full-length portrait Ragazzo del circo (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). He also took part in the Promotrice exhibition in Naples, exhibiting three works: Le speranze di una povera madre, La lingua latina, and Impressione d’un infelice.
In 1874 he took part in exhibitions in Florence, Genoa, Naples, Turin and Rome. In Turin, the painter Enrico Junck purchased his painting The Sick Orphan. In May, Mancini wrote to him to thank him, marking the beginning of a deep friendship. Through Morelli, he met the highly acclaimed Catalan painter Mariano Fortuny, who was staying for an extended period with his family at Villa Arata in Portici. Mancini painted for him, on a bedside table, The Acrobat After the Show (The Alms), presenting it to him as a gift upon his departure for Rome, where he died suddenly shortly afterwards. On 23 December, Cahen wrote to him from Paris to inform him of the sale of the painting L’Orfana (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), anticipating that the following month, in January, he would send him payment of 400 francs.
With the model Luigiello, he painted Poca carta e poco pane (Milan, Gallerie d’Italia, IntesaSanpaolo collection). Around the same time, through Cahen, he met the French critic and novelist Paul Bourget, who greatly appreciated his art and purchased several of his works.
In 1875, he painted La Fanciulla malata (De Mesdag Collectie, The Hague). In April, at the Hotel Drout in Paris, the sale of the Fortuny studio takes place. His work donated to the artist, Il Saltimbanco dopo lo spettacolo, is purchased for 930 francs by the dealer Sedelmeyer. Following the sensational sale, Cahen convinces him to join him in Paris. The artist travelled there in May and stayed for about six months. Thanks to Goupil, Mancini’s market soon opened up to Anglo-Saxon clients: that year, the well-known Scottish-American artist and art dealer Daniel Cottier purchased his first work, simply titled Esquisse, which was to be followed by others.
On 10 July 1876, he applied to be readmitted, for the following year, to the Royal Institute of Fine Arts, both to study painting and to attend the basic courses in perspective, architecture and artistic anatomy. That year, he took part in the Promotrice in Genoa with the work: La domenica, fanciulla napoletana. Meanwhile, his painting L’Enfant à l’École (Paris, Musée d’Orsay), owned by Charles Landelle, was exhibited at the Paris Salon under the title Le petit écolier, with the catalogue listing the painter’s address as Goupil, 9 Rue Chaptal.
From the first half of the 1870s, the artist frequently travelled to Rome for short stays, where he occasionally attended the evening life-drawing classes and the famous Accademia di Gigi in Via Margutta. Various drawings and oil sketches of nudes and figures in general remain from these stays, including the painting Il vinaio dated 1876.
Around 1877 he met the great American painter John Singer Sargent, who admired his work so much that he described him as ‘the greatest living painter’. That year he exhibited at the Paris Salon with *Il piccolo saltimbanco* (Philadelphia Museum of Art), which was later purchased by Cahen. In March he returned to Paris and in April, at his request, the model Luigiello joined him. For a short time in the French capital he lived with Gemito and Luigi Fabron until Gemito went to live with his French partner Mathilde Duffaud. Mancini painted a portrait of the latter. Whilst in Paris, his works The Street urchin and The Sons of a Labourer were exhibited by their owners at the Neapolitan Promotrice. In 1878, in the City of Light, he met the Marquis Giorgio Capranica del Grillo, a resident of Rome in the service of Queen Margherita and an amateur painter, who became a key figure in Mancini’s life after his move to the capital. That year, he signed a contract with ‘Maison Goupil’ that would earn him 600 francs a month. In May, the New York art dealer Samuel Avery purchased his work Toreador from the same ‘maison’. He took part in the Salon with The Feast of Saint Januarius in a House in Naples, and in the Universal Exposition with six works, including The Acrobat. Meanwhile, in Italy, the same three paintings (Il venditore di Pulcinelli, I regali della zia and Carminella in chiesa) were exhibited first at the Promotrice in Turin and then at the Brera exhibition.
A strong sense of unease, caused, in his own words, by his position of inferiority and dependence on Gemito, began to affect the artist, who in mid-October of that year suddenly returned to Naples. Once back, his malaise worsened, to the extent that later, from October 1881 to February 1882, he was admitted to a mental asylum. During this period, he never stopped working and produced numerous self-portraits and portraits of orderlies and nurses. At the 1882 Promotrice in Naples, he exhibited Si vende, an important work lost during the bombings of the Second World War.
In 1883, he took part in the International Exhibition in Rome, presenting La fantesca abbigliata da padrona, for which he won a medal. On this occasion, he decided to move permanently to the capital, initially obtaining a loan from the Sicilian baron resident in Naples, Carlo Chiarandà, of whom he painted a portrait (Rome, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art). In Rome, he was reunited with, among others, the Marquis Giorgio Capranica del Grillo and his fellow academy student, the painter Annibale Brugnoli, whom Mancini also later painted. The artist chose Del Grillo as his point of contact to gain entry into the city’s artistic circles, giving him free rein to organise his life and manage the proceeds from his works.
In September of the same year, his painting Tired out (Le due bambole), owned by the art dealer Cottier, was included in the fundraising exhibition for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty (Pedestal Art Fund).
After donating a painting to the Circolo Artistico Internazionale, he was admitted as a member. He then attended the nude drawing school attached to the same club every evening to continue practising as a model. Among his first contacts after moving to Rome was the publisher Angelo Sommaruga, who purchased some of his works.
Thanks to his connection with the Marchese del Grillo and his contacts with artists such as Giulio Monteverde and Ettore Ferrari, he came into contact with the Story family, an American family living in Rome who were also linked to Sargent. He spent time mainly with the sculptors William Wetmore and his son Thomas Waldo (known as Ubaldo), as well as their other son Julian Russel, who was a painter. It was they – and above all Waldo, with whom he formed a closer bond – who introduced him to the Anglo-American international community, enabling him, during that early period in the capital, to meet the American Daniel Curtis (who had chosen Venice as his second home) and his son Ralph, a painter and cousin of Sargent. He also met the British artist James Rennell Rodd – of whom he would paint a portrait in 1885, which belonged to Julian Story – the American painter E. Peabody, and the famous Dutch artist naturalised as an Englishman, Lawrence Alma-Tadema. During the same period, the Story family introduced him to Mary Hunter during one of her visits to Rome. She was a cultured English noblewoman, sister of the musician Ethel Smith and a close friend of Sargent’s, who would prove instrumental in the painter’s future travels to England. Thanks to these connections, Mancini further expanded his network of contacts with English, Irish and American figures, ties that would secure him numerous portrait commissions and orders for paintings.
During this period, he began an intense correspondence with the Lombard painter and explorer Guido Boggiani, who was in his early twenties at the time – and of whom he would later paint a portrait. He entrusted Boggiani with the sale of some of his paintings in northern Italy. In February 1884, he painted the portrait of Daniel Curtis, who posed for him inside a Roman hotel. That year, the refined American couple John Lowell and Isabella Stewart Gardner – art enthusiasts and collectors as well as friends of the painters Sargent and Curtis – purchased Mancini’s painting The Standard Bearer of the Harvest Festival (Il Ciociaretto porta stendardo – Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) from Curtis himself. The couple exhibited the work the following year at the Boston Art Club. At the exhibition organised by the Amatori e Cultori di Roma, he presented two portraits and Il veterano, a work for which his cousin Andrea Ruggeri sat as the model. Thanks to Boggiani’s assistance, he then exhibited La modellina pittrice in Turin and Costume napolitano and Mi dipingerà così (also known as Il buon modellino or Pastorello in ciocie – Genoa, Raccolte Frugone) in Milan. In 1885, some of his works were exhibited at the Les Vingt exhibition in Brussels, including four paintings owned by the Dutch banker and marine painter Hendrik Wilhelm Mesdag. Upon learning of this, the artist wrote to him offering to produce works for him. Mesdag accepted, and Mancini worked for him until the early 20th century. This ‘new’ foreign patron helped to make him known and appreciated in the Netherlands, dedicating, among other things, two solo exhibitions to him: in 1899 in Dordrecht and in 1902 in The Hague. He then put him in touch with the art dealer and critic Friedrich Gustav Sues (Süs), owner of the “Maison Artz” in The Hague, who, together with him, organised the painter’s first travelling solo exhibition in America in 1898 (from Boston to New York to Chicago to Philadelphia).
From 1886 he lived with his cousins Andrea and Noemi Ruggeri, whose children, Agrippina and Telemaco, became his favourite models. In that year, The Sick Girl, owned by Mesdag, was featured in the French and Dutch Loan Collection exhibition in Edinburgh, whilst three of his works were on display at the Amatori e Cultori in Rome. In 1887 he travelled to Venice for the opening of the Exhibition, which included two of his paintings owned by Curtis: Carnovale and Ritratto (Portrait of Daniel Curtis). Ralph Curtis and John Singer Sargent also attended the event. Together with the latter, the painter stayed with the Curtises at Palazzo Barbaro, where he painted Il riposo (The Rest – The Art Institute of Chicago), a sensual half-length portrait of a nude woman in bed. In July he returns to Rome. That year, Waldo Story introduces him to the American sculptor John Severinus Conway, who was staying at Villa Strohl-Fern, and of whom he paints an original portrait in his studio. In 1889 he paints the Portrait of the Marquis Giorgio Capranica del Grillo, which, the following year, is presented to the Amatori e Cultori and wins the silver medal.
In 1892, he met the Peruvian painter Carlos Baca Flor in Rome, a great admirer of his, of whom he painted a portrait. On 25 September, his mother Domenica died in Naples. At the end of the year, the young Dutch painter Jean Jonas Jacobson, sent by Mesdag, visited Mancini in his studio on Via Flaminia. Jacobson stayed in Rome for five months. During this period, he provided Mesdag and his wife Sientje with detailed updates on Mancini, leaving important insights into the painter’s life and working methods. In October 1893, his father Paolo moved to Rome to live with him. From this point on, he became one of the main subjects of his works, alongside – a little later – the model Aurelia Ciommi, known as ‘La cornacchia’. Meanwhile, in Naples, the Portrait of Marquis Giorgio Capranica del Grillo won a prize of 500 lire from the organiser. The painting was exhibited again in 1894 alongside the Portrait of Eugenio Serra at the Milan Triennale. In that year he painted the Portrait of Signora Pantaleoni (Rome, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art). In 1895, through Sommaruga, he met the Argentine doctor Pedro Martinez in Rome and painted a Portrait of his two daughters. In the same year, he also met the American couple Gardner, who had previously owned the aforementioned Ciociaretto portastendardo. To paint the portrait of the husband, John Lowell Gardner (Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), the artist joined them in Venice, where, incidentally, two of his works, Roman Boy and Ophelia, owned by Curtis, were exhibited at the first Biennale. From a letter we know that, from at least this year, he was in contact with the English antiquarian Claude Ponsonby, of whom he painted a portrait in Rome in 1898. It was the year in which he presented: two works at the Jubilaums Kunstausstellung in Vienna, three other paintings including Nude in Summer, in St Petersburg, and Waiting for the Lover (Cardiff, National Museum & Gallery) in Turin.
In 1900, he was awarded a prize at the Paris Universal Exhibition for his Portrait of Mrs Pantaleoni. The following year, persuaded by Ponsonby, he travelled to the United Kingdom for the first time. He stayed in England from 1901 to 1902 and in England and Ireland from 1907 to 1908. On both occasions, he was always helped and supported by Sargent, but above all by Mary Hunter, who hosted him at her residences in London and the countryside. During this period, he painted many portraits of leading figures of the Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie, some of whom had already been painted by Sargent himself, such as Flora Wertheimer, wife of the London gallery owner Asher Wertheimer; Mathilde Hirsch, wife of the banker Leopold Hirsch; and Mary Hunter herself. In 1902, he also painted all the members of the Caccamisi family: the Sicilian baron Andrea Arzon, his wife, the opera singer Blanche Marchesi, and his son, little Gerome (Seated Boy – Philadelphia Museum of Art); and for Ponsonby: the portrait of his son Harold (The Young Golfer – Leeds Art Gallery Museum) and his mother (Louisa Frances Charlotte Gordon – Sefton Atkinson Art Gallery). He also produced the Portrait of Frederick Charles Williamson, Lady Hunter’s son-in-law, an early portrait of Charles, Hunter’s husband, dressed as a hunter, a portrait of their daughter, Sylvia, and one of the Spanish opera singer Fernando Valero (both at the Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane). Returning from England in October 1902, the artist stopped in Ghiffa where he painted the Portrait of Mrs Torelli. Between his stays in England, in 1904 he took part in the Amatori e Cultori exhibition, with the Portrait of Ambassador Meyer and My Father with Birds. The latter was purchased by the state for the National Gallery of Modern Art. In the same year, he took part in various exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Among the most important were those in England: the New Gallery Summer Exhibition; the Royal Academy, the Society of Portrait Painters, and the Italian Art Exhibition at Earl’s Court; and in the USA: the St. Louis World’s Fair. At the latter, the portrait of the Marquis Giorgio Capranica del Grillo – suitably backdated – won the grand prize with a gold medal[1].
Between one stay in England and another, he met the painter Ise Lebrecht in Rome, who was an admirer of his, and painted the portrait of her mother Eugenia Vitali Lebrecht (Verona, Palazzo Forti). He met and became friends with the Dutch painter Kees Maks; at the 1905 Venice Biennale, he exhibited another Portrait of his father with a tray laden with objects, which was purchased by the Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art. In 1907, in Rome, he painted the first of two portraits of the German antiquarian Otto Messinger (Prado Museum), his future patron who resided at Palazzo Massimo, and that of Hugh Lane (Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane), another key figure in Mancini’s life. The latter was exhibited shortly afterwards at the Society of Portrait Painters in London. Lane, the future founder of the Dublin Gallery of Modern Art and a close friend of Sargent and Mary Hunter, invited him to the Irish city that same year to paint a portrait of his sister Ruth Shine. Stopping off in England, Mancini painted, among others, the Portrait of Charles and Elizabeth Williamson, Hunter’s nephews. Upon reaching Dublin, he produced several works in oil and pastel: among these were two oil paintings of his aunt, the playwright and theatre manager Lady Augusta Gregory, one full-face, the other in profile[2], and the pastel portrait of William Butler Yeats. In 1908, he returned to England. In January, he was in Denton, near Canterbury, before returning to London. In April, she travelled once more to Denton Court and Broome Park, travelling with the Hunter family, with whom she was staying. All the works for which the Italian model of the same name, Domenico Mancini—sent to her by Sargent—posed date from this period, including the three in which the figure offers a basket of flowers, later conceived as a ‘cycle’ entitled ‘To My Lord’. He then painted a second Portrait of Charles Hunter, the Portrait of Phyllis Williamson, the Hunters’ second daughter, and of her daughter Elizabeth. In July he was in Rome. From 1908 to early 1911, he entered into a contract with Otto Messinger, who took him to Berlin in 1910. In 1909, he produced the second full-length portrait of the German antiquarian (Rome, National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art). Among the most important works of this period are: The Toast, The Lute Player (Courtesy GB), The Halberdier, The Swiss Guard (Johannesburg Art Gallery), Lady in Lilac (Trieste, Revoltella Museum). The latter was painted in Germany with the model Gertrude. In 1911, he exhibited several works owned by Messinger in Munich. Upon his return, he took part in the International Exhibition in Rome with seven oil paintings and fourteen drawings, and in the associated exhibition of the ‘Independents’, with eight works, all again belonging to Messinger. His contract with Messinger was not an exclusive one. In fact, in 1909, thanks to the intercession of Hugh Lane, he painted the portraits of Florence Phillips and her daughter Edie Phillips, which were later placed in the then-newly established Johannesburg Art Gallery.
Always in need of support, once his working relationship with the German patron had ended, from late 1911 to 1917, he entered into a contract with the French industrialist and collector Fernand Du Chène de Vére, moving into the Villa Jacobini in Frascati, which had been offered to him by the collector himself, who also provided him with models, paints and materials for painting. During this period, the painter produced a large number of works, including the well-known Cucitrice (Rome, Galleria Nazionale di San Luca), the Self-Portrait in the Mirror (Doordrecht Museum) and several oil and pastel portraits of Fernand Du Chène’s children: Attila, Ippolito, and Clementine (Tina), later Princess Pignatelli.
In 1913, he was appointed Academician of San Luca for the painting class. Waiting for the Collector, titled Italian Lady at a Window, was on display at the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow – and was shown again the following year under the title Waiting – whilst The Halberdier and The Toast were at the Carnegie Institute exhibition in Pittsburgh, and In the Toy Shop was on display at the van Bilderbeek Collection exhibition in Dordrecht.
Du Chéne, too, was involved during this period in exhibiting the works Mancini produced for him. The very same Cucitrice was at the Roman Secessione in 1914 and, in the same year, the French collector exhibited eight of the painter’s works at the Venice Biennale. Also in 1914, Mary Hunter presented two paintings from her collection at the spring exhibition of the International Society in London: Nude and St John the Baptist (or The Pilgrim – Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), showing them again the following year at the Royal Scottish Academy in Glasgow. Also in 1915, Ferruccio Stefani exhibited four works by Mancini in Buenos Aires, whilst the artist himself sent the work Bohemian (or Auguri) – created in England with an Italian model – to the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco.
On 10 July of that year, Mesdag died. The following year, an exhibition featuring thirty-eight of Mancini’s works from his collection was held in The Hague.
Returning permanently to Rome from Frascati at the end of 1917, he went to live with his nephews, the sons of his brother Giovanni, who had since come of age. That year, he exhibited three portraits of his father at the Amatori e Cultori in Rome. One of these was a rare bronze sculpture. He remained with his nephews and nieces until the end of his days. During this period, it was precisely they—Alfredo, Enrica and Domenica (Mimma)—who became his favourite models, joined later by Maria Vedova, who would become Alfredo’s wife. In March 1918, Du Chéne organised an exhibition for him at Villa Jacobini, which received extensive press coverage. At the same time, he presented works from his collection at the exhibition at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, including paintings, pastels and plates by Mancini.
In 1919, he took part in the exhibitions of the Amatori e Cultori in Rome and the Promotrice in Turin. The following year, his nephew Alfredo, assisted by the critic Guida Guida, organised a solo exhibition of his uncle’s work at the Venice Biennale. The artist achieved great success and almost all his works were sold. With the substantial proceeds, he purchased a plot of land on the Aventine Hill where he would later have a Liberty-style villa built for himself and his nephews. In 1921, a solo exhibition of his work was held at the Circolo d’arte e di Alta coltura in Milan, whilst two of his works were exhibited at the annual Carnegie exhibition in Pittsburgh. Other works were on display at the Galleria Pesaro and the Fiorentina Primaverile. Later that year, he took part in the first Naples Biennale with a solo exhibition of thirty pieces, winning the gold medal. For the occasion, he returned to Naples as a guest of Giuseppe Casciaro and met up again with his friend Gemito, among others. He returned to Campania over the following two years. Meanwhile, Messinger had moved to Madrid and, in 1922, as part of an exhibition on Italian art, he displayed his collection at the Salón de Otoño, including twenty-three works by Mancini. That year, the artist was with his grandchildren in Minori, on the Amalfi Coast, where he returned to painting landscapes – now on a large scale – or figures against landscape backgrounds. Minori granted him “Honorary Citizenship”, an honour he would also receive the following year from the city of Naples.
In 1924, he took part in the Venice Biennale. The following summer, he was a guest in Amelia with his Umbrian relatives, where he produced, among others, Portrait of his brother Giovanni, The Japanese Parasol and The Peasant Girl.
In 1926, he again took part in the Biennale with nine works. Among these was Lady in Red, a full-length portrait of Maria Vedova (Naples, Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts). In Rome, he took part in the Amatori e Cultori exhibition and the Maritime Art Exhibition. Abroad, he exhibited in Brighton, at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and at the Grand Central Art Galleries in New York. At the end of the year, he moved into the villa, then newly completed, in Via delle Terme Deciane, near Santa Prisca.
To mark the artist’s 75th birthday in 1927, a retrospective exhibition was organised for him at the Palazzo dell’Augusteo in Rome. At the same time, Du Chène organised a second exhibition of his works at the Villa Jacobini in Frascati, whilst another exhibition was dedicated to him by the Claridge Gallery in London. The following year, again in London, another solo exhibition of his work was staged at the Knodler Gallery, as well as in Milan, at the Castello Sforzesco. Five of his works were also exhibited in Pittsburgh. In 1929, he was appointed an Accademico d’Italia. That year, among other works, he produced L’Autoritratto – biografia, in which, alongside his figure, he wrote down all the most important events and the names of the key figures in his life. In 1930, he took part in the Venice Biennale, the exhibition organised by the Amatori e Cultori and the Fascist Sindacato Laziale. His works were still on display at the Carnegie exhibition in Pittsburgh. He died on 28 December of that year, whilst working on pieces for the first Rome Quadriennale of 1931[3] and was buried in the Verano Cemetery. Five years later, his remains were transferred to Sant’Alessio all’Aventino, near his home.
Cinzia Virno
[1] The date was set ten years later than when the painting was actually created. This ploy was probably used to allow the work to be entered into the 1904 St Louis Exposition, as that competition accepted only recent works.
[2] Autograph notes in the Mancini Archive also mention a pastel, which has not yet been located.
[3] As part of this, a retrospective dedicated to him will be organised in his honour.
Bibliographical References
Virno, Antonio Mancini / Catalogue Raisonné of the Work, 2 vols: Oil Painting and Repertories, De Luca Editori d’Arte, Rome, 2019, (on bibliography and cited archival documents)
The site is constantly updated with unpublished works by the protagonists of painting and sculpture between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
