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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from the Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico, Rome.
Ritratto di bambina is regarded as an important rediscovery of De Chirico’s ‘Periodo Classico’ - begun after a period of copying from Italian Old Masters in Rome in 1919 - by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, who dedicated an essay to this portrait, when it reappeared after being hidden from the market for over sixty years after its execution in 1920.
According to Fagiolo dell’Arco, no other variation of this painting exists, as it seems to have left the artist’s studio soon after its completion, before De Chirico could paint any ‘replicas’ of the subject, as he often did with those that remained in his possession for longer. It is thought to be one of the paintings given to Mario Broglio, editor of the periodical Valori Plastici, who probably had it until 1922.
The years between the War and De Chirico’s second stay in Paris, from 1924, are some of the most fruitful and intriguing within the artist’s oeuvre. De Chirico was at this time living between Rome and Florence, where he spent most of his days at the Galleria Borghese and Palazzo Pitti, admiring the works of the Italian Masters of the Renaissance. As a pioneer of the ‘Return to Order’, (as opposed to the more experimental Metaphysical phase of the immediately precedent years spent in Paris and in Ferrara), the artist made this his own avant-garde, as one realizes when reading the pivotal article published in La Ronda of 1920 titled “Classicismo pittorico”.
Ritratto di bambina, one of the very few portraits executed during these years, combines metaphysical components such as the balustrade, that allows De Chirico to frame his subjects so that they seem bigger and surrounded by an eternal halo (M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Il meccanismo del pensiero, Torino, 1987), with stylistic elements clearly inspired by Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci’s portraiture. The year 1920, when Ritratto di bambina was painted, thus seems to have been a key, transitional moment for De Chirico.
The use of tempera, a much more classical technique typical of the Renaissance - before oil was introduced as the preferred painting medium - and one De Chirico would often go back to in his works, renders the composition even more subtle and delicate, creating a spiritual atmosphere around the subject and in the ethereal landscape in the background. The balustrade that frames the girl works as a magic threshold between the reality in which the viewer stands and the eternal, melancholic figure who looks as if she is lying outside the physical dimension, making Ritratto di bambina one of the most mysterious and intriguing portraits of De Chirico’s classical period.
Ritratto di bambina is regarded as an important rediscovery of De Chirico’s ‘Periodo Classico’ - begun after a period of copying from Italian Old Masters in Rome in 1919 - by Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco, who dedicated an essay to this portrait, when it reappeared after being hidden from the market for over sixty years after its execution in 1920.
According to Fagiolo dell’Arco, no other variation of this painting exists, as it seems to have left the artist’s studio soon after its completion, before De Chirico could paint any ‘replicas’ of the subject, as he often did with those that remained in his possession for longer. It is thought to be one of the paintings given to Mario Broglio, editor of the periodical Valori Plastici, who probably had it until 1922.
The years between the War and De Chirico’s second stay in Paris, from 1924, are some of the most fruitful and intriguing within the artist’s oeuvre. De Chirico was at this time living between Rome and Florence, where he spent most of his days at the Galleria Borghese and Palazzo Pitti, admiring the works of the Italian Masters of the Renaissance. As a pioneer of the ‘Return to Order’, (as opposed to the more experimental Metaphysical phase of the immediately precedent years spent in Paris and in Ferrara), the artist made this his own avant-garde, as one realizes when reading the pivotal article published in La Ronda of 1920 titled “Classicismo pittorico”.
Ritratto di bambina, one of the very few portraits executed during these years, combines metaphysical components such as the balustrade, that allows De Chirico to frame his subjects so that they seem bigger and surrounded by an eternal halo (M. Fagiolo dell’Arco, Il meccanismo del pensiero, Torino, 1987), with stylistic elements clearly inspired by Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci’s portraiture. The year 1920, when Ritratto di bambina was painted, thus seems to have been a key, transitional moment for De Chirico.
The use of tempera, a much more classical technique typical of the Renaissance - before oil was introduced as the preferred painting medium - and one De Chirico would often go back to in his works, renders the composition even more subtle and delicate, creating a spiritual atmosphere around the subject and in the ethereal landscape in the background. The balustrade that frames the girl works as a magic threshold between the reality in which the viewer stands and the eternal, melancholic figure who looks as if she is lying outside the physical dimension, making Ritratto di bambina one of the most mysterious and intriguing portraits of De Chirico’s classical period.