Guglielmo Ciardi (1842 - 1917) Plowing (Work... Lot 333

Guglielmo Ciardi (1842 - 1917) Plowing (Work in the Fields), c. 1872 Oil on canvas 44 x 95 cm Signature: lower left, "Ciardi" Distinctive elements: on the verso of the frame, "CIARDI in felt-tip pen Provenance: private collection, Biella Bibliography: Maria and Francesco Pospisil, "Guglielmo Ciardi," Florence, 1946, pl. 45; Giuseppe L. Marini, ed. ed. ed. ed. ed., "The Value of Italian Paintings of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," Turin, 1999, p. 205; "Ottocento. Catalogo dell'arte italiana dell'Ottocento," No. 28, Milan, 1999, p. 118; Giuseppe Pavanello, "Venezia: dall'età neoclassica alla 'scuola del vero'," in G. Pavanello, ed., "La pittura nel Veneto. L'Ottocento," I, Milan, 2002, p. 77, fig. 118; Nico Stringa, "Guglielmo Ciardi. Catalogo generale dei dipinti," Crocetta del Montello, 2007, p. 291, no. 368; Stefano Bosi, card in Enzo Savoia, Stefano Bosi, eds. "I Maestri del Colore. Art in Venice in the 1800s," exhibition catalog, Milan, 2017, pp. 36-39, 161 Exhibitions, "I Maestri del Colore. Art in Venice in the 1800s," Milan, Galleria Bottegantica, 2017 Conservation status. Support: 85% (rintelo and rintel) Conservation status. Surface: 80% (color falls and retouching) Guglielmo Ciardi's training is marked by his alumnus at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice under Domenico Bresolin, the renewer of Venetian landscape painting, and by his advanced training trip in 1868 to Florence, Rome and Naples, which enabled him to become acquainted with the painting of Fattori, Signorini, Costa, Palizzi and Morelli. The lesson of the "real" appears to have inspired the works of the artist's early maturity made between 1868 and 1869 between the Giudecca Canal and the Treviso countryside. As pointed out by Nico Stringa, the artist turns his back on the built city to "take the path of a complete and almost disarmed conversation with 'naked' nature, lowering narrative and descriptive (and decorative) elements and the resulting chromatic potential to a minimum, paving the way for a synthetic approach" (Nico Stringa, "Guglielmo Ciardi: the instinct of the real," in Nico Stringa, "Guglielmo Ciardi. General Catalog," cit., pp. 27-45, p. 37-38). In the early 1970s the lagoon and country landscapes are populated by fishermen and peasants, depicted without rhetoric within the natural environment, which becomes the absolute protagonist. Belonging to the series of country views made in this period is "L'aratura," a canvas with the characteristic elongated format of the Macchiaioli tradition. It is a painting of delicate balance, perfectly bipartite from the horizon line and built on the contrast between the warm, earthy tones of the lower part and the cold tones of the upper part. The white and blue depict the variations in the light of the sky coruscating with sparse clouds and the snow on the distant mountain tops. The scene takes place at the end of autumn: two men complete the task of plowing, while two women are ready to sow. These are impersonal figures, portrayed from behind or in profile, with unrecognizable faces. What matters is, in fact, the balanced and serene relationship between nature and human activities. The calm gestures of the figures take on a mythical dimension, in analogy with contemporary French field painting from Millet to Breton. Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto