Two paintings by Sartorio acquired by Orsay

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117/5/23 - Acquisitions - Paris, Musée d’Orsay - A protean Roman artist who was a painter, sculptor, illustrator, architect, photographer, writer and film-maker, Giulio Aristide Sartorio was largely ignored by French critics and remained a major absentee in French public collections. The Musée d’Orsay has remedied this situation thanks to the Société des Amis du Musée d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, which purchased two of his works from the Roman gallery Antonacci Lapiccirella (ill. 1 and 2) with the proceeds of the 2022 annual gala [1]. Highly acclaimed at the 2022 edition of TEFAF in Maastricht, where they were presented, they are now exhibited on the walls of the Paris museum alongside other monumental formats by Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Georges Rochegrosse, Henri Martin and Luc Olivier Merson.


1. Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860-1932)
Dalle grandi scoperte traverso le tristi età, al risorgere vivo dello Stirpe, 1906
(From the Great Discoveries, through the Dark Ages, to the Resurgence of the Lineage)
Oil on canvas - 98 x 161 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Photo: Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art
See the image in its page

Respectively entitled Dalle grandi scoperte traverso le tristi età, al risorgere vivo dello Stirpe (From the Great Discoveries through the Dark Ages to the Living Resurgence of the Lineage) and Dal mito delle Forze brute domate alle conquiste ultime della scienza (From the Myth of the Brute Forces Tamed to the Latest Achievements of Science), These two big grisaille canvases are part of a large decorative cycle executed by Sartorio for the International Exhibition held in Milan between April and November 1906 to celebrate the opening of the Simplon tunnel, then the largest tunnel in Europe (l’Esposizione Internazionale del Sempione). Spread over several metres, this cycle, entitled Dalla caduta di Roma imperiale alle conquiste ultime della scienza (From the Fall of Imperial Rome to the Ultimate Achievements of Science) took place in the Pinacoteca di Brera in room 4, which was reserved for artists from Lazio represented by Camillo Innocenti, Umberto Coromaldi, Arturo Noci, Francesco Vitalini, Enrico Lionne, Antonio Discovolo, Pietro Mengarini, Antonio Mancini, Norberto Pazzini and Paolo Ferretti. As the Musée d’Orsay’s notice states [2], at the present time, only one complete representation of the cycle, contemporary with its creation, is known, appearing in an album entitled Dalla caduta di Roma imperiale alle conquiste ultime della scienza. Fregio decorativo di GA Sartorio [3].


2. Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860-1932)
Dal mito delle Forze brute domate alle conquiste ultime della scienza, 1906
(From the Myth of the Brute Forces Tamed to the Latest Achievements of Science)
Oil on canvas, 98 x 161 cm
Paris, Musée d’Orsay
Photo: Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art
See the image in its page

Kept in the artist’s collection and then in that of his second wife Marga Sevilla Sartorio until about 1945, the two paintings passed into private hands in Rome before being rediscovered by the dealer Maria Paola Maino in 1974, who dedicated an exhibition to them in her Galleria dell’Emporio Floreale in Rome, where they were studied by Pasqualina Sadini [4]. Housed in a private collection, they were, until their acquisition by the Roman gallery Antonacci Lapiccirella in 2017, exhibited on only one other occasion, in 1989, during the exhibition dedicated to Sartorio at Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome [5]. A third painting of the same decor (ill. 3), entitled Avvenimento d’Arte e di Cultura (Advent of Art and Culture), which was also exhibited in 1974 and again in 1989, was presented by the Roman gallery Antonacci Lapiccirella at TEFAF Maastricht last March, one year after the first two paintings. It bears the artist’s signature in the upper right-hand corner and the date 1923, not 1906, "GA Sartorio, Roma MCMXXIII". As the gallery notes, the frieze of the Esposizione Internazionale del Sempione was reworked by Sartorio at this time to decorate a liner on a propaganda cruise to South America.


3. Giulio Aristide Sartorio (1860-1932)
Avenimento d’Arte e di Cultura, 1906-1923
(Advent of Art and Culture)
Oil on canvas - 98 x 392
Rome, Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art
Photo: Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art
See the image in its page

An ode to progress, the 1906 frieze, which celebrates the power of Italy from Antiquity to the modern world, through the arts, the great discoveries, and technical and scientific conquests, takes elements from a previous décor, designed two years earlier for the Italian pavilion at the 1904 Universal Exhibition in St Louis. This process is far from exceptional because, as the Musée d’Orsay points out, Sartorio cut out, reworked and reinterpreted the elements of his various cycles so much that few intact testimonies of his intense activity as a decorative painter at the beginning of the 20th century have survived. Spread over four walls, the frieze of 1906 develops a complex narrative mixing myth, allegory and history. Punctuated by cartouches with grandiloquent titles, the scenes are also explained in a booklet written by the painter Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Descrizione del Fregio Decorativo per la Sala del Lazio [6]. The first wall recalls the barbarian invasions and the fall of the Roman Empire to celebrate the Renaissance, represented as a period of political, artistic and cultural revival, as "Advent of Art and Culture". The second wall, from which the painting of the wrestling scene with a man on horseback (ill. 1) is taken, is entitled "Dalle grande scoperti traverso le tristi Età, al risorgere vivo della Stirpe" ("From the Great Discoveries through the Sad Ages, to the Living Resurgence of the Race"). The third wall revisits the myth of Pegasus to celebrate the new achievements of the seven liberal arts. The fourth wall concludes the cycle with the story of "Dal mito delle Forze brute domate, alle conquiste ultime della scienza" ("From the Myth of Tamed Brute Forces to the Ultimate Achievements of Science"). It is to the latter that the painting featuring triumphant female figures, allegories of the latest technical progress, bending the male figures, belongs (ill. 2). While the two canvases that went to Orsay have retained their original composition, the third canvas in the cycle, presented by the Antonacci Lapiccirella Gallery, was more extensively reworked in 1923. It combines four fragments of the first wall and a fragment of the third, repainted or retouched.

Julie Demarle

Footnotes

[1This information about the museum’s friends was added after the article was published.

[2We thank the Musée d’Orsay for the precise information it provided

[3Dalla caduta di Roma imperiale alle conquiste ultime della scienza. Fregio decorativo di GA Sartorio, Danesi editore, Rome 1906, pp. 107-114

[4Pasqualina Spadini, Un fregio di Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Galleria dell’Emporio Floreale, Rome, 1974.

[5Giulio Aristide Sartorio. Figura e decorazione, Roma, Palazzo Montecitorio, Sala della Regina, 1989

[6Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Descrizione del Fregio Decorativo per la Sala del Lazio.

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