The Artwork of the month - October 2021

To the left of the composition, in a darkly lighted Sacristy, there are five male characters of different ages standing in front of a child dressed as a choirboy, holding out to them a white robe and a light blue cape edged in red, probably the robes of a secular confraternity. The space is distinguished by some arches, a wooden chest of drawers and two crucifixes leaning against the wall.

The work was bought by the Municipality of Rome on the occasion of the International Exhibition of 1911 and is considered to be the first important work by Pietro Gaudenzi, a painter of Genoese origin, who trained at the Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti and then moved to Rome in 1904 for a five-year artistic pension.

The painting I priori (1910), which is the last essay of his retirement, received the gold medal of the Ministry of Public Education and the special appreciation of Antonio Mancini.
The highly realistic faces of the characters, the intensity of their expressions and the sense of composed solemnity that pervades the atmosphere are rendered through a dense, mellow colour scheme, a varied range of browns, skilful chiaroscuro and lighting rich in contrasts, emphasised by brilliant touches of white. Gaudenzi, whom Ettore Cozzani praised for his "austere and thoughtful realism" and for his "robustly felt" figures, favoured portraits and family and religious themes. In this painting too, he manages to give the everyday life of a scene from the past a dramatic intonation of intimate spirituality.

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