Filippo Palizzi

(Italian, 1818 - 1899)

Signed lower right. "With Filippo Palizzi we have the first beginning of pictorial realism. After the school of Posillipo the observation of reality becomes the object of pictorial speculation. Since the 1950s he has been interested in photography which he practices with in-depth technical knowledge. He used the photos that he himself developed, as observation and models for his paintings.In this way he developed an immediate and direct naturalism, referring to the Flemish animal school of the seventeenth century, but he pays much more attention to details, combining neoclassical dignity with genre painting of costumes popular. His trip to Europe and to Paris (1955) allowed him to perfect his luministic investigation. On his return he stayed in Florence. Here he met Giovanni Fattori and the Macchiaioli. He affirmed that what one must look for in modern painting are the finesse and the totality, with these concepts Palizzi defines his poetics which is based on his personal conception of the "stain" meaning that the "totality" it had to be the expression of the whole, of the whole of the stain which had to be completed by the refinements, or by the rendering of the perceptive subtleties. The chiaroscuro landscapes had to undergo meticulous attention, of a micrographic nature to the effects of light and had to be created with the tip of the brush to finally express the totality of the work. The painting in question is a typical example of this pictorial conception. Final product of what he himself called a cosmic naturalism." STUDIO ASOR