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DEATHS: 1962 LHOTE — 1920 MODIGLIANI
BIRTHS: 1544 CONINXLOO — 1915 MOTHERWELL
2001: $200'000 for A TREE AND TWO SAPLINGS?
^ Died on 24 January 1962: André Lhote, French Cubist painter and sculptor born on 05 July 1885.
— He painted figure subjects, portraits, landscape, and still life; he also was very influential as a teacher and writer on art. Born in Bordeaux, he was apprenticed in 1897 to an ornamental sculptor, and also studied decorative sculpture from 1898 to 1904 at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. He began to paint in his spare time. Lhote left the sculpture studio in 1905 to devote himself to painting. He was influenced by Gauguin, then from 1910 by Cézanne. First one-man exhibition at the Galerie Druet, Paris, 1910. Joined the Cubist movement in 1911; exhibited in 1912 at the Salon de la Section d'Or. Applied Cubist stylization as a formal discipline to scenes from everyday life. In 1917, after discharge from the army, became one of the Cubist group supported by Léonce Rosenberg; also began to write regularly for the Nouvelle Revue Française. Taught at the Académie Notre-Dame des Champs 1918-1920 and afterwards at various other art schools, including one he founded in Montparnasse. Lhote wrote a number of books on art, including La Peinture, Le Coeur et l'Esprit (1933), Traité du Paysage (1939). He died in Paris.

LINKS
Paysage verdoyant (1921; 1150x970pix, 102kb)
Paysage sans titre (1910, 33x51cm; 900x1389pix, 139kb)
Entrée du bassin à flot à Bordeaux(1912, 97x130cm; 480x646pix, 28kb) _ Peintre et théoricien, le bordelais André Lhote donne du cubisme une conception différente de celle de ses pères fondateurs : Braque et Picasso. Alors que ces derniers, à force d'analyse, aboutissent à une abstraction, Lhote refuse le monde de "pure conception" afin de préserver une peinture intelligible. Choisissant dans des scènes de la vie courante la source de son émotion, il puise dans le domaine de la géométrie les équivalents plastiques des objets. Le spectacle que lui offre le port de Bordeaux a certainement facilité le passage entre le "désordre émotif" né de sa contemplation et la soumission de cet élan à des signes plastiques purs.
^ Born on 24 January 1544: Gillis van Coninxloo (or Konimksloo) III, Flemish painter, draftsman, and collector, who was buried on 04 January 1607; son of Jan van Coninxloo II [1489->1552] and brother-in-law of Pieter Bruegel II.
— Van Coninxloo was a landscape painter whose works show the transition from Mannerist to early Baroque landscape. Coninxloo studied under, among others, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a painter of the Antwerp school of Mannerism. After a period of travel in France, he returned to Antwerp in 1570 and was made a member of the painters' guild. He left his home again in 1585 to escape religious persecution and stayed at Frankenthal in the Palatinate until 1595, when he settled in Amsterdam. The development of Coninxloo's style is often described in three periods that somewhat correspond with his residence in Antwerp (1570-1588), Frankenthal (1588-1595), and Amsterdam (1595-1606). His earlier works are deliberately composed landscape fantasies reflecting the influence of the Italianate Flemish landscapist Paul Bril. Coninxloo's later landscapes are more naturalistic and are characterized by their blending of color into a harmonious atmospheric tone.
— Van Mander, a contemporary of Gillis van Coninxloo III, wrote in 1604: ‘He is, as far as I know, the best landscape painter of his time; his style is now frequently imitated in Holland.’ Van Mander, moreover, based all his guidelines for landscape painters in his didactic poem Grondt der edel vry schilderconst (‘Principles of the noble and free art of painting’) on Gillis van Coninxloo’s ideas, since Gillis’s contributions to the development of Dutch and Flemish landscape painting were of decisive importance. More than any other artist, he represented the heroic landscape, an interpretation of nature based on reality but with a tendency to idealize the scenery, thus making the whole sublime. While his predecessors painted vast panoramic landscapes, Gillis III rendered self-contained glimpses of nature and created a sense of unity between man and nature as well as between the landscape and the viewer. A similar notion was being developed simultaneously in Italy by such artists of Netherlandish origin as Lodewijk Toeput and Paolo Fiammingo. Van Coninxloo, who never visited Italy, probably came to know this new style through prints by Cornelis Cort after Girolamo Muziano, which were then circulating throughout the Netherlands. Other northern artists such as Jan Breughel the elder and Paul Bril achieved similar results at the same time or even before. Their contribution to the development of forest landscapes may therefore be considered to be at least as important as that of Gillis van Coninxloo, if not more so.
— The students of Gillis van Coninxloo III included Hercules Seghers, Pieter Schoubroeck, Esaias van de Velde.

LINKS
Landscape with Leto and Peasants of Lykia (144x 204cm) _ The main subject of the painting is the landscape. The scene in the foreground is only a decoration; it depicts a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses: the peasants are changed to frogs because they did not give water to Leko. The figures of the scene were painted by Hendrick de Clerck.
Mountain Landscape with River Valley and the Prophet Hosea (20x29cm) _ The subject of this landscape is a moralistic one with a reference to a passage from the Bible, more specifically the Old Testament book of Hosea. The drawing is believed to have been done in Frankenthal, a small town in the Pfalz mountains where an important artists' colony sprang up after the fall of Antwerp to the Spanish in 1585. Many of the artists who settled there were Flemings sympathetic to the Reformation, who had been forced into exile because of their Protestant faith. Some years later, a number of them, including Gillis van Coninxloo, moved to Amsterdam. Protestant artists worked in Frankenthal in a reformed environment, which was naturally reflected in the subjects they chose to paint. That is certainly the case with this drawing. The Prophet Hosea opposed what he saw as abuses in the field of worship, making him a symbolic precursor of early Protestant leaders.
      Gillis van Coninxloo is viewed as an innovator in Flemish landscape painting. Above all, he represents the transition from the Mannerist to the Baroque landscape. The watercolor of the prophet Hosea is still done entirely in his early Mannerist style. Van Coninxloo went on to master and develop a variety of styles in his life. His influence on his contemporaries was crucial, and was felt by both Flemish and Dutch painters. In many ways, he helped Northern Netherlandish art embark on its search for a new, distinct identity.
Landscape (24x19cm)
^ Died on 24 January 1920: Amadeo Modigliani, Italian Expressionist painter, sculptor, and draftsman born on 12 July 1884.
— While he is acknowledged to be one of the major artists of his generation, he was not as experimental and daring as his contemporaries. The direction of Picasso’s work, for instance, changed radically between 1906 and 1909 as a result of the influence of Cézanne and other styles of art (notably African), but Modigliani’s assimilation of these sources had no such far-reaching consequences. Given Modigliani’s limited subject-matter in painting and sculpture, he achieved an extraordinary range of psychological interpretations of the human face, maintaining his individuality through his distinctive elongations of face or form.
— Modigliani was born in Leghorn, of Jewish descent. Modigliani studied in Venice and Florence and arrived in Paris in 1906. Without associating himself with any particular group or movement, Modigliani took what he wanted from the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, African sculpture, the Fauves, Cubism and other experimental work of Picasso and Braque. More decisive was his meeting with Brancusi; and between 1910 and 1913 it was sculpture that absorbed him. Forced to give this up because the dust thrown off by the chisel damaged his lungs, already weakened by disease, Modigliani applied many sculptural effects in his portraits and nudes, particularly the characteristic elongation of the head, the long raised ridge of the nose and the long neck. The legend of his life as a Montparnasse eccentric - handsome, poor, proud, amorous and drugged or drunk - was cultivated by his literary friends, especially after his genuinely tragic death at 35. The legend ignores his intense concentration on his painting in his last years.
— Modigliani developed a unique style. Today his graceful portraits and lush nudes at once evoke his name, but during his brief career few apart from his fellow artists were aware of his gifts. Modigliani had to struggle against poverty and chronic ill health, dying of tuberculosis and excesses of drink and drugs at the age of 35. In 1906, Modigliani settled in Paris, where he encountered the works of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Rouault, and Pablo Picasso (in his "blue period") and assimilated their influence, as in The Jewess (1908). The strong influence of Paul Cézanne's paintings is clearly evident, both in Modigliani's deliberate distortion of the figure and the free use of large, flat areas of color.
      His friendship with Constantin Brancusi kindled Modigliani's interest in sculpture, in which he would continue his very personal idiom, distinguished by strong linear rhythms, simple elongated forms, and verticality. Head (1912) and Caryatid (1914) exemplify his sculptural work, which consists mainly of heads and, less often, of full figures. After 1915, Modigliani devoted himself entirely to painting, producing some of his best work. His interest in African masks and sculpture remains evident, especially in the treatment of the sitters’ faces: flat and masklike, with almond eyes, twisted noses, pursed mouths, and elongated necks. Despite their extreme economy of composition and neutral backgrounds, the portraits convey a sharp sense of the sitter's personality, as in Moise Kisling (1915). A fine example of Modigliani's figure paintings is a Reclining Nude (1917), an elegant, arresting arrangement of curved lines and planes as well as a striking idealization of feminine sexuality.
— The third great “outsider” among the émigrés in Paris died all too soon. Modigliani destroyed himself through drink and drugs, driven desperate by his poverty and bitterly ashamed of it. Modigliani was a young man of fey beauty, and his work has a wonderful slow elegance that is unusual, but compelling. Through the influence of the Rumanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, he fell under the spell of primitive sculpture, especially from Africa. He went on to develop a sophisticated, mannered style built upon graceful, decorative arabesques and simplified forms. It is hard for us to imagine why it did not attract patrons. He is famous now for his elegant, elongated nudes, but it is his portraits that are the most extraordinary.

LINKS
Self-Portrait
(1919)
The Boy (1918) Jean Cocteau Jeune Bonne
— Deux CyprèsSeated Woman with Child
(1919, 130x81cm)
Chaim Soutine Sitting at a Table (1917; 91x60cm) Soutine, whose own art was so off-beat, appeals to Modigliani for what he is bodily and for what he could become spiritually. Soutine rears up out of the frame like a gawky pillar. His nose is brutish in its spread, his eyes asymmetrical, his hair a shaggy mess. All this uncouthness is contrasted by his slender wrists and hands, by an impression we have of a man yearning for a homeland, set upon forming one out of his own substance if no place is provided. There is sadness here, but also determination: the thick red mouth is resolutely closed.
the Painter Manuel Humbert (1916) — Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz (1916)
Female Nude (1916) — Red Nude (Nude on a Cushion) (1917)
Max Jacob (1916, 73x60cm) — Cypress (60x45cm)
The Cellist (1909; 800x637pix, 110kb)
— a slightly different version of The Cellist (1909, 130x80cm, 1070x647pix, 96kb)
Diego Rivera I (1914; 1114x898pix, 244kb) holding his breath? blue in the face.
Diego Rivera II (1914; 1116x805pix, 152kb) sleepy-eyed, pursing his lips.
Diego Rivera III (1914; 1114x927pix, 324kb) round headed.
228 images at Webshots
^ Born on 24 January 1915: Robert Motherwell, US Abstract Expressionist painter who died on 17 July 1991.
— Born in Aberdeen, grew up in San Francisco, studied at Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles 1926-1929, California School of Fine Arts, SF, graduate of Stanford University, attended Harvard and Columbia; taught at Hunter College in New York City 1951-1959. Married Helen Frankenthaler 1958.
— In 1940, a young painter named Robert Motherwell came to New York City and joined a group of artists — including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and Franz Kline — who set out to change the face of US painting. These painters renounced the prevalent US style, believing its realism depicted only the surface of US life. Their interest was in exploring the deeper sense of reality beyond the recognizable image. Influenced by the Surrealists, many of whom had emigrated from Europe to New York, the Abstract Expressionists sought to create essential images that revealed emotional truth and authenticity of feeling.
      Robert Motherwell was the youngest and most prolific of the group. Born in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1915, Motherwell first hoped to be a philosopher. His studies at Stanford and Harvard brought him into contact with the great US philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who first challenged him with the notion of abstraction. What he took from Whitehead was the sense that abstraction was the process of peeling away the inessential and presenting the necessary. After moving to New York and becoming acquainted with a number of artists, Motherwell recognized in them similar desires. Kurt Seligmann [20 Jul 1900 – 02 Jan 1962] was a teacher of Motherwell.
      Living in Greenwich Village, he became part of an exciting group of young artists. Forming a community and living on what little they had, the Abstract Expressionists made daring experiments in painting and in the intellectual investigations surrounding it. Their break with the traditional art conventions often provoked the harshest criticism from the establishment. Despite this, these early years were an incredibly productive period for Motherwell—seeing him experiment in a range of media, from painting to collage. His work often expressed the actions of the artist through dramatic and bright brush strokes. Valued for their energetic imagery, they attempted a pure emotional response made real in paint. His collage also concerned itself with an awareness of the presence of the artist in a work. Using torn paper on minimalist backgrounds, he created work that was at once discordant and lyrical.
      Beyond his individual efforts as an artist, Motherwell played a major role in the intellectual and artistic development of the underground New York art world of the time. Reflecting on those early years, he spoke of their belief that "if the abstraction, the violence, the humanity was valid in Abstract Expressionism, then it cut out the ground from every other kind of painting." It was this revolutionary sensibility that determined both his life and his art. This work, however, grew not simply from a desire to present a new US art form, but a need to express the major human themes in paint. Like the great masters, Motherwell’s importance can be seen in his attempts at expressing something monumental.
      With the advent of Pop Art and its concentration on popular culture themes, the art public began to long for the idealism of the Abstract Expressionists. In relation to Andy Warhol’s soup cans, Motherwell's large abstract paintings began to achieve a majesty in the public eye. Motherwell’s politics and spirituality were welcome reminders of a time when one could make art that did not engage the cynicism of a post-modern era. No longer the black sheep of the art world, Motherwell began to enjoy the fruits of years of dedicated work. It seemed, however, for many of the Abstract Expressionists that the newly found appreciation could not counteract the turbulence of those early years—many dying young or taking their own lives. Though somewhat alone, Motherwell committed himself to producing highly experimental work of emotional depth for the rest of his life. On July 16, 1991, at the age of 76 he died: the last of the great Abstract Expressionists. From the 1949 painting, At Five in the Afternoon, until the end of his life, Motherwell continued his search for a personal and political voice in abstraction. This search produced a body of work that remains a testament to the human soul and its persistence, and to the genre of abstract painting out of which it came.

LINKS
je t'aime No. 2 (1955) — Hermitage (1975) — CapriccioUntitled (1974)
Untitled, fourth plate from the portfolio Ten Works x Ten Painters (1964, 56x41cm)
Untitled (1966) — Automatism A (1966)
Elegy to the Spanish Republic #34 (1954, 203x254cm) _ Robert Motherwell was associated with a group of artists in the late 1940s and 1950s in New York who are now referred to as Abstract Expressionists. The term, although they did not like it, aptly describes their painting: abstract (usually to the point of being completely nonobjective), and an attempt to express feelings and moods through these abstract forms. Influenced both by current trends in modern European art (especially Surrealism, which focused on dreams and the unconscious), and the devastation of World War II, the Abstract Expressionists developed the first artistic movement that was completely American in origin. With Abstract Expressionism, the center of the art world shifted from Paris to New York. Representational art was no longer believed to be an adequate expression of the mood of the times. The Abstract Expressionists chose instead to use color, line, and texture for purely expressive purposes. Because of the extremely personal nature of the style, each artist’s work is distinct, based in part on their individual goals. Motherwell wanted to combine the conscious world (the world in which we live) with the unconscious; he thus linked many of his abstract forms to the conscious world through his titles. Motherwell painted more than one hundred works in the series "Elegy to the Spanish Republic." Each image in the series contains black, vertically oriented elements alternating with ovoid forms, and refers to the Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, leaving fascist dictator Francisco Franco in power. Motherwell began the series in 1948, almost a decade after the war’s end, but recalled "I was twenty-one in 1936, and that was the most moving political event of the time." Motherwell’s studies in philosophy, psychoanalytic theory, and aesthetics (Stanford, 1932-36; Harvard, 1937-38; Columbia, 1940) are reflected in many aspects of the "Elegy" series. For example, the black-and-white contrasts that dominate the image could refer to night and day, death and life, and oppression and freedom. This last interpretation is underscored by the colors in the background, those of the flag of the Spanish Republic, which are being blotted out by the black forms in the foreground. Although Motherwell stated that the "Elegies" are not political, he did say that they were his "private insistence that a terrible death happened that should not be forgot." There is a tinge of nostalgia for a lost cause in these images, and the use of the term elegy emphasizes this sense of loss and death. An elegy is a short funeral song or lament—slow, meditative, and mournful. The rhythm of an elegy could be compared to the type of rhythm seen in the black forms moving slowly and solemnly across the canvas, marking the death of freedom for the Spanish people.
+ ZOOM IN +Elegy to the Spanish Republic # 57 (1960, 213x274cm) [image >] _ The youngest member of the group of artists who founded the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York in the 1940s, Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) was also an active writer and editor of writings on art, and was greatly influenced by poetry, philosophy (which he studied at Stanford University) and, in the case of his Spanish Elegyseries, politics. Though a relatively small part of Motherwell's total output, the Spanish Elegies are the best known works of Motherwell's career and constitute one of the most ballyhooed meditations of modern art on a political theme since Picasso's incomparably superior Guernica.
      The origin of imagery for the Spanish Elegies is in Motherwell's 1948 black-and-white illustration for a poem by Harold Rosenberg (02 Feb 1906 – 1978) in the avant-garde periodical Possibilities. After many experiments in these abstract illuminations, the pattern emerged of black vertical and oval shapes against a white backdrop. These forms were reworked over the years until they were painted in monumental scale in the late 1950s, a time of prolific and brilliant activity in Motherwell's career. Motherwell's renewal of the Elegies and the general expansion of creative effort in the late 1950s and early 1960s came in a period when any self-doubts seem to have been resolved, and the artist was moving into a prolific and brilliant phase of his mature achievements. He suddenly seemed to have realized that he was in control of forms capable of almost infinitely monumental expression. This period of dynamic creative expression resulted in the large scale, rough-textured quality and architectural framework of a number of Spanish Elegy paintings, including No. 57. This painting in particular places the action of the painting within a unique spatial enclosure.
      While the Elegies represent the central chapter in Motherwell's work, they stand out from other work in his oeuvre by the almost exclusive use of back and white, in contrast to the richer palette of his other paintings and collages. They are also distinctive in the artist's concentrated focus on a single theme—the destruction of Spanish democracy by Franco — in opposition to the range of experimentation and change that characterized most of Motherwell's career. No other single theme so preoccupied Motherwell as did the Spanish Elegies.

Died on a 24 January:

1915 Carl Haag, German painter, active in Great Britain, born on 20 April 1820. After studying in Nüremberg, he painted miniature portraits in Munich and Brussels. In 1847 he went to London to study English techniques of watercolor painting and evolved a method that he claimed achieved the ‘brilliancy of oil painting, combined with the tender-sweetness of water-colors’. From 1850 he exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours and was elected a full member in 1853. That year he was commissioned by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to paint two large and elaborate watercolors commemorating deerstalking expeditions at Balmoral in Scotland; he returned to Balmoral in 1863 and 1864.

1914 Adolf Eberle, German artist born on 11 January 1843.
by Hartinger
^ 1890 (27 Jan?) Anton Hartinger, Austrian artist born on 13 June 1806. — {Does the paucity of internet images of artwork by Hartinger heart anger provoke in you?} — Still Life with Fruit [>>>].

1849 Casparis Haanen, Dutch painter born in 1778. He was the father and art teacher of Remigius Adrianus van Haanen “Remy van Haan” [05 Jan 1812 – 13 Aug 1894].

1830 Jan Frans van Geel, Flemish sculptor born on 18 September 1756.

1665 Carel van Savoyen, Dutch artist born in 1621. — {Carel vend Savoyen? Mais qui donc l'achète?}— {Ça, voyons! On ne dit pas “savoyen” mais “savoyard”.}


Born on a 24 January:


1919 William Nelson Copley, US artist.

1878 Edmond Bille, Swiss artist who died in 1959. — {apparenté à l'inventeur des roulements?}

^ 1836 Gioacchino Toma, Italian painter who died on 12 January 1891. — {“¿Qué toma Toma?” tal vez le preguntaron cuando estaba para ganar un partido de ajedrez. Y, al contestar él: “Toma no toma más té. Toma toma mate.” A lo que replicaron: “Toma te tomaste tomate? No tenemos de pronto mate. Tómate tomate, Toma, te gustará.” y tal vez, al hacer la movida ganadora, exclamó él: “¡Ja! ¡Qué mate!”} — He was orphaned at the age of six and spent an unhappy childhood and adolescence in convents and poorhouses; these experiences would later provide subjects for his paintings. He was first taught drawing at the art school in the hospice for the poor in the Adriatic town of Giovinazzo, but in 1855 he moved to Naples, where he worked for an ornamental painter named Alessandro Fergola. In 1857 he was mistakenly arrested for conspiracy and exiled to Piedimonte d’Alife, 60 km from Naples, where he was initiated into the secret society of the Carbonari by some local liberal aristocrats who also became his first patrons. His paintings for them were mainly still-lifes, largely in the traditional Neapolitan style. On his return to Naples in 1858 he became a student at the Accademia di Belle Arti, attending the classes of Domenico Morelli, who influenced such early works as Erminia (1859). Toma fought for two years with Garibaldi in the campaign for the unification of Italy, then returned to painting, exhibiting A Revolutionary Priest at the Esposizione Nazionale in Florence in 1861. In 1862 Toma participated in the first exhibition of the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti di Napoli, showing the Children of the People, a political allegory, and Saint Peter’s Pence. His work began to treat themes, whether historical or contemporary, from a domestic, everyday viewpoint, focusing more on sentiment and psychology than on the representation of events as such. This youthful phase, influenced by the work of Filippo Palizzi, terminated with A Stern Cross-examination by the Holy Office (1864). Through it the characteristics of Toma’s mature style began to show themselves: a harsh perspective, severe composition and the use of all elements for symbolic, never merely decorative, purposes. These elements combined, in the maturer works produced up till 1880, with a control of light achieved through the modulation of cold tones. They keep his paintings from the triteness his chosen themes — derived from minor works of romantic literature — could easily have resulted in. His subtle judgement of effect is particularly evident in his second version of Luisa Sanfelice in Prison, where the drama of an incident of Neapolitan history is conveyed through the exploration of light and tone.
Biography of Luisa Fortunata de Molina Sanfelice [28 Feb 1764 – 11 Sep 1800] with images of the two versions of Toma's La Sanfelice in carcere version 1 (494x642pix, 33kb) and La Sanfelice in carcere version 2 (390x518pix, 20kb), as well as his La Sanfelice ricondatta a Napoli (397x561pix, 16kb), L'arresto di Luisa Sanfelice (639x467pix, 61kb) by Modesto Faustini, and La Sanfelice condotta in carcere (384x484pix, 31kb) by Eurisio Capocci. She had leaked to the doomed Republic of Naples the secret of a counter-revolutionary monarchist plot and, after the monarchists reconquered the city, they emprisoned and then beheaded her.
_ A Napoli c'era una giovane ed avvenente signora, che conduceva una vita brillante e salottiera all’ombra della nascente repubblica: Luisa Molina Sanfelice. Separata dal marito, viveva in un bel palazzo del centro, e tra i suoi amanti c'era uno dei figli del più ricco commerciante di Napoli, Gerardo Baccher. 34 anni, tenente di cavalleria e legittimista convinto, come tutti nella sua famiglia, era rimasto a Napoli e non aveva mai cessato di cospirare per il ritorno dei Borbone e per la fine della repubblica giacobina. Finalmente la sollevazione della città era pronta per i primi di aprile del 1799; il Cardinale Ruffo era alle porte, e la partenza delle truppe francesi diventava sempre più imminente. Gerardo Baccher decise di dare alla Sanfelice un salvacondotto che la mettesse al riparo da ritorsioni durante la sollevazione popolare, ma la donna, con estrema leggerezza, consegnò il salvacondotto al suo amante repubblicano, Fernando Ferri, che svelò immediatamente la congiura mettendo al corrente Vincenzo Cuoco ed i componenti del Comitato di Salute Pubblica. Il Baccher e tutti gli altri capi realisti furono arrestati e gettati nelle carceri del Castel Nuovo. Il Monitore Napoletano, giornale del regime, annunciò con le parole di Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel: “Una nostra egregia cittadina, Luisa Molina Sanfelice, svelò venerdì sera al governo la cospirazione di pochi non più scellerati che mentecatti… La nostra repubblica non deve trascurare di eternare il fatto ed il nome di questa illustre cittadina. Essa superiore alla sua gloria ne invita premurosamente di far pubblico chi ugualmente come lei è benemerito della patria in questa scoperta: il cittadino Vincenzo Cuoco”. La repubblica aveva ormai i giorni contati e, come spesso accade nei regimi agonizzanti, iniziarono fucilazioni e massacri indiscriminati. L’ultimo giorno di vita della repubblica, il 13 giugno, nella piazza di Castel Nuovo furono giustiziati, dopo un sommario processo che apparve ai più come una farsa, e, come scrive Benedetto Croce, “la vendetta e la crudeltà presero la maschera di una necessaria misura di rigore…”, Gennaro e Gerardo Baccher, Ferdinando e Giovan Battista La Rossa e Natale D’Angelo. Come raccontò un testimone oculare i condannati morirono intrepidamente “tutti contenti di morire per così degna causa”. Il giorno successivo Napoli era liberata, e poco dopo la Sanfelice fu arrestata e gettata in carcere. Nel mese di settembre iniziò il processo, che si concluse con la condanna a morte promulgata il 13 del mese. Due giudici furono a favore ed uno, Antonio della Rossa, contrario: il 29 settembre la sventurata donna fu portata all’ultimo supplizio, ma uno stratagemma le permise di ritardare l’esecuzione per poi ottenere la grazia, si dichiarò incinta. “La sorte fu più benigna a Vincenzo Cuoco e Ferdinando Ferri”, dice Croce, ed è quanto meno paradossale. Ebbero entrambi una condanna all’esilio. I giudici vollero punire nella donna quel che causò con il suo leggero comportamento, più che il reato vero e proprio. Ferri, ma anche il Cuoco e lo stesso successore di Ferri alle Finanze nel 1847, furono in gioventù tutti giacobini. Luisa Sanfelice fu l’ultima dei condannati a morte ad essere giustiziata, quando fu evidente la falsità della sua gravidanza e quando il vecchio Baccher, che si era visto togliere due figli, si recò a Palermo dal Re chiedendo che la giustizia avesse il suo corso: l’11 settembre 1800 veniva decapitata in Piazza Mercato. Vincenzo Cuoco morirà pazzo nel 1823 e Ferdinando Ferri, dopo una lunga carriera come magistrato della Corte dei Conti, fu nominato ministro nel 1841 alla morte di Giovanni d’Andrea, e morirà novantenne nel 1857. Certo egli fu, dopo la restaurazione, uomo onesto e probo tanto che si trovano addirittura i nomi dei suoi figli nelle già povere liste di sussidiati da Francesco II e dalla Regina Maria Sofia dall’esilio. Fino alla caduta del Regno nel 1860 si parlò e si scrisse rispettosamente della Sanfelice come di una sventurata, ma dopo iniziò una sorta di “trasformazione della sventura nella gloria… ed il suo nome cadde in balia degli scrittori di propaganda politica”. (Parole di Benedetto Croce).

Trees by Fra Bartolommeo^ 2001

This Study of tree and two saplings, by Baccio Della Porta “Fra Bartolommeo” [1472-1517], in black chalk and brown wash, goes on auction at Christies. Is is expected to sell for close to $200'000.

     It is one of ten studies depicting single trees which survived from the artist's studio and represent the earliest known evidence in the history of western art of an artist sketching outdoors.

      These studies are an integral part of the celebrated series of landscape drawings excecuted in pen and brown ink depicting views of Dominican holdings in the vicinity of Florence.

      The tree studies however often vary from the larger views in spirit and technique. While half of them are drawn like the landscapes in pen and brown ink, the present sheet is executed in Fra Bartolommeo's preferred medium: black chalk. It could have been sketched by the artist at any time during his career.

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