Estimate
€ 500 - 800
Sold
€ 1.280
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Information
31.7 x 47.6 cm
On the back, on the passepartout, stamp Carlo Virgilio / Drawings / 19th and 20th century / V. della Lupa, 9 - Rome.
Provenance
Literature
A pupil of the Academy of San Luca, Filippo Bigioli is one of the protagonists of Roman purism, who had achieved great technical expertise through the practice of copying the great Roman galleries. Active in the Torlonia construction sites, on papal commission he participated in the restoration of Raphael's Loggias in the Vatican and in the decoration of the basilica of San Paolo fuori le mura and created cycles of frescoes for the churches of the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini and San Rocco. His skill as a draftsman allowed him to participate in numerous and celebrated publishing ventures, carried out with "fruitfulness of imagination, [...] daring of ingenuity, [...] mastery of execution" [1] . At the end of the 1820s he had come into contact with Romualdo Gentilucci, editor and cultural promoter of Fabriano, founder of the periodical "The Italian Ape of Fine Arts", who had commissioned him some of the tables for The Vatican Described and Illustrated by Erasmo Pistolesi , published in installments between 1829 and 1838. The fruitful relationship between the two had developed over the years in important projects including Il Perfetto Leggendario , or an almanac illustrated dei santi, and in 1854 the Galleria Dantesca, a grandiose project of twenty-seven canvases, only partially made by Bigioli, to be presented with a great traveling show in the major cities of Italy and Europe. In this context, the work in question inspired by the Petrarchian Triumphs & nbsp; must also mature. It is, in fact, known that Petrarch, together with Dante and Boccaccio, had a place of honor within the romantic Pantheon. The artist gives shape to the poetic text of Triumphus Cupidinis in which it is said how the poet asleep in Vaucluse had dreamed on a spring day the passage of the triumphal chariot of Love, accompanied by a group of followers from he won, among which it was possible to recognize numerous illustrious historical, literary, mythological and biblical characters: "four destrier away more than white snow / on a chariot of fire a raw garzon / with bow in hand and with thunderbolts on his sides / contra here it is not a helmet or a shield / above the humerus it had only two great wings / of love colors, among which Jupiter, Juno, Achilles, learners and philosophers, can be known. As noted by Maria Cristina Bonagura, the format and the strongly luministic technique of the drawing suggest a preparatory table for a printed translation, placing the drawing within the publishing enterprises in which Bigioli had frequently and actively taken part thanks to the balance of his compositions, the mastery in orchestrating groups of figures and the skilful use of highlighting, which made him particularly appreciated by his contemporaries.
Teresa Sacchi Lodispoto
[1] F. Romans, Fine Arts , in “L'Album”, XIII, 1846-47, 13, pp. 178-179.