For a long time, Italian art between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was branded as belated provincialism, due to the insistence on the themes of rural realism and popular subjects, often approached with an anecdotal approach. A perspective, this, which has inevitably relegated to the shadow of oblivion many of those painters and sculptors who, even if they did not make innovative contributions to the national artistic scene, interpreted a repertoire then perceived as of considerable interest. Today we are witnessing a phase of study and rediscovery of these personalities, above all in consideration of the documentary value of their research and the attraction it had on the international market of the time.

Among the Italian regional schools, the Abruzzo was among the most lively and productive. [1] Historically, it is considered, in a certain sense, a branch of the Neapolitan school, with which it shared an adherence to truth with a sentimental streak and a special attention to the rendering of light in the landscape. Since its establishment in 1752, the Royal Institute of Fine Arts of Naples had trained artists coming from a very vast geographical area: that of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which in 1861 also included the area currently corresponding to the region of 'Abruzzo.

It can be said that the Abruzzo school was born with the Palizzi painter brothers, all trained at the Neapolitan institute: Giuseppe, Filippo, Nicola and Francesco Paolo. It was Giuseppe, the eldest, who opened the path of painting to his brothers, who followed him first to Naples for an apprenticeship, then to France, where he moved as early as 1844 to remain there all his life. There the artist fully expressed his vocation as a landscape painter by sharing the research of the protagonists of the Barbizon School, with whom he was always in close contact. Filippo, however, abandoned the institute to attend the Free School of Giuseppe Bonolis, an artist - also from Abruzzo - who had opened a private school in opposition to the teachings of the Academy. Remaining constantly in contact with his older brother Giuseppe, now active in France, he approached French painting and its protagonists, in particular the Barbizon school. In 1861 he founded the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti of Naples with Morelli and Smargiassi, where he began to exhibit mainly animal-themed paintings, an iconographic genre of which he became one of the most appreciated interpreters, even outside national borders. The influence of the Barbizonniers and Courbet is revealed in his painting through the rendering of the contours of the shapes, which tend to become increasingly blurred to leave the task of defining the image to the colour. He then returned to the academic field in 1868, when he was entrusted with teaching: although his teaching activity lasted just a dozen years - in 1880 he resigned to take over the direction of the Industrial Artistic Museum, which he himself had founded two years earlier with Gaetano Filangeri and Domenico Morelli – there were numerous students who absorbed his French-inspired realism. Among these also Francesco Paolo Michetti, stationed in Naples since 1867: the young man, however, soon surpassed Palizzan realism, assimilating the technique of modern painters who had the opportunity to study live in Paris, where he stayed in his youth, achieving great success of the market. The clamor aroused among critics - and more generally in the world of culture, if we think of the special relationship with Gabriele d'Annunzio - with the masterpieces presented at national and international exhibitions led him to establish himself, still very young, as one of the most influential. Among the various artists over whom he exerted his influence, it is worth mentioning Alfonso Muzii from Pescara. The painter was little younger than Michetti: yet, from the moment he began to attract public attention at national exhibitions, critics clearly highlighted the debt of his painting towards that of Micheletti. «Alfonso Muzii is a young artist from Abruzzo» - we read in the “Illustrazione Popolare” of 15 April 1888, commenting on the reproduction of one of his paintings - «whose broad style and the power to imprint lineage characters in the heads, demonstrate immediately a good follower of Francesco Paolo Michetti." [2]

The fascination exercised by Abruzzo popular culture and its myths materialized, in the first decade of the twentieth century, in an all-round interest that involved both literature and anthropology: hence the success of the pavilion dedicated to Italian ethnography at the 1911 International Exhibition in Valle Giulia, an event that contributed to injecting new life into the interest in applied arts and in particular in traditional rural ceramics.

Also with regards to painting, although the languages from beyond the Alps had now penetrated the Italian artistic scene and taste was inexorably changing, Micheletti's figuration continued to profoundly influence the new generations of artists. Think, for example, of the Roman Camillo Innocenti: before arriving at the worldly imagery that gave him international fame, the artist experimented for a long time with Abruzzo subjects, obtaining, among other things, important recognition. In 1905 he won the gold medal at the Venice Biennale, on the proposal of the Irish-born English painter John Lavery, for the large painting Sui monti (Budapest, Szépművészeti Múzeum); and again in 1913, on the occasion of the retrospective at the prestigious Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris, the Musée d'Orsay purchased the painting Cortège nuptial dans les Abruzzes.

Michetti's painting constituted the starting point for the research of another interesting figure in the history of twentieth-century Roman art: Emilia De Divitiis, known for having been the only pupil of the Abruzzo native. The artist inherited from the master the realistic approach to figuration derived from the study of the photographic medium, sometimes emulating it, in certain technical and compositional solutions, in such a faithful way as to confuse contemporary collecting. His is, in chronological order, only the latest personality of a large group of artists to be rediscovered, with a wide-ranging study that takes stock of the role played between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by Abruzzo art - by origin or inspiration - without prejudice of any kind.

Manuel Carrera

December 2023

[1] For further information on the topic, see P. Del Cimmuto, P. Di Felice, I. Valente (eds.), Il vero e il sentimento: Abruzzo e abruzzesi nella pittura dell’Ottocento, Ascoli Piceno 2016.