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Information
35.2 x 48.5 cm
signed and dated lower left: U. Prencipe - 1918
On the back, artist's signature, title and date.
Exhibition
Lucca, Fondazione Ragghianti, 2014.
Literature
Umberto Prencipe and Tuscany. Between tradition and modernity , exhibition catalog curated by T. Sacchi Lodispoto and S. Spinazzè, Lucca, Fondazione Ragghianti, 28 February - 22 June 2014, & nbsp; p. 67 n. 13.
At the end of 1914 Umberto Prencipe moved to Lucca to teach engraving in the local Institute of Fine Arts. Although the assignment lasted only one year, the artist remained in Tuscany until 1921, painting in Lucca and the Versilian countryside. Protected by mighty medieval walls, crossed by silent streets interspersed with ancient churches and austere towers, the Tuscan town appears to Prencipe as a new, precious hortus conclusus where to once again put its peculiar transfiguring sensitivity to good use . Lucca too had been included by d'Annunzio in the selected group of the twenty-six Italian cities of silence . As already in Orvieto, even in the Tuscan years, to best translate the visionary suggestion of the places and the sense of profound consonance with them, Prencipe often uses, both in painting and in engraving, nocturnal or crepuscular settings. An example is this painting dedicated to Piazza Napoleone, a motif repeated several times in 1918. Together with the other known paintings & nbsp; [1] , this is probably a study for a larger picture purchased by the Queen Mother at the Roman exhibition of Amatori e Cultori from 1919, currently lost and of which no photographs are known.
In the background of a group of tall plane trees with branches leaning towards a twilight sky, the buildings appear ghostly presences, whose sense of disquiet is amplified by the mysterious lighting of the door in the background. A ghostly semblance also assumes in the distance the monument to Maria Luisa di Borbone, rendered with quick and synthetic brushstrokes, while a strong sign of loneliness is in the presence of the empty benches in the foreground. There is also an engraving version of the motif in 1917 & nbsp; [2] , in which, thanks to the skilful use of aquatint, which softens the image in a sulphurous atmosphere, Prencipe accentuates its apparition character. these years will tend to abandon in favor of a more direct relationship with the natural data, encouraged by the climate of the Secession and by the friendships cultivated in the Tuscan years, in particular that with the painter Alceste Campriani and with the circle of artists of post Macchiaioli culture.