Refined painting that refers to Sir Alma Tadema's painting depicting a meeting between friends inside an elegant Pompeian patio overlooking the sea. The two girls are dressed in "Roman peplos", at their feet a tiger skin that underlines the youthful and disheveled atmosphere of the scene. Behind the two protagonists there is a beautiful sculptural group, also female, which portrays two women intent on confiding.
Oil on canvas.
Italy - 1920 (approx.)
Measurements: Height cm. 101 Width cm 69
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, born Lourens Alma Tadema, Dutch painter. Born in Dronrijp on January 8, 1836 and died in Wiesbaden on June 25, 1912. His body rests in a crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
Trained in Belgium at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp (Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten van Antwerpen), from 1870 until his death he settled in England. The mid-19th century, thanks to archaeological missions, brought back into vogue the taste for ancient civilizations: the Greeks and Egyptians (already before with Winckelmann and the Napoleonic campaigns), Rome and the Pompeian world with the discoveries in Herculaneum and surroundings. Alma-Tadema could not fail to notice this antiquity that was coming back to light. He became one of the most famous painters of the late 19th century in Great Britain and considered one of the most influential Victorian painters.
He married Marie-Pauline Gressin in the town hall of Antwerp. Nothing is known about their meeting. They spent their honeymoon in Florence, Rome, Naples and Pompeii. This, his first visit to Italy, developed his interest in representing the life of ancient Greece and Rome, especially the latter since he found new inspiration in the ruins of Pompeii, which fascinated and inspired much of his work in the coming decades. Widowed with two daughters to raise, Alma-Tadema in 1871 married an English noblewoman, Laura Epps, who lent her features to various paintings.
Two years later he became fully British, in 1876 he entered the Royal Academy, in 1899 he was made a knight and in 1907 he had the honor of the Order of Merit. Furthermore, the knowledge of the Pre-Raphaelites influenced his painting where he made significant changes to his pictorial palette, even to the consistency of the brushstrokes. With his second wife they made a trip to the Continent that lasted five and a half months and took them through Brussels, Germany and Italy. In Italy he returned to visit the antiquities of Rome and Pompeii and this time acquired several photographs, mostly of the ruins, starting his immense collection of sheets sufficient for a large documentation used for the completion of future paintings. In January 1876, he rented a studio in Rome. The family returned to London in April, visiting the Parisian salon on the way back. For over sixty years he gave his audience exactly what they wanted: distinctive and elaborate paintings of beautiful people in classical settings. His incredibly detailed reconstructions of ancient Rome, with languid men and women posed against white marble in the dazzling sunlight, famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, with languid figures set in fabulous marble interiors or in a background of dazzling sea and blue Mediterranean sky seen from the houses of Pompeii
Already at the time critics defined his paintings as a sort of museum, a gallery of perfectly delineated archaeological objects, in tune with the antiquarian and collecting culture of the time, expressed in private homes and artists' studios, full of originals, copies of masterpieces and decorative minutiae of all kinds and genres. Alma-Tadema's great skill and originality is vigorously revealed in the rendering of materials: precious and refined objects, refined fabrics of which he manages to render the consistency and quality with surprising virtuosity.
Stunning scenographies of shining marbles form the background to his creations, a sort of spectacular and ideal setting in which the artist's precious visions come to life.
Sensuality and pleasantness animate Alma-Tadema's painting, which shuns the representation of violent images, even those handed down from antiquity. With ancient clothes he dresses and ennobles Victorian society, with all the splendor of the residences, the refined elegance of women's clothing, the allusive enigmaticity of apparently normal family ménages.
