Description
Pietro Bardellino
Naples 1728 - Naples 1806
Pair of paintings: Allegories of the elements
Oil on canvas
cm 125x93
In perfect condition, these overdoors with allegorical themes appear to us as a remarkable, as well as among the most enjoyable, result of Neapolitan painting from the last twenty years of the eighteenth century. Their re-emergence allows us to rethink a very articulated (and delicate) phase of the figurative culture of the Bourbon period, torn between local resistances and foreign pressures.
We are referring to the years of the so-called Neoclassicism and the spread, from Naples to Rome, of the fashion of the Antique, although this, and much more, the six brawny putti (engaged in posing, doing all sorts of things, between animals and vases of flowers) do not seem to notice. In any case, that blond boy with rosy cheeks, intent on riding and trying to tame the goat, as if he were doing a rodeo, is not at all worried!
The two ovals constitute among the most important additions to the mature corpus of this leading Neapolitan master who, according to biographical data, endured the effort, working assiduously throughout the second half of the century until the early years of the next. Thus, Bardellino, who has one foot in the nineteenth century, belongs to the full Bourbon age and the Napoleonic season in Naples.
The destination as overdoors in a patrician palace justifies the rather low point of view.
From the critical essay by Prof. Stefano Causa
The painting is accompanied by:
Expertise Prof. Stefano Causa
Dimensions
cm 125x93
Provenance
Private collection
Conditions
Defects and restorations.
