This is Francesco Netti

Runs, hops, kicks, flees, flies. Join together a cloud, a spinning top, a greyhound, an arrow, a bird and you will have Francesco Netti.

How old is he?

Her models say she's twenty.

His important pictures say he is forty. His hair, curly and fluttering but few, say he's sixty.

Of course, his passions are youthful.

He prefers beer to water, beauty to ugliness, wakefulness to sleep, sofa to bed, extemporaneousness to pondering, courage to prudence, night to day.

And by day he belongs more to others than to himself. During the day he belongs to everyone.

When, running, hopping, tripping, fleeing, flying, he comes home late and in the nocturnal shadows his air-inflated clothes no longer seem to contain his stunted body, it is almost thought that he has left the pulp to all his many friends as if to give them, as a sign of affection, self-denial and deference, even a particle of his person…

Roberto Bracco, 1892

IN EVIDENCE