FNetti

After the Party, 1864

Oil on canvas, cm 90x131

Signed and dated on the bottom right «FNetti 1864»

Santèramo in Colle, private collection

It is considered one of the most extraordinary and significant paintings, from this period. It deals with the theme of Carnival, really loved by Francesco Netti. However, he doesn’t represent the joy, or the thrill of the party, but chooses to fix on the canvas the moment of his abrupt interruption, the sudden end of the dance, letting the moralistic intentions of the work shine through. The party ends because of the sudden illness of Pierrot who collapsed in some chairs and cried, as if dead, at his woman not too casually dressed in black. At the bottom of the room, the guest’s crowd, giving rise to a sad procession. To attract attention, in addition to the main group, there is a small figurine, the only one who looks at the viewer: masculine in appearance, in fact, it seems to be a woman masked as débardeur. This is a costume used a lot by women at the carnival, which consists of a velvet and silk shorts, a shirt with the high band at the waist and nothing more. It refers to a work now lost entitled La débardeur, exhibited in Milan in 1861.

After the party appears stylistically close to the works that Netti will create only in the Seventies, mindful of the french heritage, on his return to Naples from his stay in Paris and could lead him to think of similar stimuli if he did not expressly see the date «1864». And yet, not in a direct way, Netti could still succumbed to the influence of a famous French artist he loved and highly esteemed, Jean-Leon Gèrôme, who realizes The duel after the dance, a scene of a duel between a Harlequin and a Pierrot surrounded by other masks, with resounding success at its presentation at the Salon of 1853.