FNetti

The Levantine Embroiderers, 1886

Oil on canvas, cm 86x113

Signed on the lower right «FNetti»

Conversàno, MUSeCo Polo Museale

Francesco Netti took long time to make this painting: in 1886, he began to work on it, but in 1887 was forced to stop, because of a family bereavement, which gave rise to the elaboration of the work The crisis, that faced a really different theme, the death.

However, both of them seem very close in terms of composition. In fact, the design of the window, in both has a precise function: screen the space in favor of the development of the scene in the foreground. Even the opening of the tent in a central point is the same, to guide the gaze in depth.

With this painting, Netti comes to the end of the Orientalist phase, in which the Mediterranean light converges, which warms the surfaces and gives softness to the forms; a lightening of the palette that began at Fontainebleau and is enriched with new colours, now, that emerge thanks to a preciously golden brightness.