Project Description
Vincenzo Irolli (Naples 1860 – 1949), Woman with parasol
Oil on canvas cm 35 x 27 signed (V. Irolli) lower left.
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In 1877 Irolli enrolled at the Institute of Fine Arts in Naples, where he taught Gioacchino Toma and Maldarelli. In 1878 he created the Portrait of the painter Raffaele Izzo, which arouses the curiosity of Domenico Morelli; the following year, just nineteen, at the XV Exhibition of the Promoter Salvator Rosa, he presented Felice rimembranza, with whom he won the first prize.
After completing his studies in 1880, he began to paint intensely, inspired by the paintings of Morelli and Michetti, in a palette rich in strong chromatic lightings. He creates landscapes, views of Venice and Naples, scenes of everyday life (often set in the markets), children, street urchins, women in mischievous attitudes (also typical of maternal scenes), sensual commoners and still lives.
This extraordinary oil, a technique often adopted by the Neapolitan painter, is particularly suited to translating Irolli’s skillful ability to alternate effects of minute and punctual optical verisimilitude with more free material depositions of color on paper, in a fantasy of bright spots and contrasts cleverly studied, it constitutes an important testimony of his brushstroke, fluid and fibrous at the same time, with local material densities, comparable to the ductus of Mancini and Michetti, tutelary deities of the audacious and magmatic technical virtuosity, elaborated by the Neapolitan painter.
The naturalness of the scene represented; the spontaneous movement, in a slight twist of the young woman protagonist; its elegance and refinement embodied by some accessories like white gloves, the fragile parasol and the delightful cap; the terrace punctuated by lightning chromatic ignitions: these are peculiar features of a painting that stands out for its compositional freshness and immediacy in the search for formal solutions that do not overlook the emotional scope of the scene. The young protagonist, emblem of the emancipated woman of the early twentieth century, looks proudly towards the distant horizon, towards the clear sky, dreaming of a bright future. Constitutes the vertex of a painting technique that is very skilled in alternating effects of minute and punctual optical verisimilitude with more free material depositions of color, in a fantasy of spots and luminous contrasts, combining, according to the personal inclination of Irolli, Neapolitan and Flemish style.
