Genre scene with bird

Antonio Rotta started his art studies at the Venetian Academy as a thirteen-year-old in 1841 in the studio of Lodovico Lipparini. In the early period, he remained under the influence of late neo-Classicist works of Lattanzio Queren. Starting from the 1860s, the painter, flattering the traditional tastes of his recipients, painted primarily anecdotal genre scenes sometimes with a slight tinge of humour or sentimentality. He preferred themes from the life of Italian people (“Venetian Fiesta”, “Three Boys With a Starling”, “House Chores”, “Hands Offering Help”, “A Cab Ride”, “Feeding of Birds”, private collections). His style manifested attraction to details ensuring evocativeness of presentations. The painter from Gorizia successfully presented his works in Verona, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Turin, as well as Berlin, Dresden and Philadelphia. The Szczecin genre scene depicting the artist’s contemporary times was painted in a realistic convention. It attracts attention by care for the details of the interior design of the house (diverse household devices, hunting gear and travelling equipment). The composition has toned-down, grey, ochre and brown tones complemented with spots of carmine red, subtle blue and deep, dark bronze. Warm golden ochre, which the painter used to underscore the light falling from above, from the left side of the composition, instils the composition with character. The light models the group of characters and is additionally used to highlight the composition. The works of Antonio Rotta, similarly to Domenico Scatolla, Antonio Paoletti or Giulio del Torre, born slightly later also in Gorizia, are an example of quite common artistic production in the 4th quarter of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. These paintings, purchased at affordable prices, usually decorated middle class homes. They also appeared in other countries acquired as souvenirs from trips to Italy.

Dariusz Kacprzak