International studio (32.1907)

The Venice Exhibition, igof

“SAND-CARRIERS” BY FRANCESCO GIOLI

would point out a clever painting by Emilio Gola,
Beside the Wharf as well as Borsa’s Winter
Evening.

Passing through the Sala Emiliana, with Majani’s
charming moonlight study Le hameau dort, and
Scattola’s Assisi, we come, in the Sala Toscana, to
the art of modern Florence. Here Luigi Gioli
comes before us with his Volterra Fair and his
clever study of horses in the Pisan plain treading
out the corn. Here, too, are Nomellini’s Love and
Leaves (p. '273), Francesco Gioli’s Sand-Carriers
(above); and near it is a sunset, very good in
colour, and a group of naked children dancing on
the Tyrrhenian strand, which he calls Youth.

In the South Italian room De Maria Bergler’s
studies of Taormina (the smaller are here the best)
and Viole are to be noted, with the work of De
Sanctis and Tafuri. And now we come to the
Venetians themselves. Dali’ Oca Bianca and De
Blaas have wandered off into the South Italian
room— the latter almost too smooth and sweet in
his Gii'ls of Campalto, the former full of piquancy
and vivacity in his Civette.

In the first Venetian Room Laurenti figures
largely with eighteen canvases. The most attractive
to- me is his Ritortio, a girl in green dress, where
the whole conception seems reminiscent of Palma
Vecchio. Laurenti is no longer among the younger
men (he was born in 1854), but is a fine and serious
artist, who has followed his art into other branches,
such as sculpture and even architecture.

In the next Venetian Room (Sala XXV.) we
shall notice the work of the three Ciardi. Beppo,
the younger Ciardi, has here a canvas full of light
in his Sourires; but personally I find myself strongly
attracted by Signorina Emma Ciardi’s Paroles
Antiques, where the terrace, with its white sculpture
and monumental cypresses, with its masked figure
from the Venice of Goldoni, has something of the
indefinable charm of the great Bocklin’s Tddteti
Lnsel. Here, too, that excellent Venetian artist
Vincenzo de Stefani, who figured well in the last
exhibition, has two paintings, a study of a young
girl in white and a beautiful sunset, The Evening
Harmony. Here, too, is Milesi’s portrait of Giosul
Carducci, the poet whom all Italy this spring has
mourned (p. 270); and here Vizzotto, in his
Sirhies, gives just the impression of a “ burrasco ”—
a squall such as sometimes comes up at short
notice on these lagoons; while Sormani (Sur le
Mole) has a quieter scene of nightfall at Venice.

Of the sculpture in these Italian rooms I need
not speak at any length. The central group in the
Roman Sala, La Vendange, with its figures of men
and a girl, is ambitious and sound in modelling.
But one of the most delightful things in the whole
exhibition is a little bronze of a dancing girl,
Printemps, by Rosales. This gem has been secured
by the State for the National Gallery at Rome.
Antonio Ugo, whose group of a peasant mother
and child (Maternite) is among our illustrations,
(p. 278) also claims notice. Ugo is a Sicilian, and

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