International studio (59.1916)

A Note on Mancini


SELF-PORTRAIT

BY MANCINI

explain what happened. Another
might have looked through the vast
palace, exclaimed, made a sketch or
two, and gone back to Paris and
its student life. Not so Bittinger.
He went back to Paris, but only
to pack his painting traps. The
beauty of the palace of Versailles,
gorgeous, yet in its untenanted con-
dition sombre, at first overwhelmed
then filled him with a steady en-
thusiasm. For two years Bittinger
with undiminished joyfulness and
painstaking patience lived and
painted among the glories of Ver-
sailles. It was an extraordinary
thing for a young painter to at-
tempt, a still more extraordinary
thing to succeed with. But Bit-
tinger, as has been said, is deeply
sensitive to the outward forms of
beauty. In painting the interiors
of Versailles, he was moved by no
interest in history nor by historic
ornament. He simply painted the
things he saw for the beauty which
lay in them. The veined marble
of a mantelpiece, the iridescent
shimmer of a crystal chandelier,
the exquisite chiselling on a metal
mount, the tints of a piece of tap-
estry in a chair back, each beauty is after its
own kind, subordinate only to the beauty of the
whole. All this beauty of form, colour and tex-
ture Bittinger has felt and has faithfully, even
lovingly, presented.
Besides the Versailles series, Bittinger has
painted some of the distinguished interiors in
America. He has painted the blue room of the
White House and the Library of the University
Club, richly decorated by H. Siddons Mowbray.
As an exhibitor at the Academy from year to
year he is best known for his “intime” subjects,
such as The Cretonne Boudoir and Isabel.
^^NOTE ON MANCINI
The catholic taste of the smaller mu-
seums is being more and more demonstrated in
the choice of their permanent exhibits. Minne-
apolis, in its short existence, has acquired paint-
ings and other objects of art of a high standard

of excellence that would not have been tolerated
by museum trustees of a few years ago. The
same can be said of Cleveland, St. Louis, Wor-
cester and that excellent collection of old and
modern masters in the Hackley Gallery. Every
evidence of this increasing demand for the best
in art is shown in the recent acquisition by the
Detroit Museum of a self-portrait in pastel by
Mancini. The dominating note in the work of
this Italian is emotion and in this almost super-
aesthetic state he will resort to any technical
means to obtain to overflowing the result of his
impression.
Although in this portrait Mancini has re-
frained from unusual technical expediences,
partly due no doubt to the limitation of the
medium of pastel, it is a veritable masterpiece in
passionately quivering yet subjective rendering.
From a colour extraordinarily individual in tech-
nique and pulsating with life, it may be called a
sketch, yet what more could be said?

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