DOI Heft:
No. 40 (July, 1896)
DOI Artikel:Beltrami, G.: An Italian artist: Luigi Conconi
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17297#0104
An Italian Artist
trating them in their entirety. I am convinced duces the simple elements ot terror into most of
that, if he chose, he could produce a series of his works; and when such things are incompatible
works of art of the highest interest, and could with his subject he will work them artfully into the
show us the real spirit of the age in which the angles of his frame, like a mischievous schoolboy
" Decameron " was written. playing some prank on his companions.
Another favourite theme of Conconi's is that to Paradoxical as it may seem, the fact remains
which I have already referred—La Casa del Mago, that this sort of aberration or deformity in Con-
the Magician's Home. He has illustrated this coni's mind is allied to a rare sense of beauty, and
subject in an etching and in several paintings. He to a true worship of all that is best and noblest in
takes for his scene the church of St. Vincenzo-in- womanhood. His female type—one from which
Prato, in Milan, an ancient edifice deserted for he rarely departs—is most charming in its in-
centuries past, and now turned into a chemical genuous grace and distinction; full of comely
manufactory. Conconi saw the place, and was at strength, and with the frank, pure gaze of one who
once delighted with the mysterious twilight of its knows nothing of the dark side of human life,
aisles and the weirdness of
its dark apse and crypt. In
his eyes all the vulgar appli-
ances of industry—the acid
tanks, the retorts, the stills
—were transformed into
the sinister instruments of
witchcraft; he was no longer
in the old church nave, but
in the home of some old-
world alchemist or necro-
mancer, a terrible place full
of whitened skeletons, with
screeching owls perched on
the lintels of the doors. As
I have said before, the mar-
vellous and the macabre are
Conconi's special charac-
teristics, and the curious in
this respect find every
gratification in his work.
One of his fancies takes the
form of an Orologio, or time-
piece, in which the sense of
horror is conveyed, not so
much by the skulls forming
the centre part, as by cer-
tain of the details which at
the first glance might not be
noticed. The base of the
dial on which the hands are
fixed is designed in the
shape of a coffin ; the hour
and minute hands are
formed like finger bones,
and the pendulum is a
scythe, which, in its oscil-
lations, symbolises the
inexorable reaper of lives.
In this way Conconi intro- " confidenze " from a painting by l. conconi
89
trating them in their entirety. I am convinced duces the simple elements ot terror into most of
that, if he chose, he could produce a series of his works; and when such things are incompatible
works of art of the highest interest, and could with his subject he will work them artfully into the
show us the real spirit of the age in which the angles of his frame, like a mischievous schoolboy
" Decameron " was written. playing some prank on his companions.
Another favourite theme of Conconi's is that to Paradoxical as it may seem, the fact remains
which I have already referred—La Casa del Mago, that this sort of aberration or deformity in Con-
the Magician's Home. He has illustrated this coni's mind is allied to a rare sense of beauty, and
subject in an etching and in several paintings. He to a true worship of all that is best and noblest in
takes for his scene the church of St. Vincenzo-in- womanhood. His female type—one from which
Prato, in Milan, an ancient edifice deserted for he rarely departs—is most charming in its in-
centuries past, and now turned into a chemical genuous grace and distinction; full of comely
manufactory. Conconi saw the place, and was at strength, and with the frank, pure gaze of one who
once delighted with the mysterious twilight of its knows nothing of the dark side of human life,
aisles and the weirdness of
its dark apse and crypt. In
his eyes all the vulgar appli-
ances of industry—the acid
tanks, the retorts, the stills
—were transformed into
the sinister instruments of
witchcraft; he was no longer
in the old church nave, but
in the home of some old-
world alchemist or necro-
mancer, a terrible place full
of whitened skeletons, with
screeching owls perched on
the lintels of the doors. As
I have said before, the mar-
vellous and the macabre are
Conconi's special charac-
teristics, and the curious in
this respect find every
gratification in his work.
One of his fancies takes the
form of an Orologio, or time-
piece, in which the sense of
horror is conveyed, not so
much by the skulls forming
the centre part, as by cer-
tain of the details which at
the first glance might not be
noticed. The base of the
dial on which the hands are
fixed is designed in the
shape of a coffin ; the hour
and minute hands are
formed like finger bones,
and the pendulum is a
scythe, which, in its oscil-
lations, symbolises the
inexorable reaper of lives.
In this way Conconi intro- " confidenze " from a painting by l. conconi
89