DOI Heft:
No. 319 (October 1919)
DOI Artikel:Pica, Vittorio: A young italian engraver: Benvenuto Disertori
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21359#0038
A YOUNG ITALIAN ENGRAVER: BENVENUTO DISERTORI
“ THE FOUNTAIN FILLED WITH EARTH "
WOOD-ENGRAVING BY B. M. DISERTORI
Disertori without question belongs to
this second category of artists of more
limited inspiration but of undoubtedly
greater suggestive power. This explains
how Venice, the wonderful, only prompted
an insignificant etching, while the old
mediaeval walls of Gubbio, Perugia, and
San Gemignano provided an inexhaustible
source of inspiration for his steel-point.
This series of pictures of old Italian
cities—cities of silence, solitude, and dreams
—presented in their most typical aspects,
was first of all drawn in pen and ink on
paper and only some time later engraved
on copper. 0 0 0 0 0
To approach as much as possible the
archaic asceticism of old Italian and German
engravings in the illustrated books of the
fourteenth century, he reduced the varied
richness and sensuous beauty of his tech-
nique to its utmost degree, voluntarily
avoiding the graceful effects of chiaroscuro
32
and the charm of velvety outline. This
deliberate design to suggest old woodcuts
certainly gives an archaic stamp to each
impression of this series, which is in perfect
harmony with the spirit that inspired and
pervades it but which also possesses the
disadvantage of producing a dry and dull
monotony, which ends by tiring the on-
looker and may in time even exercise a
depressing effect upon the gifts of inven-
tion and composition of the author himself.
There lies dormant within him, however,
a little capricious libertine satyr who laughs
and mocks and is responsible for such
occasional inspirations as the little nude
Boccaccio nun, the tiny girl ensnared by a
toad, the bizarre little pocket-nymph, and
the beautiful and splendid sinner raised,
among vases of flowers and long, lighted
tapers, to the honours of an altar. 0 0
It seems to me that Benvenuto Disertori
should break free from the peculiar in-
“ THE FOUNTAIN FILLED WITH EARTH "
WOOD-ENGRAVING BY B. M. DISERTORI
Disertori without question belongs to
this second category of artists of more
limited inspiration but of undoubtedly
greater suggestive power. This explains
how Venice, the wonderful, only prompted
an insignificant etching, while the old
mediaeval walls of Gubbio, Perugia, and
San Gemignano provided an inexhaustible
source of inspiration for his steel-point.
This series of pictures of old Italian
cities—cities of silence, solitude, and dreams
—presented in their most typical aspects,
was first of all drawn in pen and ink on
paper and only some time later engraved
on copper. 0 0 0 0 0
To approach as much as possible the
archaic asceticism of old Italian and German
engravings in the illustrated books of the
fourteenth century, he reduced the varied
richness and sensuous beauty of his tech-
nique to its utmost degree, voluntarily
avoiding the graceful effects of chiaroscuro
32
and the charm of velvety outline. This
deliberate design to suggest old woodcuts
certainly gives an archaic stamp to each
impression of this series, which is in perfect
harmony with the spirit that inspired and
pervades it but which also possesses the
disadvantage of producing a dry and dull
monotony, which ends by tiring the on-
looker and may in time even exercise a
depressing effect upon the gifts of inven-
tion and composition of the author himself.
There lies dormant within him, however,
a little capricious libertine satyr who laughs
and mocks and is responsible for such
occasional inspirations as the little nude
Boccaccio nun, the tiny girl ensnared by a
toad, the bizarre little pocket-nymph, and
the beautiful and splendid sinner raised,
among vases of flowers and long, lighted
tapers, to the honours of an altar. 0 0
It seems to me that Benvenuto Disertori
should break free from the peculiar in-