WTI Magazine #48    2014 November, 26
Author : Enrico De Iulis      Translation by:

It is amazing how in just a century the habits of part of the Italian society have so radically changed. In Palazzo Zabarella in Padua continues the amazing exhibition of the artists of the nineteenth century that most were close to the frantic novelty of the belle epoque. This time the exhibition is about Vittorio Corcos, excellent painter famous throughout his career for being, together with Boldini, De Nittis and Zandomenighi, the painter of the upper class and nobility.

There are many common elements among these painters, but for sure the more evident matrix shared between them is the attention to the Parisian fashion, in all its forms: stylistic, social, and technical. But if in the coeval Paris this type of testimony had been taken over by the Impressionists, with new coloristic techniques, in Italy was still alive the desire to celebrate the social status, the class and the political position.

Thus, a particular version of the painting of the end '800 was born, combining the attention to frivolous fashion and accessories together with the aestheticized portrait of representation, relegating to the background the condemning approach always alive and well present in the Parisians Impressionists' representations of social events.

In Corcos the high society becomes alive and fervent; but compared to the opulence of the urban portrait of Boldini and De Nittis, the faces of Corcos say more: they don't complaint but they tell, immortalizing a rare depth of soul, especially in portraits of women, leading the viewer to a silent dialogue with the retracted, often using empathy to get in sync with her.

Vittorio Corcos was born in Livorno in 1859, and after a training that saw him very attentive to the colors of the Neapolitan school, he frequented the brilliant Domenico Morelli: right on his suggestion Corcos went to Paris in 1880, where he cemented a lasting collaboration with the art dealer preferred by the French upper middle class, Adolphe Goupil.

After six years, with a valuable experience and a reputation that preceded him of being a portrait painter that beautifies the subjects, Corcos came back to Italy. It is no coincidence that his male portraits remain with a martial aura although immersed in the financial and diplomatic field, while in the female portraits emerges the exaltation of luxury, beauty and aesthetics of women's belle epoque, true engine of that hectic period of cultural vibration and of sophisticated luxury.

He retracts countesses, wives of ambassadors, famous actresses like Lina Cavalieri: beauty specimens for the time, sophisticated, eccentric, capable of weaving solid social networks that does not allow their husbands' failure while allowing these women to shine and show their power. Even the not perfect features or the less graceful connotations were refined thanks to softer and smoother application of color.

But the Corcos masterpiece that will be always remembered is "Sogni" (Dreams), where a young woman is portrayed on a bench, looking straight at the viewer and with a few book next to her. "Eyes say it all" always said Vittorio Corcos, "and when they are good, the portrait is almost done". In "Sogni", there is a whole world in the eyes of the woman, a world with whom you can communicate in silence for hours.