Collection

Tivoli Costumes

Bartolomeo Pinelli

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-1740
Author: Bartolomeo Pinelli
Name: Tivoli Costumes
Date of creation: 1816
Technique: etching watercolor
Material: paper
Dimensions (height x width, cm): 10.2 x 16.3

Additionally

Type: graphic art
Genre: genre art
Provenance: Collection of Faina Tarashchanska (Lviv), 1966

Information about author

Author: Bartolomeo Pinelli
Artist's lifetime: 1781–1835
Biography: Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781, Rome – 1835, ibid.) was an Italian painter, engraver, and sculptor. He was a son of the ceramist J. B. Pinelli. Bartolomeo Pinelli was born in Trastevere district (over the River Tiber). Street sketches of that western suburb of Rome repeatedly appeared in his graphic works later. He studied in Bologna, later on – at Accademia di San Luca (Academy of Saint Luke) in Rome. He attended the studio of Felice Giani, an Italian painter of the Neoclassic style, from whom he inherited the style of drawing. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Bartolomeo Pinelli took an interest in the engravings of the Renaissance, namely in the works by Marcantonio Raimondi, and started making etchings and lithographs out of his drawings. In 1809, Pinelli created his first series of watercolor etchings – Collection of 50 picturesque costumes (Raccola di cinquanta costumi pittoreschi). The album was reissued in 1814 and 1815. In 1816, a new version of the album under the title Nuova Raccolta di Cinquanta costumi pittoreschi incisi di acqua forte was released. Most of Lviv's engravings are from this series. The main theme of the artist's creative work is genre scenes (Costumi), which he saw in Rome, Naples, as well as the provinces of Abruzzo and Molise. Pinelli's engravings have not only artistic value but also important ethnographic information. In the 1820s and 1830s, the artist created drawings and engravings for poems by Torquato Tasso (1827–1829) and the novel “Don Quixote” (1834) by Miguel de Cervantes. One of Pinelli's famous series of drawings is Seven Hills of Rome (Sette colli di Roma) (1827–1830). The artist's works are housed in many Italian museums as well as in collections of other countries.

Object description

This work is from the Roman series. The first version of the composition is known from the album Raccolta di cinquanta costumi pittoreschi... published in 1809. The architectural background and clothing of the first version of the composition is worked out in more detail in contrast to the "Lviv" engraving. The second version of the composition is known from the album Costumi di Tivoli published in 1815. In that engraving, new characters appeared, and the architectural background was presented differently. A variant similar to the "Lviv" one was issued in the album Nuova Raccolta di Cinquanta costumi pittoreschi) (Collection of fifty picturesque costumes) published by Giovanni Scudellari in Rome in 1817. The "Lviv" engraving belongs to the third simplified version, in which less attention is paid to details. In the foreground of the composition, one can see a young woman sitting in a chair in the center and lifting up a swaddled baby who is joyfully opening its arms in front of the mother's face. Two young men dressed in traditional clothing (wide-brimmed hats, jackets, vests, knee-length pants, stockings, and shoes with overlays) are looking carefully at a happy woman (apparently their wife and sister). A very young girl is standing a little bit distantly on the left. The composition is outlined by the walls of the buildings, and its background is the crowns of trees in the distance as well as the mountain top. The images of the walls are complemented by a fragment of a door on the left and a stump of a cut tree on the right. The clothes of the characters are painted with bright watercolor paints, namely red, blue, yellow, and pink ones. The background is depicted in blurred blue and green tones. Tivoli is a city in the Lazio region northwest of Rome. It is known for remnants of ancient architecture.

Inscriptions

In the lower left corner there is the author’s signature Pinelli f [fecit] written in italics, date – 1816, and the place of performance – Roma (illegibly). In the center of the engraving under the image there is the work’s title Costumi di Tivoli. There is a number "34" in the upper right corner above the plate.

Tivoli Costumes

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