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Tivoli Costumes

Bartolomeo Pinelli

Basic information

ID: Г-IV-1740
Author: Bartolomeo Pinelli
Name: Tivoli Costumes
Date of creation: 1816
Technique: etching watercolour
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
Country: Italy
Biography: Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781, Rome – 1835, ibid.) was an Italian painter, engraver, and sculptor. He was the son of the ceramist G. B. Pinelli. Bartolomeo was born in the Trastevere district (over the Tiber River). He studied in Bologna and later at the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome. The artist attended the Academy of Felice Giani, an Italian painter of the Neoclassic style, from whom he adopted the drawing style. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, 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 watercolour etchings – Collection of Fifty Picturesque Costumes (Raccolta di Cinquanta Costumi Pittoreschi). The album was reissued in 1814 and 1815. In 1816, a new version of the album under the title New Collection of Fifty Picturesque Costumes (Nuova Raccolta di Cinquanta Costumi Pittoreschi incisi di acqua forte) was released. Most of the Lviv engravings are from this series. The central theme of the artist's work is genre scenes (Costumi), which he saw in Rome and Naples, as well as the provinces of Abruzzo and Molise. Pinelli's engravings are not only of artistic value but also carry 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 and 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 (Collection of Fifty Picturesque Costumes), published in 1809. The architectural background and clothing of the first version of the composition are 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 (New 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 composition's foreground, one can see a young woman sitting in a chair in the centre and lifting a swaddled baby, 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) look carefully at a happy woman (apparently their wife and sister). A very young girl is standing distantly on the left. The walls of the buildings outline the composition, and its background is the crowns of trees and the mountain top in the distance. The images of the walls are complemented by a fragment of a door on the left and a cut tree stump on the right. The characters' clothes are painted with bright watercolours, namely red, blue, yellow, and pink. 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 centre of the engraving, under the image, is the work's title Costumi di Tivoli. The number "34" is in the upper right corner above the plate.

Legal regulation

Borys Voznytskyi Lviv National Art Gallery

Tivoli Costumes

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