I fratelli sono al campo! Ricordo di Venezia

Etching and drypoint printed on contemporary paper, in excellent condition.

Original etching executed on copper matrix; on the plate, under the image, indication of the artist as inventor and executor, name of the printer and title. The work, valuable and involving for the intense chiaroscuro effect, is taken from one of the main Italian art magazines of the time. The image, reproducing a painting by Bianchi himself, now preserved at the Gallery of Modern Art in Milan, represents a scene inspired by the ideals of the Risorgimento: in the half-light of a church, three young women pray before the altar for their brothers who are at the battlefield. 

This is a fortunate and celebrated painting, also because of the fortunate choice of the subject, inspired by the third war of independence fought for the liberation of Venice (1866), with clear Risorgimento and patriotic subtexts evoked by the allusion to the tricolor flag in the garments of the three young girls. It was one of the works by Mosè Bianchi that his critics liked the most. The work is influenced by his youthful stay in Venice, evident in the bright and vivid colors. The fame of the "Fratelli al campo" contributed to the multiplication of versions, in the form of replicas, pseudo-sketches, variants, in different techniques, from oil to watercolor, to etching.

Influenced by the style of Faruffini and Mariano Fortuny, Moses Bianchi began with historical paintings of romantic subjects, then turned to the genre and landscape. His painting seemed very innovative, for the attention given to the atmospheric effects and for the easy technique, actually closer to that of Fortuny than to that of the impressionists. He made about seventy engraved works in which he reported what he represented in the paintings but the attention is no longer directed so much to the subject as to the chiaroscuro games.