WOMAN - VINCENZO IROLLI

He approached painting at the age of seventeen when he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples , where his teachers were Gioacchino Toma and Federico Maldarelli . In that same year (1877) his artistic curiosity was piqued by the work Corpus Domini by Francesco Paolo Michetti exhibited at the National Exhibition in Naples. He spent his youth in his father's house in Calvizzano , often going to Naples to visit the art dealer Ragozzino, who took care of the distribution of his works. In 1878, with his Portrait of the Painter Izzo, he attracted the attention of Domenico Morelli for his use of a strong palette, and in 1879, he exhibited for the first time at the Promotrice in Naples with his work Felice Rimembranza; that same year, he won first prize at the 15th Salvator Rosa Promotrice Exhibition, an event that brought him to the attention of the general public and brought him considerable artistic and commercial success. From 1880 onwards, free from the Academy , he began his long and uninterrupted artistic career. At the Neapolitan Promotrice of 1886 he once again aroused Morelli 's admiration for his portraits of Carmine Franchi and the lawyer Monaci. He was often present at the exhibitions of the Neapolitan Promotrice Society: in 1881 with Una testa , in 1883 with Studio dal vero , in 1885 with Per l'onomastico dello zio , Impressione del contrabassista Franchi and Si diventa così , in 1891 with Primavera , in 1892 with Mezza figura . In 1887 he participated in the National Artistic Exhibition of Venice with the works Dal vero , Chiaroscuro and Studio . Later, still in Venice, he exhibited at the XIII Biennale (1922) the works Pesci , L'inascoltato , L'invito , La trapunta . In the years 1889-1890 he participated with other artists Luca Postiglione , Pietro Scoppetta , Vincenzo Volpe , Edoardo Matania , Attilio Pratella , Giuseppe Alberto Cocco, Giuseppe Casciaro , Vincenzo Caprile , Gaetano Esposito , Vincenzo Migliaro and others in the decoration of the interior of the Gambrinus Brewery in Naples. The relationship between Irolli and these artists grew even closer due to their shared tendency towards an avowedly decorative art. Irolli executed for Gambrinus the Piedigrotta panel with a girl dressed as Venus and a Cupid (in the guise of a Neapolitan street urchin) who, instead of playing thelyre , is trying his hand at a putipù . He exhibited in Munich in 1890, in Genoa and Berlin in 1892, and in Rome in 1893. In 1894 in Milan he presented Le prime mammole and Cavalleria Rusticana; again in Berlin he presented the canvas Il Natale a Napoli (which was sold for the extraordinary sum of twenty-three thousand lire and was illustrated in Modern Kunst ). In Paris , where he had already presented the works Maddalena moderna , Dolore e Consolazione in 1890, he was called to exhibit at the Salon in 1907, at the Salon d'Automne in 1909 (where the work Spannocchitrici was purchased by the Municipality for the Municipal Museum of the Champs-Élysées), again in 1909 at the Salon for the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (XIX exhibition) with Donna con Polli and Tenerezza . His success, exceptional abroad, was slow to establish itself in Italy, where he clashed with the Novecentisti . His traditionalist approach displeased him with the critics of the time, who were more interested in the avant-garde, but Irolli never made any effort to adapt his painting to the times. Indeed, he kept in his studio a painting depicting a painter intent on finishing an ugly Cubist painting, all the rage at the time, demonstrating a gentle irony towards new trends. While Le Figaro in 1908 used words like "extremely agile" and "seductive" for Irolli, Italian intellectuals (and Neapolitans in particular) considered him an artist sold out to the easy market and the patronage of the uneducated bourgeoisie. While in Paris, in the years 1910-1915, he was defined as the painter of the sun and considered excellent by Léon Talboum at the Alderéte Gallery, in Italy, in the same period, he was excluded from the Venice Biennale and, in 1929, subjected to harsh criticism by Ardengo Soffici . In 1933 Irolli organized a solo exhibition in Bari where his works were snapped up by collectors. In October 1936, at the Sacred Art Exhibition in Naples, he exhibited ten works with sacred subjects: Miraculous Draught of Fishes , The Washing of the Feet , The Healing of the Man Born Blind , The Deposition , Communion , Christ at the Tomb of Lazarus , The Virgin in Adoration , The Madonna of Aviation , The Altar Boy in Prayer , The Feast of the Redeemer , and The Feast of the Man Born Blind . Alongside religious themes, which are well represented in the Granturco collection in Naples, Irolli continued to record scenes of everyday life, portraying children and women in mischievous poses, for which he used his goddaughter Sisina as a model. Vincenzo Irolli, besides being a great artist who left his mark on Neapolitan painting in Italy and abroad, is also remembered for his high intellectual level; he was a friend and frequenter of important cultural figures, including Ferdinando Russo and Salvatore Di Giacomo . He was a member of the Polytechnic Artistic Circle of Naples. He died in his home in Capodimonte , Naples, on Via Cagnazzi (now Via Vincenzo Irolli), at the end of 1949 at the age of eighty-nine. A few days before his death, art critic Paolo Ricci harshly attacked Irolli's painting, calling it "rich in sentimentality, pious tenderness, affectation, and demagogic moralism, all in a mercilessly bright and crude, approximate palette...

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