Pietro Annigoni - Cristina 1

Portraiture focuses on the depiction of human beings in their many facets, often capturing their features, personalities, and expressions. As a pictorial genre, it has had numerous meanings over the centuries: since antiquity, portraits of sovereigns, dignitaries, and important figures have been used to emphasize their rank. During the Renaissance, portraits sought to capture the personality of the person depicted. Pietro Annigoni's drawing began precisely on these principles, recording his subjects' evolving psychological expression. Through his pictorial vision, Pietro Annigoni became the modern painter who bucked the abstract-informal tendencies of the time. The technical lyricism of the drawing, in this case, gives way to the lithographic technique, making it a graphic work. This means that the work is based on a matrix that allows for multiple reproductions of the same subject. Beyond lithography, there are various types of graphic art, from woodcuts, aquatints, and etchings to silkscreens and many others. All these techniques are not simple prints, but graphic art created through the direct intervention of the artist's hand. The word lithography derives from the Greek and literally means "writing on stone." The technique exploits the mutual repulsion between aqueous and greasy materials. The artist, on a specially prepared, thick stone (approximately 6-12 cm), begins to trace a drawing with a greasy pen. This drawing must mirror the intended representation. As the ink is drawn over the stone, the aqueous areas of the stone, due to the initial treatment, repel the ink, which deposits only on the drawing. When pressed, the paper therefore absorbs only the ink previously deposited on the drawing. Precisely because this technique offers the painter great freedom, it is the closest to a true drawing. Thanks to multiple layers, lithographs of various colors can be created, each color requiring a separate press pass. Typically, each copy produced in this way is called a print run and is numbered in pencil in the lower left corner. The painter signs his work in pencil in the lower right corner. Once the desired print run is reached, the matrix is ​​"crossed out," meaning it is defaced so that no further copies can be released onto the market, beyond those desired by the artist. The painter Pietro Annigoni's technical prowess in portraying the human figure is undoubtedly a distinctive feature. The artist is capable of a completely naturalistic rendering, characterized by a high level of formal purity. The facial features, drawn from a life study, are complemented by a tender and well-constructed form. Drawing, a fundamental part of Annigoni's work, interacts naturally with the contrasts of chiaroscuro, revealing the figure's volumetric consistency within the painting. The graphic aspect of the work, therefore, does not detract from the composition. The formal purity of the drawing is, in fact, enhanced by the graphics, which take care to highlight, in all its meticulousness, the depiction of the girl's face, which, in her absorbed state, offers us a moment of introspection.  Pietro Annigoni (Milan 1910 – Florence 1988). In 1947, along with Gregorio Sciltian and the Bueno brothers, he signed the "Manifesto of Modern Painters of Reality," which advocated full adherence to natural truth through the use of ancient techniques used during the Renaissance. Annigoni's commitment to the naturalistic rendering of his subjects made him a great portraitist, appreciated by Europe's highest notables, so much so that he was called the "painter of queens."

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