Antonio Mancini at Art Museum (1st review)

Passionate, crazy, forgotten:
Rediscovering Antonio Mancini

ANNE R. FABBRI

Un pittore pazzo— a crazy artist— was the term used by friends and neighbors in Naples to describe Antonio Mancini (1852-1930). In 1864, when he was 12, Mancini was enrolled at the Instituto di Belle Arti in Naples— the youngest student in the school’s history. From then on he painted feverishly, turning out accomplished paintings, drawings, sketches, pastels, self-portraits galore, hundreds of commissions and too many copies of his own masterpieces. When he wasn’t painting, he was rushing from one art museum and gallery to another, trying to see everything and imprint it in his mind. Art was the be-all and end-all of Mancini’s life; nothing else mattered.

Ultimately Mancini’s fame spread to the United Kingdom and the U.S. By 1929 he was the toast of the artistic world. Seated in his garden at his villa in the Aventine hills of Rome, he said to a visitor on one of his last days in 1930: “The sun sets, man dies. It is right. But what a pity not to be able to paint any more.”

Today Mancini is almost unknown. But his passion for painting is clearly evident in the 40-plus paintings currently on view at the Art Museum. The exhibition is timed perfectly to coincide with the renewed interest in narrative art and the figure. Mancini’s paintings in this exhibition seem to burst from the canvas. The subjects often stare directly at us, with clearly delineated facial features, surrounded by bravura brushstrokes, palette knife heaps of paint and otherworldly tonal variations. Mancini painted everyone from the scugnizzi (street kids) of Naples, posing in costume for genre scenes, to portraits of society patrons and ascetic art dealers.

Why paint self-portraits?

Mancini’s many self-portraits reveal him during his sane as well as his aberrational moments. His Self-Portrait (1883, pastel on paper) shows a frontal image of a rather young man in a straw hat like a halo, solemn and introspective. Looking at it, you know this artist has spent some time in Paris, absorbing the Impressionist vision. That same year Mancini did another pastel on paper, Self-Portrait with Basket, worn as a hat. In it he looks certifiably insane. Both faces confront you directly. It is disconcerting; it is art.

(Incidentally, while viewing the exhibition I heard a visitor speculating aloud about artists’ tendency to do self-portraits, wondering if it is egomania. Ask any artist and they will tell you: Portraying yourself requires only a mirror. You don’t have to pay a model, fit your schedule to their availability or put up with their idiosyncrasies.)

From street urchins on up

Thanks to the current exhibition at the Art Museum (prompted by a gift of 15 paintings from the estate of the late collector Vance N. Jordan) and the excellent catalogue by curator Ulrich W. Hiesinger, Mancini’s star could soar again. Supplementing the 15 now in the museum’s collection are works from museums and private collections in the United States and Europe. Except for one small painting of children on the beach, they are all figure paintings of everyone from street urchins on up.

Throughout his life Mancini had patrons who, beyond buying his paintings, lent him money for travel expenses and other necessities, promoted his art to curators and collectors and provided housing and wherewithal for him to continue his work. Some of these portraits are included in the show, such as: The Marquis Giorgio Capranica del Grillo, Signora Pantaleoni, and Sir Hugh Lane. These are probing portraits. You feel as if you know the individuals intimately and enjoy speculating about the various objects seen in each portrait and even the background colors and patterns. What do these signify?

You keep turning back

The Saltimbanco (1977-78, above) is one of the show’s widely recognized highlights. It features an adolescent acrobatic performer in elegant costume, holding a peacock feather in his left hand, standing on a platform filled with objects used in the performance of these entertainments. The boy, with hands crossed over his chest, echoes the traditional ecce homo pose. It’s a magnificent painting— 80 inches by 43-plus— seemingly removed from our world to a meditative universe. The painting is a magnet; you keep turning back to look at it. The boy looks so vulnerable.

The children’s portrait, Elizabeth and Charles Hedworth Williamson with Dog (1907), at first glance resembled one by John Singer Sargent-- however, the facial features are more carefully delineated. One only has to remember that Sargent said Mancini was the greatest living artist, not the other way around.

Resting (1887) is an intimate scene of a nude young woman in bed with a somewhat troubled expression and one bare breast revealed above the bed covers. The loose brush strokes and almost abstract division of the canvas convey an emotional turmoil that remains hidden from us.

How a poor artist economized

Since Mancini was often mired in poverty, thanks to his parasitic family and friends, he commonly used both sides of his canvas and painted multiple paintings on each. One of my favorites is the phenomenal Girl with White Veil on the verso of Almond Blossom. The young girl’s hair and part of her face in profile are barely visible through the sheer white covering, her nose and lips partially extending beyond the veil. It is an abstract homage to youth and beauty.

One of his last paintings is a self-portrait painted during the last year of his life. Self Portrait with Autobiographical Script (1929), oil on canvas, portrays the artist seated on the right, looking out toward the viewer while pointing to the list of people and influences that had shaped his art. Friends, family, teachers, artists and works of art are listed somewhat chronologically. He seems fully aware of his impending mortality, and this is his final tribute.

Since this artist has been so long consigned to obscurity, the exhibition feels more enlightening than the Renoir landscapes across the hall. It’s filled with probing portraits of plain people and art world cognoscenti, each one subjected to the unblinking assessment of an artist who lacked practical survival skills but possessed a great innate talent for revealing an individual’s soul.



To read another review by Andrew Mangravite, click here.