“The light of the setting sun bathes the coats of these quadrupeds, so acutely observed, so real and yet so picturesque, in one of the finest examples of the genre produced by the master from the Abruzzi region in a splendid painting of rural poetry.”

Originally owned by the Neapolitan noblewoman Gilda Garbarino Dusmet de Smours, as documented by an inscription on the back of the canvas, this delightful painting by Filippo Palizzi formed part of the collection of 19th-century art owned by Sebastiano Sandri (1887-1954) in the early 1940s. Enrico Somaré described it in the January-April 1941 issue of L’Esame artistico e letterario as hanging in the collector’s home in Turin next to the Pastorello d’Abruzzo by Antonio Mancini: “Al Pascolo (pl. 29) painted by Filippo Palizzi in 1862 [sic], a year of increasing maturity. In a grassy clearing beneath a sky full of benign clouds: a hairless donkey, a shaggy billy goat, a female goat standing on her four legs and watching the goatherd in a red jerkin as he advances with a heavy bundle of grass on his back, a dog ready to snarl. The light of the setting sun bathes the coats of these quadrupeds, so acutely observed, so real and yet so picturesque, in one of the finest examples of the genre produced by the master from the Abruzzi region in a splendid painting of rural poetry.”¹ A handwritten label on the back bears the same judgement on the quality of the work (“‘Al Pascolo’ 1852 -/ è uno dei migliori suoi quadri/ del genere” [“‘Out at Pasture’ 1852/ is one of his best pictures / of this genre ]), as well as its correct date. In 1852, aged thirty-four, Palizzi had already developed his mature style, personal and modern, the result of detailed study of nature in the surroundings of his hometown Vasto and Naples, his chosen city, but above all at Cava dei Tirreni near Salerno, where he went to paint in the open air for long periods every summer as from 1847. Examples of this work include Due pastorelli (Two Sheperds, Vasto, Musei Civici di Palazzo d’Avalos) and Due bambine stese sull’erba (Two Little Girls Lying on the Grass, Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea), both painted in that year and characterised by the utmost attention to descriptive detail as well as great skill in the handling of light.² So unsuited to academic studies that he left the Real Istituto di belle arti in Naples just a few months after gaining admission in 1837, Filippo Palizzi devoted himself to what Domenico Morelli was to call “a modest art of small proportions” but containing “an entire world of colour, light, truth and palpable significance”, fully recognising his friend’s ability to make even the humblest and most commonplace subjects interesting. As recalled by Francis Napier in his Notes on Modern Painting at Naples,³ Palizzi was already established by the mid-1850s as the author of small- and medium-sized landscapes with scenes of rural life and above all animals depicted with great realism and delicacy. The early paintings of animals presented as from 1839 at the exhibitions of the Real Museo Borbonico are still tied to a whole series of conventions and display the influence of old and new models of the genre drawn from prints, from 17thcentury Dutch artists all the way up to the more recent work of French artists like J. R. Brascassat and T. Géricault.⁴ His later production, painted directly from life and inspired by the works of the Barbizon school seen during a trip to Belgium, Holland and Paris in 1855, are instead characterised by an immediate realism that left an artist like Michele Cammarano “amazed” and full of enthusiasm, and gained the admiration of an entire generation of young Neapolitan painters, including Saverio Altamura, Saro Cucinotta and Morelli himself.⁵ 

Al pascolo (Out at Pasture) is a good example of Palizzi’s meticulous painting based on close and constant observation of the real world. As in other studies, while the human presence remains marginal and is perceived as supplementary, it is the animals, bathed in a warm light and depicted in every detail, that occupy the centre of the stage, in accordance with the feelings that also inform the contemporary poetry of Giovanni Pascoli and Giosuè Carducci.⁶

Monica Tomiato

¹ Somaré 1941, p. 56.

² L. Arbace, “Dalle prime luci dell’alba alle atmosfere della notte”, in Arbace 2018, pp. 69-70, figs. 68, 69.

³ Napier 1855, pp. 108-109.

⁴ Picone Petrusa, 2014.

⁵ M. S. Ruga, “Tronchi di Querce”, in Seravezza 2014, p. 138.

⁶ Arbace 2018, p. 83.