Luigi Nono had long been famous when this painting was produced. After his debut at the Brera in 1873, he quickly established himself on the Italian and then the international art scene with paintings like Le sorgenti del Gorgazzo, exemplifying his drive for renewal by endowing landscapes and scenes of everyday life with disturbing emotive overtones through the studied use of effects of light and colour. His deep understanding of the human psyche enabled him to express himself with equal sureness in bustling scenes of great vitality - like Il mattino della Sagra, presented at the World’s Fair of 1878 in Paris, and I recini da festa, shown in Venice in 1887 - and in powerfully dramatic scenes like Rifugium Peccatorum, shown in Rome in 1883 and subsequently repeated in different versions. He took part as from 1895 in the Venice Biennale, where he presented La prima pioggia (The First Rain), the heart-rending depiction of a peasant mother holding an umbrella over the newly-dug grave of her child, in 1909. 

Alongside such major works for exhibitions, often on a large scale, the artist also delighted in producing less demanding works on appealing subjects in a fluid, pithy style characterised by the deft handling of colour and chiaroscuro. Highly esteemed by critics and the public, these works also aroused the interest of art dealers outside Italy and especially in Britain,¹ as in the case of the work now in the Cerruti Collection, for which a preparatory drawing of the female figure is known to exist on the back of a photograph of Nono’s painting Flirtation (1885).² 

While Cerruti’s work can be regarded as a variation on the Cucitrice (1886)³ by virtue of intrinsic similarities, it is also endowed with greater emotional tension due to the taut composition, which accentuates the intimate relationship between the two lovers. They are shown close together in a corner of a room crammed with furnishings, most of which also appear in the earlier work. The emotion is further heightened by the use of a vertical support. 

The steady narrative cadence of the Cucitrice, where the female figure occupies the centre of the stage, gives way here to a hint of anxious sensuality conveyed not only by the position of the two young people against the wall but also by their close attention to the needlework, as though this were the reason for their proximity, and significant details such as the way the woman’s foot in its red shoe rests nonchalantly on the chair in front of her. In the sobriety of a chromatic range dominated by shades of white, from the more dappled areas to the gleaming hues of the ceramic objects on the cupboard and the young woman’s dazzling blouse, the few dashes of red take on a precise expressive function to enhance the eloquence of the depiction. In the mid-1880s, the artist frequently addressed the themes of the woman sewing at home beneath the gaze of her lover and the couple on the doorstep, exploring their narrative and sentimental possibilities in accordance with the tastes of the general public, as revealed in a letter sent to his fiancée in January 1887, while working at the same time on the works for presentation in the national exhibition to be held that year in Venice, namely Ruth and I recini da festa. Nono wrote that in addition to paintings for exhibitions, he would always take the opportunity to produce “little pictures capable of giving pleasure to me, in painting them, and to the public”.⁴ 

Silvestra Bietoletti 

¹ Serafini 2006, I, p. 23. 

² Ibid., II, p. 118, no. 379. 

³ Ibid., II, p. 118, no. 382. 

⁴ Ibid., I, p. 23, letter from Luigi Nono to Rina Priuli Bon, Venice, 10 January 1887, in ibid., vol. I, p. 23.