Contemporaries noted the decadent theme of the glittering festivity in fancy dress, an ambiguous masquerade that “transmutes pain and tears into jests, / sighs and sorrow into grimaces”, to quote Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci (Clowns, 1892), often referred to as one of Agnelli’s interests. 

Fausto Agnelli’s eccentric image as a dandy of sophisticated tastes and flamboyant elegance, a flower in his buttonhole and a handkerchief in his breast pocket, made him a celebrity in Lugano early in the 20th-century and suggested some important features of his work as a painter. Little is known about his training, apart from the three years in the sculpture course at the Accademia di Brera from 1897 to 1899, or about his time in Venice and a trip to Spain in the early years of the new century. The stylistic physiognomy with which Agnelli presented himself on his debut in 1911 points to the international art that enjoyed success at the Venice Biennale as the source of his Art Nouveau Symbolism with macabre and literary overtones. Impressed above all by the graphic art of the Belgians James Ensor and Félicien Rops, he followed the example of the famous illustrations by Alberto Martini and drew numerous subjects from the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe. 

Another characteristic of Agnelli’s painting is concentration on a handful of motifs, varied over the decades with minimal changes in style, such as the theme of carnival, which soon became one of his principal commercial trademarks. Agnelli became known as a “fancy-dress painter” and the local press did not fail to comment ironically on the sometimes weary repetitiveness of his work (fig. 1). His “little carnival poems”, significantly presented as a poetic genre, include the Cerruti Sera carnevalesca (Carnival Evening), a previously unpublished work. In two exhibitions held around 1920, the period to which the painting can be dated on stylistic grounds, Agnelli showed various works with similar titles (Poemetto carnevalesco, Notte carnevalesca, Sera di carnevale, Carnevale and Maschere) that prove hard to identify. Contemporaries noted the decadent theme of the glittering festivity in fancy dress, an ambiguous masquerade that “transmutes pain and tears into jests, / sighs and sorrow into grimaces”, to quote Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci (Clowns, 1892), often referred to as one of Agnelli’s interests. The curious solidity of his painting, which critics compared to ceramics, was influenced by the example of the Spanish painter Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa, whose handling of colour and the hallucinatory effects of artificial light found great favour in Italy. The dancing procession of Pierrots, Colombines, Harlequins and other characters from the Commedia dell’Arte is set in a recognisable part of Lugano, namely Piazza della Riforma, with the arched porticoes hung with lanterns. Mariangela Agliati Ruggia draws attention to Agnelli’s interest in 18th-century prints and views of his hometown and the lake, especially those of the local painter Rocco Torricelli, who frescoed Palazzo Grosso at Riva near Chieri and the main hall of the Castello di Rivoli together with his brother Antonio Maria in the late 1780s and early 1790s. 

Filippo Bosco