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Giulio Aristide Sartorio and the art of grace

by Rosanna Nobilitato

Giulio Aristide Sartorio‘s painting is made of grace and beauty combined with culture of art history, which sensually pulsates in each of his works. The works of the first manner oscillate between the neo-eighteenth-century genre, contaminated with classical reminiscences, and the progressive adherence to the current of verism, in an attempt to identify an original manner, also through the contribution of Domenico Morelli, whose studio he visited several times in Naples and to whom he was bound by mutual esteem and friendship. From the mid-1980s, Sartorio had begun to frequent the artistic environment of Via Margutta, establishing close relations with the Spanish painter José Villegas Cordero, who introduced him to the great connoisseurs of the Eternal City. The enchanting Academic Study for young man lying naked, which will be hesitated in the auction of Paintings of the nineteenth century of 21th December 2020, is to be referred to this period. It was commissioned by Count Pietro Giorgi (Rome 1850 – 1916) who was a friend, patron and collector of Sartorio. A precious epistolary of about ten autograph letters sent by the Master to Giorgi from Paris starting from 1884, portrays a fascinating fresco of the artistic and literary environment of the time. These passionate missives show a very young Sartorio frantically busy attending the group of Italian artists, including De Nittis, Palizzi, Corcos, Detti, Pittara, but also foreigners such as the excellent Hungarian Munkàcsy, Meissonier, Bougoureau, Jeròme, Van Beers, Bastien-Lepage, visiting Salon and influential gallery owners such as Paul Durand-Ruel who, at the time, dictated the artistic trends of the Ville Lumière.