Description
Vincenzo Colleoni (Active in Venice in the second half of the 19th century) – Interior scene with masked figures.
Oil on canvas, in a gilded wood frame.
Signed lower left: «V. Colleoni».
Vincenzo Colleoni was a Venetian painter active in the second half of the nineteenth century, associated with the Realist movement, which developed in opposition to Romanticism and Neoclassicism by favouring an objective depiction of everyday life. Little critical literature survives on Colleoni, and he remains an artist in need of further scholarly study: he is known to have exhibited at the Mostra Nazionale in Parma in 1870 with the painting «Il cane importuno», and in Naples, in 1877, presented five works, including «Visita allo studio d’un pittore», «Infilatrice di perle» and «I saltimbanchi».
In the present painting, signed in red by the artist, a lively interior scene unfolds: two female figures at the centre hold back a crowd of masked figures, drawn by curiosity toward the swaddled infant in the left corner of the canvas. In the shadows, a nurse pushes away a further figure. The costumes suggest a fashionable social gathering, while the onlookers’ curiosity hints at a small scandal connected to the child’s birth.
Condition report: Original canvas. Good state of preservation of the pictorial surface.
