ARMANDO SPADINI | Maternity

Formerly, Luigi La Monica Collection, acquired from Armando Spadini at the latest in 1920 at the latest

Armando Spadini, Galleria Gian Ferrari, Milan, March-April 1946, n°7
Probably Prima quadriennale d'Arte Nazionale, Rome 1931 XIVa Esposizione d'Arte della Città di Venezia, Venice 1924 n° 49a, titled The figure

Arduino Colasanti, Armando Spadini, Rome 1925 (?) reproduced pl.15 titled Gruppo Famigliare; Adolfo Venturi, Armando Spadini, Duecentocinquantasei tavole, Milan, 1927, pl. 47, illustrated, titled Figure


Armando Spadini, article in "ABC rivista d'arte", N°XV, mai 1937, illustrated, titled Figure


Leonardo Borgese et Orio Vergani, Spadini, nella vita e nelle opere, Milan 1946, reproduced pl.VII titled Figure;

The canvas has been strip-lined along the four tacking edges, apparently retaining the original stretcher. There are some localised areas of drying craquelure, notably in the skin tones of the woman on the far left. The work could benefit from a light surface clean. Ultra-violet light reveals notably strokes of retouching along the framing edges, in the hair of the woman on the far left, and some scattered spots in the white dress towards the lower edge of the composition. The work is otherwise in good overall condition. The colours are less yellow overall in reality than in the catalogue illustration.
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Born in a family of Florentine craftsmen, Armando Spadini trains as a painter and a ceramist, and exhibits his works as early as 1906, at the 59^th Annual Exhibition of Fine Arts of Florence. In 1910, he settles in Rome, where he starts a career as a portraitist and painter of vedute. After World War I he knows a deserved recognition, about fifty of his works, including this one, are exhibited in 1924 at the Venice Biennale, in a room entirely dedicated to Spadini, rewarding him with a celebrity he won't have much time to enjoy as he dies in 1918, aged 42.  

This magnificent Maternity was painted at the beginning of the Roman period. Spadini executed it in 1911, at a time when he gives up on tumultuous effects, to reach a form of calm and serenity that could be linked to classicism. The colours he uses are soft and bright, and his brushstroke is very supple. The composition and the figures of the women and the child impress by their monumentality. In Adolfo Venturi's own words (A. Venturi, Armando Spadini, Milan, 1927, p. XI), the painting seems imagined as a "pala d'altare", a panel from an altarpiece. Likewise, the deliberately light handling of the faces shows Spadini's will to set the scene outside any precise realism, thus giving a timeless image of maternity, that in some ways refers to the Cinquecento art, specifically to Andrea del Sarto's manner, that seemed to inspire Spadini.