Gaetano Previati

(Ferrara 1852 – Lavagna 1920)

Paul and Francesca, 1909

Oil on canvas, 230 x 260 cm
Museum of the Nineteenth Century, inv. 3

The story of the ill-fated lovers Paolo and Francesca, narrated by Dante in Canto V of theInferno, comes to Gaetano Previati’s attention from his late Romantic phase: he took up the theme several times, proposing it in a painting of 1887, still linked to the historical genre, and in a drawing of 1901. From the evolution of the latter comes this large canvas in which, in full harmony with Symbolist poetics, the narrative register focuses on the allegorical plane of the representation of damned spirits. The artist eliminates all descriptive notation in order to visually evoke the torment of the two lovers in the lustful circle and creates an immaterial vision, constructing an illusory space defined by the dynamics of the two souls dragged by the infernal storm and concatenated according to a vortex-like ascending rhythm that unfolds beyond the boundaries of the canvas. Lighter undulating brushstrokes make the intertwined bodies barely emerge from the gloomy atmosphere, with a luminous vibration effect that accentuates the suggestion of movement, while the dense shadows convey a strong dramatic charge. The work sums up certain paradigms of European Symbolist and Decadentist culture: the equivalence of painting-music, the primacy of imagination, the vertigo of immensity, the conflict between light and darkness, and the idea of the flow of time. These are aspects that indicate significant harmony with Umberto Boccioni’s coeval researches, in the phase preceding the elaboration of Futurist poetics in painting.

The painting was first exhibited at the 1909 Venice Biennale, then in Ferrara in 1910 where it attracted the interest of critics who advocated its acquisition by the municipality.