Читать книгу The Museo Vincenzo Vela in Ligornetto - Marc-Joachim Wasmer - Страница 18

Born in Turin on 23 March 1854, Spartaco Vela – the only son of Vincenzo Vela and the Milanese Sabina Vela Dragoni – settled in Ligornetto with his parents in 1867. After an early interest in science and medicine, Spartaco devoted himself to painting in accordance with the wishes of his father, who sent him to study with his friends Giuseppe Bertini and Eleuterio Pagliano at Brera Academy in the early 1870s. There he established a close relationship with the painter Mosè Bianchi and other artists on the Lombard scene, although he personally was not part of any particular group. He spent the last years of his life gravely ill in Ligornetto, where he died at the age of forty-one. As the executor of Vincenzo Vela’s will, he donated the house and all his father’s possessions to the Swiss Confederation.

The burden of expectations weighed heavily on Vincenzo’s introverted son. Despite his undeniable talent, he was never able to escape beyond the sphere of expertise of his father, whose work was inevitably the touchstone by which Spartaco’s work was judged. Although he was a skilled draughtsman, watercolourist and painter, he garnered little recognition, even from his artist friends. His artistic output was limited and few of his works are actually finished, and yet his works were favourably received in his day.

Carlo Felice Biscarra, Portrait of Lorenzo Vela, c. 1855, oil on canvas.

Cesare Tallone, Portrait of Spartaco Vela (detail), c. 1880, oil on canvas.

Spartaco Vela, Rizpah Watching Over the Bodies of her Sons, 1881, oil on canvas.

His paintings with biblical or historical content clearly show the influence of Bertini and Pagliano while also referencing themes found in Vincenzo Vela’s work. One such painting is the large Rispa (2 Samuel, 21, 8–14; XX), which Spartaco exhibited in Milan in 1881 and at the first Swiss National Exposition in Zurich in 1883, along with his father’s relief The Victims of Labour (VII). His genre scenes and landscapes painted en plein air are associated with Lombard ‘Impressionism’ – an Italian version of the French artistic movement – especially as seen in the work of Eugenio Gignous (1850–1906). Although the eroticized themes with female figures appear rather inopportune today, they corresponded to the taste of the upper middle class of the time. He also produced lively portraits and nudes in the style of the group of artists known as ‘Scapigliatura’, using his mistresses as models.