I rinfreschi

Etching, 1791/95, unsigned and without printing details. From a subject by Giuseppe Piattoli.

Beautiful proof, impressed on contemporary wove paper, with margins, in excellent condition.

Plate from the series Lo Sposalizio di Marfisa, a series of 10 works engraved by Carlo Lasinio from a drawing by Giuseppe Piattoli and published in Florence by the printing house of Niccolò Pagni and Giuseppe Bardi.

For the dating of the prints, both Lazarus and Scrase -analyzing the examples preserved at the Cantor Arts Center - propose 1790 based, perhaps, on the date of the panel titled "La buona notte," the only one in which the last figure appears to be a zero. However, the absence of the Marfisa series in the list of works for sale in another Catalogo delle stampe incise in copperplate che si vendono in Firenze da Niccolò Pagni, e Giuseppe Bardi printed in Florence after 1791, supports the hypothesis of a dating after this date since it would be unusual for a collection published only the previous year not to be promoted. In a later catalog of the printer preserved in the Bertarelli Collection, we find the series listed as "Lo sposalizio di Marfisa, o sia raccolta di Caricature diverse inventate da Giuseppe Piattoli in Num. 10 mezzo fogli imperiali, ed espresse a colori. 15 Pauls."

The ten engravings, lacking a frontispiece, constitute a veritable figurative poem with the key moments that prelude an eighteenth-century fashionable wedding, whose elegant verses deliberately clash with the grotesque characters to whom they refer, accentuating their ridiculous character.

The vast satirical and burlesque literature of the Tuscan tradition, together with popular poems and songs, certainly inspired Piattoli, to whom the production of the poet Francesco Berni, who had lived two centuries earlier, must have been familiar, from whom the term "bernesco" was derived to define a true literary genre, which had numerous imitators and would also influence caricature painting at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Another source of inspiration, was the heroicomic poem, entitled La Marfisa Bizzarra, composed by Carlo Gozzi between 1761 and 1768, which offered the public an extravagant version of the epic-chivalric world. As for, on the other hand, the graphic and pictorial sources used by the artist, one can suggest multiple ones of different origins: the Anglo-Saxon one - especially the famous series created by William Hogarth, between 1743 and 1745, entitled Mariage à la mode; the Venetian one - satirical and playful motifs of Venetian costume characterize Giandomenico Tiepolo's engravings, which depict scenes of everyday life; that of Rome, where Pier Leone Ghezzi's abundant caricature production was among the most widespread at the time; and last but not least the Tuscan tradition, whose deformed characters would be among the favorite subjects of genre painting from the 16th to the 18th century.

It would be, however, the Lorraine engraver Jacques Callot, who arrived in Florence in 1611, who would create with his 'Gobbi' a caricature typology that would influence not only the works of contemporary artists with him, such as Stefano Della Bella and Baccio del Bianco, but also those of the Brescian Faustino Bocchi and Giovanni Domenico Ferretti, evoking in some features the fascinating grotesques of Gaetano Piccini, whose characters - the so-called caramogi - are the same ones who populate Lo Sposalizio di Marfisa. Piattoli draws, therefore, heavily from these repertoires, drawing inspiration mainly from Baccio's drawings, despite the fact that they are among the least known since they are not translated into engravings.

For Piattoli, the 'Marriage of Marfisa' is nothing more than a pretext to benevolently mock the naïve and engaging love feeling of the eager maiden through all the conventional stages that prelude marriage, beginning precisely with the "Marriage Sign," which officially sanctions the union with the beloved well and where the protagonists, respectful of the behavioral norms required by the circumstance and with an expression of serene dullness, witness the stipulation of their wedding contract in the presence of the notary and a large group of figures, including assistants, relatives and footmen, peculiar to this marriage chapter that we often find depicted in painting.

Bibliografia

Angela Maria D’Amelio, “Lo sposalizio di Marfisa”. Una raccolta di caricature di Giuseppe Piattoli, in "Paragone", LXVI, Terza serie, Nr. 120 (781), Marzo 2015, pp. 50-60; Eighteenth-century Italian prints from the collection of Mr and Mrs Marcus S. Sopher with addictions from the Stanford University Museum of Art, catalogo della mostra a cura di C. Lazzaro, Stanford, 1980; D. Scrase, A sidelight on the artistic personality of Count Carlo Lasinio, in ‘Master Drawings’, XXI, 1983, pp. 32-36; A. Milano, The marriage of Marfisa. A Florentine series of prints from 1796, in ‘Signs. Studies in Graphic Narratives’, 1, aprile 2007.