Sam Ben-Meir and Stephanie Sinclair
BOLOGNA, Italy— The Museo Ottocento Bologna is currently presenting Mario De Maria, “Marius Pictor” (1852-1924). Ombra cara, an exhibition devoted to the work of painter Mario de Maria (Bologna, 1852 – Bologna, 1924) as part of its mission to reveal the leading representatives in nineteenth century Italian art history. It is something of a travesty that de Maria still receives scant attention outside of Italy; for as this exhibition makes all too clear, de Maria’s work does so much more than merely please the eye (though it certainly accomplishes that) – it is haunting, mesmerizing, it takes hold of the viewer and refuses to let go, like a beautiful and terrible dream.
While he was one of the original founders of the Venice Biennale, de Maria was Bolognese by birth and there is an unmistakable affinity between his work and that extraordinary city: both seem profoundly old, deeply rooted in tradition (for de Maria, Rembrandt is the indispensable touchstone) – while at the same time there is a reaching out towards the new, a vibrancy, a readiness to forge ahead (Bologna, it is well known, has a long history of being a hotbed of political radicalism). There is a radicalism in de Maria as well, though not necessarily of a political nature.
As a founder of Italian Symbolist painting, a form of protest against the realism of contemporary art, de Maria focused on creating a new artistic language manifesting through painting the inner experience of the most existential aspects of life – love, melancholia, and death. Through the use of line, color, and chiaroscuro, a more subjective and spiritual way of understanding life and art is revealed in dreamscapes replete with mysticism, decadence, decline, marginality, and eroticism.
The tenents of Symbolist painting were heavily inspired by the French poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (1857), the German philosopher Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious (1877), and the Gothic fiction of the American writer and critic Edgar Allen Poe. Originating in France during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Symbolism movement embodied art, theatre, music, and literature exploring the anguish during a time of great loss and chaos in the Western world. The Symbolist art movement is an antecedent to Expressionism and modern thought, yet even in its importance has rarely been the subject of public exhibition, until now.
This exhibition, featuring over seventy paintings by de Maria and a handful of his contemporaries, commences with a self-portrait from 1878 – he has placed himself left of center, his face turned outward, with a rocky backdrop and an overcast sky at the top. One of the notable features of his Autoritratto, are the deep-set eyes sunk in shadow which are peering off away from the viewer. We feel that he is looking at something intently, and it is not us, which is also to say, not himself: de Maria’s gaze is fixed outward, upon the world. We can make out from his slightly open mouth, the faintest grin amidst the thick moustache and narrow beard which he has rendered with highlights that, along with his hat tiled back, lend him a certain élan and dash. Here is a confident man who knows he possesses greatness.
What we see here and it will recur throughout his work is a mastery of the use of sharp contrasts of light and shade. Indeed, this is what his work is about, if anything. Chiaroscuro (literally ‘light-dark’) is not simply a technique, a tool: it is the theme of his work. As the philosopher Schelling would observe: ‘Chiaroscuro is really the magical part of painting… It is attainable only by a soul sensitive to the most delicate perceptions of light and color…’ It is this magic, ‘allowing negation to appear as reality, darkness as light’ that makes de Maria’s painting astounding and provides the indispensable key to grasping his poignant vision of the world.
De Maria was a vivid and emotionally charged colorist, but he could paint with his canvas effectively drained of color, stripped down to shades of gray. Two pieces serve to demonstrate the extraordinary power of his brush when he has all but banished color from the palette. Both are nocturnes dating to 1886: La Danza dei pavoni o Eliana (Peacock dance or Eliana) displays de Maria’s fascination with Gothic architecture in contrast with the white peacocks in various positions, and distances from the viewer. De Maria was in fact an architect as well, and designed his house in Venice, the now famous Casa dei Tre Oci, as well as the first draft for the Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (replaced by a new building in 1914).
The evocative effect of moonlight over antique buildings is a recurring motif for de Maria: he was an unparalleled master of the nocturne, for these nighttime scenes bear an almost metaphysical weight. Consider, for example, the companion piece, L’alumna (The Pupil), which is among the most extraordinary works in this exhibition and unlike any other in its bringing to the fore the fruit of de Maria’s Symbolist experiments. It is not only the pallid moon which has been transformed into an appalling skull, but the clouds as well, near and far. At the top, a winged skeletal figure emerges from the sfumato, just enough so that it can be recognized as if the viewer and not the painter has conjured this memento mori, the hovering image which invokes not merely death, so much as evil itself. In the bottom half we find a swampy marshland with three large, coiled snakes, each raising itself as if it to greet the moon-skull. With careful inspection one can also descry two horses: atop one of them is some kind of sphinxlike creature, while at the extreme right are two bearded figures – all of which lends the image a mythical, and even biblical quality. The overwhelming sensation transcends death, or evil, but touches on horror – an unnamed and unnamable horror that pervades reality itself.
The painting speaks to a dark and even tragic conception of the world which will only intensify with the death of his daughter, Silvia, in 1904 – a loss which led to the artist’s mental collapse and a period of convalescence which lasted some five years. “My life is meaningless… she was our joy, she was our everything and I would rejoin her.” he writes to a friend, Vittore Grubicy, a fellow painter who would honor Silvia’s death with a gentle portrait, on view, of the smiling young girl, under which is inscribed the words Ombra Cara (Dear Shadow).
This exhibition contains an embarrassment of riches that one can hardly begin to do justice to within a brief review. Story of a Skeleton Merchant (1914) was clearly one of the pictures in which de Maria took the greatest satisfaction (“When I see it, I feel the same joy I could have in standing before one of [Rembrandt’s] masterpieces.”) His enthusiasm was not unjustified. All his varied talents are in evidence here: his sense of texture (one feels the stone, wood, textiles, fauna, and of course, the bones), his complex symphony of colors; but as the title suggests there is a narrative component to this painting. A corpse lies in the lower forefront with his right arm outstretched (an only slightly veiled allusion to the crucifixion), while above him hovers the skeleton trader. At the dead man’s feet, with his back to us, stands a cardinal, evidenced by his red zucchetto. As if standing sentinel at the door through which the corpse will be taken for excarnation, are two full skeletal figures: both stand in postures almost suggestive of animation, with the one in front fully erect and at attention, while the one in the rear stands with its right leg extended forward, and its left hand raised to its forehead as though it were saluting the newcomer. In the red-lit room behind them, we see the silhouettes of those whose task is presumably that of defleshing the cadaver. Above them and to the left is a half open wooden cabinet in which four skulls occupy the several shelves, and above which is a large bouquet of blood red roses bursting with life. The painting contains much more of interest, but the crucial point is that like both the merchant and priest we live off and with the dead: they are with us, always. Ombra cara, indeed.
The final piece about which something must be said is La luna ritorna in seno alla Madre Terra (The moon returns to the bosom of Mother Earth), painted in Venice in 1903. In many ways it is the supreme masterwork of the exhibition: it is not only considerably larger than any other work, but its sheer force is also of incomparable magnitude. The viewer is situated before an onslaught of human and natural forces – men, women, horses, a torrential river: the rush of the waters on the right is mirrored by the rush of humanity over a precipitous cliff that occupies most of the lower foreground. Two legs protrude from the bottom center, as if we are witnessing the descent of humans and animals into the abyss. The full, bright yellow moon that occupies the upper left feels more like the setting sun, and therein lies the great mystery. Is this the moon setting, or the end of time altogether? Once again, the moon is a harbinger of death, but in this case the magic of de Maria’s brush consists in his ability to present brightness as darkness. One thing we can be sure of is that the de Maria understood full well da Vinci’s words: ‘if you desire the splendor of fame, do not fear the darkness of shadows.’
Sam Ben-Meir is an assistant adjunct professor of philosophy at City University of New York, College of Technology.
Stephanie Sinclair is an art historian and legacy consultant living and working in Bologna, Italy.
