The Artwork of the Month of the Roman School Museum - November 2023

The hot tones of this Autumn Natura Morta (still life) carry us into the interior of an essential and evocative household atmosphere, built with just a few objects - a teapot, a cup and five cachi - in dialogue between them thanks to the skilful combination of the earthy colours, that characterise also the bare back wall. The artwork is very close to the stylistic modes of 15th-century Italian artists, in the metaphysical essentiality of the forms and volumes, in the refined pictorial draftsmanship and in the detail of the parallel folds of the neat white tablecloth, which are not perfectly cancelled out by the iron. The static nature of the scene and the almost photographic realism also bring it close to the masters of the Roman area contemporary with Francalancia, such as Francesco Trombadori, Carlo Socrate and Antonio Donghi, and to that poetic artistic strand defined as 'magic realism'. In the 1920s, many artists felt the need to rediscover the tradition of Italic painting and in this sense the debate took place above all in the magazine Valori Plastici directed by Mario Broglio with his wife Edita, with whom Francalancia had important collaborative relationships.

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