Giacomo Grosso

I attended a Tamara de Lempicka exhibit at the Museo Centrale del Risorgimento here in Rome last week, and when we were done, we wandered next door to another exhibit called "L'Unita dell'Arte Italiana nella Diversità delle Regioni" which is a quick survey of Italian art from 1861 to 2011. And I discovered an artist who is new to me: Giacomo Grosso, 1860-1938. He created an absolutely breathtaking canvas called simply La Femme, painted in 1895. The sheer enormous size of the piece along with the creamy and heavy satins, shimmery champagnes and golds, and scattered roses seemed to appear out of a dream. He rendered his subject and her immediate surroundings in a romantic realist style yet the wall behind her is textural and abstract. And what a bold choice to paint a wide swath of gold that disappears behind her head, suggesting, not by accident I am sure, a kind of halo.

I literally stopped in my tracks as I entered the gallery and saw this marvelous painting. I am anxious to learn about Grosso and to seek out more of his work.