(Venice 1791 - Milan 1882)
GLI SPONSALI DI GIULIETTA E ROMEO, 1830, 1830
Pen with black and brown inks, over traces in black chalk, washed in grey and brown, heightened with white and yellow; signed Hayez fe in pen at lower left. 200 x 267 mm.
According to Mazzocca 1994, this fine drawing, realized with the quality of a miniature, can be identified as a drawn version of the lost painting of the same subject commissioned to Hayez by Frédéric Pourtalès in 1830. Pourtalès was colonel and Chamberlain to the King of Prussia.
LITERATURE:
Fernando Mazzocca, Francesco Hayez: catalogo ragionato, Milan 1994, cat. no. 147.
Fernando Mazzocca, Hayez acquarellista, in Fare storia dell'arte. Studi offerti a Liana Castelfranchi, 2000; page 224
Hayez is the most important figure in the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism in Italian painting, but his Romantic leanings come out mainly in subject-matter rather than in technique, the clear outlines he favoured revealing his training in Rome in the circle of Canova. He painted religious, historical, and mythological works and portraits that are sometimes thought worthy of comparison with those of Ingres. Many of the most eminent Italians of the day sat for him. For many years he taught at the Brera in Milan (he became director in 1860). Hayez was also one of the very few to seize upon the artistic possibilities of lithography at an early date.
