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拍品專文
Pasini, educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Parma, was a pupil of Paolo Toschi and the stage scenery painter Guiseppe Boccaccio. In 1851 having fled Italy, Pasini moved to Paris and joined the studio of Eugéne Ciceri. This was a time when Pasini befriended important painters such as Eugéne Fromentin and Thèodore Rousseau, who influenced the development of Pasini's compositional skills. It was as soon as 1855 that he joined a French expedition to the Near East as he was having financial difficulty supporting himself in Paris where he discovered his personal style which would become his tour de force: Orientalism. By 1864 he was awarded the first class medal at the Salon and in 1868 he was furnished with Légion d'Honneur.
Mercato in Oriente was painted the year after he returned from his trip to Spain with the great Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Both Spain and Gérôme doubtlessly influenced the artist, the former with its bright and exceptional colour combinations, and the latter with his sublime mastery over issues of composition and space. Pasini's trip to Venice in 1876 had also termendous impact on his work - Venice's opulent decadence greatly influenced his late Orientalist corpus. Fired by the jewel-like chromatic feast of Venetian Byzantine domes and baroque façades, Pasini developed an exuberant, almost manneristic palette, perfectly demonstrated in the present painting. Here, Pasini utilizes the figures' colouring as a compositional tool for greater balance in his expression of crowd versus space. In Mercato in Oriente, the colourful groupings of women draped in shades of red, yellow and blue juxtaposed with the brown palette of the male groupings creates a sense of expansion and rhythm within what appears to be just a crowd.
Pasini's outstanding ability to render architecture accurately, as well as theatrically, allows him to use expressive Oriental structures as backdrops for his compositions. Occasionally, these backdrops are so powerful that it is difficult for the viewer's focus to shift to the figures. In the present work, Pasini places a large tree on the right hand side thus blurring the architectural backdrop and bringing out the detailed figure grouping in the foreground. Furthermore, he accentuates this grouping with the woman's cadmium yellow tunic and the young boys vibrant red shirt. The feeling of depth is increased but most importantly the viewer's eye is invited to wonder through the composition and focus on fluid details. The experience of viewing the present work is similar to a curious traveller entering a foreign space - one's point of interest and focus shifts each time a brighter, more impressive delight is discovered in the composition.
Mercato in Oriente was painted the year after he returned from his trip to Spain with the great Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Both Spain and Gérôme doubtlessly influenced the artist, the former with its bright and exceptional colour combinations, and the latter with his sublime mastery over issues of composition and space. Pasini's trip to Venice in 1876 had also termendous impact on his work - Venice's opulent decadence greatly influenced his late Orientalist corpus. Fired by the jewel-like chromatic feast of Venetian Byzantine domes and baroque façades, Pasini developed an exuberant, almost manneristic palette, perfectly demonstrated in the present painting. Here, Pasini utilizes the figures' colouring as a compositional tool for greater balance in his expression of crowd versus space. In Mercato in Oriente, the colourful groupings of women draped in shades of red, yellow and blue juxtaposed with the brown palette of the male groupings creates a sense of expansion and rhythm within what appears to be just a crowd.
Pasini's outstanding ability to render architecture accurately, as well as theatrically, allows him to use expressive Oriental structures as backdrops for his compositions. Occasionally, these backdrops are so powerful that it is difficult for the viewer's focus to shift to the figures. In the present work, Pasini places a large tree on the right hand side thus blurring the architectural backdrop and bringing out the detailed figure grouping in the foreground. Furthermore, he accentuates this grouping with the woman's cadmium yellow tunic and the young boys vibrant red shirt. The feeling of depth is increased but most importantly the viewer's eye is invited to wonder through the composition and focus on fluid details. The experience of viewing the present work is similar to a curious traveller entering a foreign space - one's point of interest and focus shifts each time a brighter, more impressive delight is discovered in the composition.