Sorrento

Giacinto Gigante is probably the most renowned artist of the Scuola di Posillipo, a movement which sought to negate the more 'academic' conventions of the day and reveal a visual truth through painting all'aria aperta. It was the Neapolitan landscape which was to provide Gigante with the major inspiration for his work, in particular the fishing village of Sorrento, the jewel of the Costiera Amalfitana, which represents an important stage in the artist's pictorial development. The present work, which dates from the 1840s, around the time that Gigante moved to Sorrento in order to escape the revolutionary climate in Naples, displays the artist's increasing interest in the chromatic study of vegetation and the qualities of light as it is softened and diluted by the overhead canopy of vines.