TEFAF MAASTRICHT 2025

 

The Sultan’s Favourite: amid seduction and theatricality in the Harem

Francesco Hayez's newly rediscovered masterpiece, Interior of a Harem (1840), is an important addition to the catalogue of this great Italian artist, a protagonist of the Romanticism. In this striking painting, made for one of his major Austrian patrons, Countess Nákó of Vienna, Hayez takes us into a world of refined seduction and theatricality, with a subject that was very dear to him and very fashionable throughout Europe at the time. In the main group, the sultan is complacently gazing at a magnificent Western woman who has just joined the harem, whose youth and purity embody ideal beauty. Portrayed with a grace that expresses all of her femininity, the protagonist is Hayez’s favourite muse, who had already appeared in other iconic works by the artist such as Odalisca and Malinconia. Around her, other odalisques help to create a romantic and sensual atmosphere. The painting closes around an extraordinary scene, of a great scenic effect, framed by the painter between a rich curtain, a wooden backdrop typical of the Harem, and a softly blurred landscape on the horizon. The skilful use of perspective and the contrast between light and shadow add depth and magic to the scene. Painted at the height of Hayez's success, this work is a refined example of 19th-century Orientalism in its ability to enhance female beauty in all its nuances and to depict the sumptuousness of costume with almost miniaturist precision.

 

With her hair slicked back and her lips picked out in carmine lipstick, the general appearance of this elegant woman typifies the clear-cut modernity of inter-war women. Germaine Gien (1895-1989) married Léon Bélugou (1865-1934) in 1919. It was to her husband, that the painter dedicated the portrait of his wife two years after their marriage. Gien was 26 at the time.

de László, a painter of European high society, appreciated mainly for his portraits in which he represented aristocrats, royals, and prominent figures of his time, here deviated in part from his more conventional works, distinguishing himself for an intimate quality and an emotional introspection. In this portrait, the artist adopted a less formal and more fluid painting style compared to his official portraits, with vibrant brushstrokes that suggest an atmosphere of free spontaneity and through which he explored a more personal, informal dimension. In her baggy shirt with its plunging neckline, and a modern androgynous hairstyle known as à la garçonne, muchin vogue in the Roaring Twenties, Gien embodies the emancipated modern woman.

 

 

This half-figure of an elderly man with a long white beard seems eager to exit the canvas from the right-hand side. The artist’s free and rapid brushstrokes acquired ever-greater consistency and body to form real reliefs, especially in the lower part of the painting. The painted surface very clearly shows traces of the “double grid”, a unique method of painting from life that Mancini adopted from the mid-1880s and which consisted of first placing a grid frame in front of the model and then a second one of exactly the same size and with exactly the same arrangement of the cords directly on the canvas. This allowed him to paint with a long brush at a certain distance, frame by frame, as in an abstract work in which the whole composition only comes together at the end.

 

Antonio Mancini (Rome 1852 – 1930)

Ritratto di vecchio – Portrait of an old man, c. 1896 - 99

Signed lower left: A Mancini

Oil on canvas, 62 x 50 cm.

Provenance: Private collection

Literature: Antonio Mancini. Catalogo ragionato dell’opera. La pittura a olio, pag. 286, n.443 (dated 1895)

 

Three young female figures are portrayed at the precise moment in which their delicate adolescent lines are evolving towards the more sensual and mature curves of femininity.

Finelli decided to sculpt this life-size work directly into the marble, ‘alla prima’, that is, without the aid of a reference plaster model, in an exceptional practice for the time and whose boldness, admitting no errors or time for regret, immediately evoked the technique of the great Michelangelo. However, Finelli never finished the work, which he always kept hidden from visitors to his studio and it only became known after his death. The unfinished nature of the Three Graces, limited to the base and the girls’ feet, is a unique case in the sculpture of the time and, as a result, is full of charm.