Giovanni Battista Costantini, better known as Giovanni Costantini, revealed a quite extraordinary talent for drawing and painting from an early age. He trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, where he had the opportunity to hone his skills and develop his own unique style. Influenced by the artistic currents of the time, including Realism and Divisionism, he evolved a manner all his own that stood out for the vibrant rendering of the colours and a sensitivity to the subjects tackled. In 1892, with a series of landscapes of the Roman countryside, he participated in an exhibition of the “Società Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti” (“Association of Amateurs and Connoisseurs of Fine Arts”). He occasionally attended the life-drawing evening classes at the Académie Française in Villa Medici, and started producing works visibly influenced by Giulio Aristide Sartorio.

In 1904, he joined a group founded by the latter, the XXV della Campagna Romana, where he was given the nickname “Grillo” (“Cricket” [insect]) because of his slender figure and his “tall, thin and wiry” appearance. That same year, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome purchased his painting Dai Campi di Riposo, and then, in 1908, Folla Triste. He taught at the Accademia di Belle Arti and from 1909 was a member of the Accademia di San Luca.

What brought him to the attention of the general public was the series of war paintings, great theatrical works with strong contrasts of light and shade, in which the artist expressed all his anti-militarism. He suspended the characteristic depictions of the Roman Campagna, and in one fell swoop summarized his thinking in four symbolic compositions: War, Booty, Military Domination and Victory. This was the beginning of a cycle that would lead him to create another 41 paintings on the same theme over the following years (until 1921). The complete cycle of 45 works Lacrime di Guerra (Tears of War) was exhibited at the First Art Biennial of Rome in 1921 (Figs. 1 - 2).

 

The work presented here, Dominion, is part of this fundamental cycle in Costantini's artistic life. In it the artist depicts a personification of domination, power, control.

 

Vagnetti[1] described Military Dominion as follows: A frank, brutal nude is seated on the fortress, his arms resting on a greatsword with a sinister glow lowering over the enchained village. He watches in the night with a sharp and metallic eye that no force should rise against him. We can feel the shudders of terror.

 

---