Ettore Forti (active in Rome between 1880 and 1920), A refreshing conversation

Ettore Forti (active in Rome between 1880 and 1920)

A refreshing conversation

oil on canvas, cm. 81,3×57,2

Signature bottom left: “Forti”

This elegant painting depicts a meeting scene along a Roman road. A woman dressed in a blue peplum leans casually on a banquet while she converses amiably with the brown-haired young man who decants a jug of wine. Lying on the ground, a child plays with a dove while two elderly people chat lively in the background.

 The author of the painting perfectly captured what must have been the atmosphere of a Roman street of the time, recalling the echoes of the archaeological discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The one depicted is in fact a Thermopolium, in fact a grocery shop where food, wine and other foodstuffs were sold, many of which remained intact in the buried cities of Vesuvius. 

The author, the Roman painter Ettore Forti, based much of his career on the creation of Neo-Pompeian scenes or scenes set in ancient Rome, a genre that allowed him to obtain great success especially among private clients.

Forti was one of those artists who, starting from the excavations of Pompeii (begun in 1748) and the work of Lawerence Alma-Tadema (1836 – 1912) (to whom he was compared several times) contributed to celebrating classical Roman and Pompeian culture through painting. His compositions are elaborated with remarkable meticulousness and photographic realism based on a meticulous study of classical decorations and everyday objects: he precisely copies the architecture painted in Roman frescoes with bundles of fruit and leaves, masks and instruments from Roman frescoes but also mosaics of the floors and models of window and chairs, as well as the statues reproduce examples in public and private Roman collections. Many of these genre scenes also have erotic undercurrents, featuring languidly beautiful young women in the company of older men.

Forti was a painter much loved internationally; in fact he exhibited in Berlin and Rome between 1893 and 1897 and in 1905 he participated with two works in the exhibition of the Roman Society of Amateurs and Cultori.

Among the most prestigious museums where his works are exhibited is the Getty Museum of Los Angeles.

The object is in good condition

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