This sheet, of great quality and remarkable for its size, represents a very rare and important testimony of the graphic production of Francesco Hayez related to his stay in Rome, where he remained for his training and where he achieved his first successes from 1809 to 1817. In fact, only a very small number of drawings from that period are known, the most significant of which is connected to the painting depicting Laocoön, with which he won the first prize ex aequo with the pupil of Andrea Appiani, Antonio De Antoni, in the major Painting Competition held in 1812 by the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan.[1]

Hayez himself must have been aware of the rarity and importance of this early testimony of his youthful activity, since he added the signature and the date presumably in his later years. Indeed, the inscription that appears on the drawing reveals the characteristic handwriting typical of his old age: incisive but slightly trembling. We know of other similar cases concerning early works that were brought to him for authentication, beginning with what is considered his first painting, the Group Portrait of the Painter’s Family (Treviso, Museo Civico L. Bailo), which he signed and dated in 1864.

Returning to our drawing, considering both the date and the style, it should be connected to those graphic experiments relating to mythology or episodes from ancient Greek and Roman history in which Hayez became involved, together with his fellow students, when he attended the Academy of the Kingdom of Italy in Rome, supported by his protector Antonio Canova and directed by Giuseppe Tambroni, which was housed in Palazzo Venezia.

This was a fundamental moment in the formation of the young Venetian painter, and he later recalled this experience in his Memoirs. In a very significant passage he states that, after having “completed my studies from life, I returned to Rome and resumed the works I had begun in my studio at Palazzo Venezia, where, thanks to the recommendations of Canova, Mr. Tambroni also granted me a room to live in. Thanks to the intervention of these two figures, benefactors of the arts, the other pensioners also obtained rooms in the Palace, and little by little they managed to secure for us the life-drawing room, and one could say that the Italian Academy in Rome was created by them. It was attended by all the pensioners of the three Academies of the Kingdom, as well as by those young students who were independently studying in Rome. We had introduced an exercise for the study of composition that was truly beneficial and enjoyable. A subject was given to us, and each of the young artists had to bring within eight days a drawn or painted sketch; the sketches were displayed in a room adjacent to the life-drawing hall: almost none of the young artists missed this exhibition. The works were judged by the students themselves, who expressed aloud their reasoned opinions, and from this there resulted a very great benefit, since we were necessarily obliged to explain the concept that had guided us. Some claimed that it was a sign of great talent to introduce into their works figures known from the best authors, something I could not accept, as it seemed to me a form of plagiarism. But such was the fashion of the time; however, I noticed that this habit gradually disappeared and art became more and more an imitation of nature.”[2]

Therefore, precisely because of the commitment and the complexity of such an articulated composition, defined in every detail, and also because of its date, our sheet should be connected to that fundamental experience of which Hayez retained such a vivid memory. The scene, which has not yet been identified, appears to be one of those episodes from ancient history that were proposed in academic competitions or formed the subject of these contests among artists.

At the center stands a majestic building with powerful Corinthian columns, while in the background one can see a temple with a commemorative column beside it, and finally, in the upper right, an acropolis rises. These evocative architectural elements refer to Greece, particularly to ancient Athens, as do the four sages seated at the top of a staircase, wrapped in their tunics.

They represent the focal point of a more complex scene formed by a series of figures, all in different attitudes, crowding the foreground. On the left, a group of armed figures advances toward a person lying on the ground, represented with an effective perspective foreshortening. One is struck by the skill and confidence with which Hayez has outlined each individual figure with a vigorous line, as well as by the extraordinary sense of direction with which he relates the various groups of characters, each distinguished by pose, gestures, physiognomy, and costume.

This superb work therefore seems to be a prelude to the expressive maturity that we soon encounter in the Laocoön of 1812, and it appears to anticipate the final outcomes of the Neoclassical season, such as the monumental Ulysses at the Court of Alcinous, the painting of 1814–1816 destined for the court of Naples, and The Piety of Hezekiah, King of Israel, executed after his return to Venice in 1817 for the “Homage of the Venetian Provinces to Her Majesty Carolina Augusta, Empress of Austria.”

 

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