IPPOLITO CAFFI BELLUNO 1809-LISSA 1866

This gouache captures on paper – with the liquid feel of a watercolour, yet at the same time extremely accurate in its rendering of detail – a fleeting moment in the extraordinary days that marked the Carnival in Rome between the 15th and 16th centuries, when its fame outshone even that of its counterpart in Venice.

The initial venue for the Carnival celebrations was Piazza Navona, then known as “Platea in Agone”, where bull fighting and jousting in which knights had to strike a revolving target (a “Saracen”) or insert their lances through a small metal ring (“ring-tilting”) were commonly held in the Middle Ages.  The celebrations were moved in the mid-15th century by order of Pope Paul II who, being Venetian, seized the opportunity to increase the appeal of his recently built Palazzo Venezia adjacent to the church of San Marco and chose nearby Via del Corso, then still known as Via Lata, as the new venue for the Carnival celebrations.

This picture is a fine example of the way in which the artist used to devote special attention to rendering the urban landscape, a feature typical of his best work.  The crowd crams Via del Corso in a whirlwind of joyful, noisy, jostling movement, dance and chatter, as though the mass of figures were perfectly aware of their role in an amusing commedia dell’arte brought to life by a flash of creative grace built with delicate brushwork in light and glittering colours.

Caffi was unquestionably attracted by his theme and certainly did not repeat it only because of its popularity with his admirers but also because of all that it signified for him in his permanent search for “novelty”:  light, shade, refractive power, perspective and emotion, the whole translated into light and colour.