Luigi Nono, an active painter from 1850 until 1918, was born in Fusina, and died in Venice, remembered primarily for his genre scenes which accorded dignity to the poor and to the life of the lagoon. He studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice under the tutelage of Pompeo Molmenti, yet under the early influence of Giacomo Favretto, the leading artist of Venetian Realism, from which he and Favretto would take a path that would quickly separate them. Nono was less interested in the sunny, lighthearted views of contemporary Venice that Favretto captured, and more in the grim, often tragic situations of derelict mothers, sick children, funerals, the silent despair of the working poor. His most famous picture, Refugium peccatorum (Refuge of the sinner), earned him a gold medal in Munich in 1884 and brought him fame throughout Italy and internationally. He became a knight in 1887 and in 1891 became honorary associate of the Brera Academy, exhibiting regularly from 1895 at the Venice Biennale, and was appointed Professor at the Venice Academy in 1899. The influence of his work today is linked with that of other Venetian Realists such as Favretto and Guglielmo Ciardi, and his grandson by the same name, a little by chance, became one of the most important composers of the 20th century working in the avant-garde style.
Early Life
Nono’s early work occurs at an interesting intersection of city, countryside and geography appears to have informed the breadth of his early work more than any single teacher. He was born in 1850 in Fusina, just outside Venice, and started his training at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, under the tutelage of Pompeo Molmenti, a traditional painter of his time. What came next, however, was more unconventional: at the age of twenty, instead of a studio in the city, he moved to Polcenigo, a village in the countryside of Friuli and lived there for some time, developing a largely genre-painting reputation, but not yet.What followed, however, was more unusual: rather than a studio in the city, he moved to Polcenigo, a village in the Friulian countryside, where he lived for some time and developed a largely genre-painting reputation, but not yet. This is when he wrote works such as Sull’Avemaria and Le sorgenti del Gorgazzo, which are more atmospheric and rural than a later stage of his career, when he began to write socially charged scenes. After this rural phase he reverted to genre subjects related to everyday life, which would dominate his career. A major turning point was the death of his father in 1879, which led him to permanently leave the countryside for Venice and its lagoon, of which he would get almost all his mature subject matter from.
Signature Works
Nono’s mature oeuvre is unified by his sense that he can’t turn a blind eye to hardship, a hardship that his peers were too squeamish to notice. Abbandonati, which was exhibited at the 5th Exposizione in Venice, portrays a mother and her child who are homeless, sleeping under a church entrance, an architectural context that serves as a frame for a real, unfulfilled poverty, rather than a religious sanctuary. This indomitable style was evident in his most famous painting, Refugium peccatorum (“Refuge of Sinners”), which was exhibited at the Mostra in Venice in 1881 and received the gold medal in Munich in 1884. Along with these works, other paintings such as the so-called La povera madre (“The Poor Mother”) and Il Bimbo Malato (“The Sick Child,” 1885) and depictions of a child’s funeral constitute a unified body of work focused on the domestic miseries, sickness and sorrow of the working poor in Venice, in contrast to the happy vedute and comic genre scenes usually linked to Venetian painting during the period. Later paintings, including paintings made on successive visits to Asolo from 1907 onwards, including the 1912 painting 1 November and the surviving plein-air oil sketch, reveal a painter yet working from observed reality late in his career, scratching in dates and notes for colors on the wet paint. His signature works, looked at as a whole, represent not a series of masterpieces but a sustained, caring observation of a theme that few of his contemporaries engaged in as academic painters.
Inspiration
Within Nono’s artistic sensitivity, it is possible to discern two competing forces: the formal education of the Venice Academy, and a personal attraction to the subjects that were not usually favored by this education. His early teacher, Pompeo Molmenti, provided him with a traditional academic education, and through Giacomo Favretto he became acquainted with the emergent Venetian Realist trend – but whereas Favretto’s Realism was humorous it was Nono’s which was pathos, a commitment that he pursued in an educationally different path. He was first introduced to the Barbizon School during this visit to Paris, where he was exposed to the unidealized paintings of rural and everyday subject matter, which were more in keeping with his own impulses toward social realism. His long residency in Polcenigo also appears to have been one of deep engagement with the rural labor and landscape, which would be reflected in his genre paintings of peasant and working-class life, including Ritorno dai campi (“Return from the Fields”). In addition to specific influences, his subject matter itself implies a long-held personal curiosity in social issues – a preoccupation with the poor, the sick, the grieving, a preoccupation more than just observation, more than just curiosity. Alongside such other artists as Favretto and Guglielmo Ciardi, he joined a broader trend that defined Realist painting in Venice at the beginning of the twentieth century, but his focus on suffering appears to have always distinguished him within the movement.
Awards and Recognition
Nono’s career had been a steady progression of institutional awards not one big one. It was in 1884, when he won the gold medal in Munich with Refugium peccatorum, that he finally secured international acclaim and thus became regarded as one of the most successful genre painters of his time in Italy. In 1887, three years later, he was awarded the Knight of the crown of Italy, a formal state honour which recognized his position in the cultural life of Italy. His academic standing was further enhanced in 1891 when he was made an honorary associate of the Brera Academy in Milan and in 1899 when he became a professor at his own institution, the Accademia di Belle Arti of Venice, where he was to assume a new role as a representative and instructer of younger artists in addition to creating his own work. Since the first Biennale (then called the “I Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia”) in 1895, he was involved with the newly established Biennale, putting him at the heart of Venice’s most important recurring exhibition in the last decades of his career, and his work was exhibited not only in Venice but also in Berlin, Munich, and St. Petersburg. As a whole, this collection of national and international prizes, a knighthood and a continuous Biennale presence places him among one of the most renowned painters of his time in Venice, together with Favretto and Ciardi, as a representative of the city’s Realist tradition.