Armando Spadini’s ‘Bambini che studiano’ was created by him in around 1918. He used the canvas as his supporting material for showing two children leaning over a table - one writing, the other watching closely, maybe learning from the sibling’s work or maybe just keeping an eye on things. There’s no settled way of reading the work and it does not really push toward either. It just sits there, quiet and unresolved, which is part of its appeal.
The picture entered the Banca d’Italia holdings through Riccardo Gualino, the Turin industrialist whose collecting habits shaped a significant part of early twentieth century Italian taste. Gualino owned six Spadini paintings at one point. Two stayed with the Bank after his collection was split up, and this is one of them.
Spandini’s brushwork here carries a soft, almost grainy texture - thick in places, loose in others, closer to sculpture than to flat paint. Light falls warmly across the children’s hair and illuminating their golden-brown hair colour. The light further spreads over their skin with a rosy, absorbed quality. The palette stays muted throughout - built from soft, yielding tones rather than sharp contrast, which keeps the focus entirely on the two figures and the small, ordinary gesture between them.
Oddly enough, the painting has a second life outside art history circles as well. It appeared on the reverse of the 1990 Italian 1000 lire note, making it one of the more widely seen, least identified Italian paintings of the century.
The artist shows the Spadini children studying in a way that can only be described as tender. The innocence of the children contracted by their somber focus on their studies makes for a very interesting composition. The brushstrokes are soft and blurred such that they are made to look like pastels.
