Portrait of Mrs. Luvoni

Portrait of Mrs Luvoni is an expression of the unique style of the Scapigliatura, the Italian avant-garde movement which was radicalizing the academic rules in the decades after the unification of the Italian States. A major player in this Milanese group, Ranzoni's painting was defined by “vibrant splashes of colour that are not drawn out on the canvas” (as described in one source). This portrait is rendered in a way that doesn't rely on sharp lines or edges, but instead on subtle shifts in tone, creating a sense of being both figure and atmosphere. This portrait is introspective and gentle, typical of Ranzoni's best-known female portraits. The surfaces in his brushwork, “filamentous and frayed,” appear to resonate with a veiled radiance. The faces are treated with special care, the clothing and hair in a freer and more flowing manner. The overall impression is of psychological depth, rather than simply physical resemblance: Ranzoni's work was distinguished from his contemporaries, as even those critics who were sympathetic expressed, because it resisted the “sentimentalism and virtuosity” which befell others in the movement. Ranzoni’s portraits of women hold a special place in his oeuvre. One of them describes them as having a “suffering melancholy without ostentation, and full of sweet interiority”. The Portrait of Mrs Luvoni is a prime example: the sitter may be there, but she is also always present and affectionately absent, her body merging in and out with the surrounding light. In 1934, the portrait was shown at the XIX Venice Biennale, in an exhibition of 19th-century portraiture. His paintings of this period, especially from 1885 to his death in 1889, are among the most evocative of the late nineteenth century, as "abstract creations" in which the paint has been reduced to its minimum and the colours to two tones. This last and most extreme phase can be seen in a portrait of Mrs Luvoni, which predates it.