The panel in the Gallery is a replica of another self-portrait by the painter, on canvas, of the same size and similarly signed and dated, preserved in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan (inv. 5482). Both works were executed in that brief span of years in which the painter, just over twenty years old, but already endowed with considerable talent, was gaining a certain consensus in the local area, so much so that she received her first public commission. In 1800 Callani painted her only large painting on commission from the Cistercian monks of Piacenza: an altarpiece depicting the Battesimo di Gesù nelle acque del Giordano for the church of Quartazzola. The painting, lost due to the transformation of the place of worship into a private oratory, is known only from the description provided by Scarabelli Zunti in his memoirs relating to the Callani: “It represents the Divine Redeemer in the midst of the waters of the majestic Jordan with the Holy Forerunner John in the act of pouring the Baptismal waters on the head of the Divine Master. The Divine Spirit towers over the divine figures in the midst of the fiery light, and the background of the painting is furnished with rocks, trees, and a beautiful horizon, and the clear waters of the Jordan”. The scholar from Parma also writes with ill-concealed emphasis, but perhaps with good reason: “Since this painting is well drawn, and the figures are almost naked, the saint is covered with rough camel skins with a red cloak with good style of folds, and the Redeemer with a blue cloak and small sash, painted with a frankness of brush equal to more excellent masters… it was contemplated in Parma and brought great praise, as it was also exhibited in the public Church of Piacenza, and was highly praised and applauded by the most intelligent”.
He also informs us that there was also an original sketch kept by Mr. Luigi Sormani of Soragna, which has also disappeared.
The red chalk drawing with the Battesimo di Cristo, preserved in the Palatina Library of Parma (ms. Parm. n. 3724/127) which can most likely be referred to this altarpiece, since the aforementioned sketch is missing, could be of no small interest in the corpus of the painter’s works, if it were considered to have been executed by her, as Cirillo and Godi propose (1979b, I, p. 45). But if one accepts the attribution of the sketch to Gaetano Callani, whose stylistic characteristics were considered by Riccomini to be “fully in his taste and of the highest quality”, then it can be considered – as he suggested – a guide to guide his young daughter towards her first public office (1977a, p. 184; 1979a, p. 184). Whatever the reality, one cannot forget the close master-student bond that united the two artists and Maria’s assiduous attendance of her father’s studio, with the consequent exchange of ideas and suggestions, facts that justify any plausible doubt regarding this question.
The qualities that were found in the large canvas, balance, compositional elegance and chromatic refinement, also qualify the self-portrait of Parma, where the analysis from life and the assimilation of classical taste are predominant characteristics. With the bust slightly turned to the left but with the face almost frontal and the intense and fixed gaze projected towards the spectator, the painter portrays herself dressed in the ancient style with a hairstyle, adorned according to the Greek costume, where some locks of hair arranged with extreme freedom and naturalness frame the face. A whim allowed even in the most severe portraits of the major exponents of Neoclassicism, such as Appiani and Bossi, whom Callani had had the opportunity to meet in Milan, almost to solicit those vitalistic inspirations, inhibited elsewhere. The landscape background, treated with rapid touches of colour playing on shades of light green, not present in the Milanese version, as well as the pink dress rendered with loose and quick brush strokes, the only virtuosic exceptions of an eighteenth-century style, seem to almost dilute the more classical setting of the figure.
United by the same expressive intensity, the same incisiveness in the physiognomic features, modulated by a smooth and compact pictorial mixture, and by the chiaroscuro passages more delicately shaded than in the painting with the Negroni, the two self-portraits can easily be traced back to a drawing preserved at the Pinacoteca Stuard in Parma. Although it cannot be considered a preparatory study in all respects, as some had believed (Ceschi Lavagetto 1973b, p. 734), the charcoal, similarly signed “R.to di Maria Callani fatto da sé”, appears rather to be an autonomous exercise, which the painter carries out with skill and a sure hand. More evident, in this case, is the reference to the great masters of the Renaissance: the almost Leonardesque cut of the face, the expressive depth, the chiaroscuro and the linear stroke conducted with delicacy, make this painter a wise interpreter of classical culture. The image that the painter gives of herself fits into that process of self-awareness and awareness of her role as a female artist, perfectly in line with the neoclassical culture that was now dominant at the turn of the century.
Bibliography
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