Painting By Fausto Zonaro (1854-1929), young Oriental Girl

Fausto Zonaro (Masi 1854-San Remo 1929), “Young Oriental Girl”, 1896?
Oil on canvas, cm 56 x 43
signed “F. Zonaro” top left.

Young Oriental Girl by Fausto Zonaro is a very fine portrait dating back to the Venetian artist’s long stay in Turkey. The girl, with markedly Mediterranean features, is immersed in a muffled, almost fairy-tale atmosphere, from One Thousand and One Nights; the shaded background of the green wall contrasts and highlights the pink dress, whose chromatic choice is not casual, and indeed dialogues with and highlights the rosy color of her cheeks. Half hidden by a white veil, the girl’s dark, curly hair falls softly on her forehead and cheekbones, from which deep black eyes peep out: set in a thick blanket of lashes, they look at the observer with great intensity. The young woman’s fascinating oriental beauty is highlighted by the cut of her thick eyebrows and her aquiline nose, slightly pronounced at the tip; her full lips are half-open in a shy half-smile. In this painting Zonaro uses a thick and nuanced brushstroke, light as the breeze that caresses the veil on the girl’s head. The painting of his portraits, so intimate and ethereal, is a continuous dialogue between transparencies and glances.

BIOGRAPHY

Fausto Zonaro was born in 1854 in Masi, in the province of Padua. He showed excellent artistic talent from an early age and, despite coming from a poor family (his father was a bricklayer), he was sent to study at a technical institute in the province of Rovigo. Later he enrolled at the Academia Cignaroli in Verona, whose direction was entrusted to one of the most renowned Venetian verists of the time, Napoleone Nani; among his colleagues were other future Venetian artists, including Favretto and Milesi. Thanks to the help of some patrons he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Later he moved to Venice where he opened a small painting school inside Palazzo Pesaro; in the meantime, he received commissions from the duke and entrepreneur Camerini from Padua. Between 1885 and 1888 Zonaro often went to Naples, a city that particularly attracted him, making friends with Neapolitan painters, especially Attilio Pratella. Here he painted pastels of views of the city and what is considered the masterpiece of his Neapolitan period, the large canvas Il banditore (The Town Crier) from 1886; the works cited were later purchased by Duke Camerini.
His fascination with the teeming and exotic Constantinople began with his reading of writings about the city, such as the novels of French writers Théophile Gautier and Pierre Loti, who had lived in Turkey, and especially the novel by Edmondo de Amicis from 1882, illustrated by the Roman painter Cesare Biseo.
In 1891 his life was turned upside down when, with a third-class ticket, he boarded the Simeto of the Navigazione Generale Italiana, following in the footsteps of his former student Elisabetta Pante who had preceded him to Constantinople two months earlier; to support himself financially he gave Italian and painting lessons to the women in the harems of Ottoman nobles. Pante provided him with his first contacts with the Italian embassy and the local institutions and in the early years Zonaro began to make himself known artistically to the aristocrats of the city, starting his journey from scratch: his first non-formal exhibition took place inside a bookshop of the Zellich printing house, founded by the Dalmatian Antonio Zellich in 1869. He managed to gain greater publicity thanks to the publication of his painting, The Town Crier, on the cover of Illustrirte Zeitung of Leipzig, a German weekly, very popular among the upper middle class, which published news and columns on music, art and theatre. Zonaro then presented himself in the editorial office of a Turkish daily newspaper in French, Stamboul, which published the painting and the news of his arrival in Constantinople, guaranteeing the artist meetings and commissions from many European embassies. Thanks to the fame ensured by the article, the painter manages to establish a friendship with the Italian minister Rosti, who puts him in contact with the Italian ambassador Panza.
Zonaro's fame also reached the Russian ambassador Alexandr Nelidov, who made a room in his embassy available to the artist to run a school for the wealthy wives and daughters of European diplomats. Nelidov and Panza presented the work The Imperial Regiment of Ertogrul on the Galata Bridge to Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, who immediately purchased it; a great patron, the sovereign appointed Zonaro Court Painter and assured him a considerable salary. The sultan had many commissions: portraits of his children, studies from life in the Park of the Palace and a series celebrating the entry of Mehmet II into Constantinople on 29 May 1453, which the sovereign appreciated so much that he donated Zonaro a three-story palace in the Besiktas district, used as a residence for Palace officials. The painter dedicated the first two floors to a permanent exhibition of all his works and the gallery was visited by wealthy people, such as the Prince of Naples Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia and his wife in 1903, but also the English colonel Winston Churchill, the head of the Ottoman army Enver Bey and the nephew of the sultan, Prince Abdulmecid. His wife Elisa meanwhile continued to teach painting to the women of the Ottoman Harem and devoted herself to photography. The happy decade in Constantinople ended abruptly in 1909, when the aforementioned head of the army, Enver Bey, deposed Sultan Abdul-Hamid II with a coup d'état and imposed a constitution: the painter was forced to return to Italy and, deeply embittered, never returned to Constantinople. The Zonaro family thus settled in San Remo, a seaside town and a popular destination for Russian and English nobles, who stayed there for months; here the artist organized exhibitions throughout Liguria and opened a permanent atelier; His pictorial activity continued with views of the cities of the French Riviera, portrait commissions from nobles and orientalist paintings, which nevertheless achieved a fair amount of success. Zonaro's last years were marked by sad events, first of all the death of his firstborn son during the world conflict in 1915, then the disappearance of his beloved daughter Jolanda, consumed by tuberculosis at a very young age in 1922. Fausto Zonaro, named honorary citizen of Sanremo, passed away in 1929; his funeral was held with public honors.
Many of Zonaro's works are preserved in the most important museums in Istanbul, including the Topkapi, the Imperial Palace of Dolmabahçe and the Military Museum.