Object Description
A large painting of ‘The Wedding Party’ by Arturo Ricci (1854-1919)
Italian, Late 19th Century
Frame: Height 90cm, width 121cm, depth 8cm
Canvas: Height 68cm, width 100cm, depth 2cm
This beautiful oil-on-canvas painting by the Italian artist Arturo Ricci depicts a genre scene of a wedding celebration in a lavishly adorned exuberant aristocratic courtly interior. Ricci, an Academic and Classical artist working in an Italian Rococo style, is greatly admired and prized for scenes such as these, which display the sort of Pre-Industrial aristocratic lifestyle of opulence and leisure which nobility of the time, and those on the Grand Tour, found so appealing, and which continues to be greatly enjoyed today.
This painting, very similar in execution to works such as ‘The Cardinal’s Present,’ ‘The Recitation,’ and ‘The First Visit,’ depicts the married couple processing into a richly adorned courtly hall, with a young girl strewing flowers before them from a basket, and a pair of seated aristocratic ladies sat in front of them to the left awaiting their arrival. A man hails their entrance, as do other figures in the wedding entourage, including pair of elegant young women to the right. All of the figures are painted with impeccable skill, as is to be expected from an artist of Ricci’s calibre – yet even by Ricci’s standards this work is exceptional, and the painting is exemplary of the wonderfully carefree, charming, and reassuring character and composition of so much of his oeuvre.
The work is in oil-on-canvas in a carved giltwood frame, signed to the lower right ‘Arturo Ricci.’