Cesare Dies - Family Joys

The painting can be defined as a genre scene, that is, the depiction of an episode of everyday life that, apparently, lacks any significant element. These types of domestic subjects were long considered minor and only began to spread in Western art starting in the 17th century. Only with the development of 19th-century realism did everyday subjects become considered as important as historical or religious ones. Cesare Dies is one of the leading exponents of 19th-century Italian academic painting, specializing in the depiction of historical-literary scenes. In the present work, however, the artist draws inspiration from the genre scene set in an interior. A widespread subject from the 18th century onwards, it combines a narrative flair with an accurate description of the setting, almost transforming the painting into a precious testimony.

The work is attributed to Cesare Dies, who truly is a perfect interpreter of the genre scene in all its codified rules. The work, in fact, wonderfully illustrates its era with extraordinary representational power. Dies's aim was to capture on canvas the symbolic image of an era, which is expressed already starting from the idea of
A composition in which the subject is coherently united with its surrounding environment. The union between subject and environment is inseparable and further strengthened by the work's structure, constructed according to a rigorous perspective. It goes without saying that, in a painting of this kind, descriptive clarity must be an essential characteristic of the pictorial process. Indeed, Dies's works are characterized by a perfect naturalistic rendering, impeccable in the description of every single objective detail. A style that can be described as academic, an illustrious example of that pompier painting that, at the end of the nineteenth century, proud of its tradition, opposed the innovations of Impressionism. All of these characteristics are found expressed in the painting in question. It is also characterized by a great softness of touch, through which the artist achieves a complete fusion of the objects in the atmospheric, coherent, and luminous space of the work.

Cesare Diesa, Rome 1830 - after 1889. He received his first training from his father Luigi, a gem engraver, and his brother Giuseppe, a mosaic artist. In Rome, he attended courses at the Accademia di San Luca and the studio of T. Minardi, with whom he formed a long-standing partnership that saw him create canvases designed by the master. His academic-purist training is evident in St. Paul in the House of St. James in Jerusalem for the Roman basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. He participated in exhibitions with subjects of various inspirations, such as an episode from the second canto of Dante's Inferno, presented in Florence in 1861, or Disillusionment and the two watercolors with Costumes, sent in 1871 to the Roman Society of Amateurs and Cultivators. Still with watercolor works, a technique he had dedicated himself to since 1863, he took part in the 1869 exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. St. Gregory the Great sending the apostles to convert England, for the Roman church of San Giorgio Maggiore (1889), is the last known work.

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