Raffaele Frigerio

RAFFAELE FRIGERIO (Italy, 1875-1948).
"Street melody".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the upper right corner.
It presents some damage in the golden frame.
Measurements: 30 x 39 cm; 50 x 60 cm (frame).

This painting is framed in the tradition of Italian realism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The canvas shows an old man of gray beard, face tanned by the years and the sun, playing the guitar with a serious concentration. His frown and deep gaze, sunken in the sockets of tired eyes, project intensity. The old man accompanies the singing of a child. Captured with his mouth open, he delivers himself with a luminous expression. His face contrasts with the old man's: it is fresh, round, vivid. He wears humble clothes and a knotted scarf around his neck. Both characters have tanned skin, toasted by the weather, which probably places the scene in an urban or peripheral Mediterranean environment, perhaps in a corner of Naples, Rome or Palermo, where street music and popular life intersected on the threshold of modernity. Raffaele Frigerio was an Italian painter who left us interesting portraits of popular characters.