(Ancona 1867–1960 Venice)
Carnival in Venice, one signed G. Cherubini, oil on gold ground on canvas, each 129 x 248 cm, framed, (2)

Provenance:
Private Collection, Italy.

A certificate issued by Michele Rovoleto is available upon request.

Giuseppe Cherubini was born in the working-class district of Capodimonte in Ancona. Given his precocious artistic talents, he was assigned to the care of the academic painter Francesco Podesti after primary school. Later, thanks to a municipal scholarship, he completed his training in Rome at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1895, he visited Venice for the first time on the occasion of the first International Art Exhibition and, in the following years, he both exhibited at the Società degli Amatori e Cultori dell'Arte, 1898 in Rome, and also painted murals at the Hotel Roma e Pace in Ancona in 1900. He moved to Venice with his family at the turn of the century, whilst maintaining his position as a teacher at the Ancona School of Art. His artistic activity in the city began at this time, and demonstrates an extraordinary pictorial culture.

The two panels presented here can be traced back to his work in the 1920s-1930s through comparison with similar paintings: the Venetian panels of the Caffè Martini and those adorning the walls of the Caffè Aragno in Rome.
Monumental figures stand in the foreground. Behind them, two marvellous views open up, immortalising St. Mark's Square from the side of the Procuratie Vecchie, the Molo with Bacino San Marco and the island of San Giorgio at the apex.
The panels are crowded with characters in the foreground showing an obvious symbolic play between past and present, between carnival caricatures and reality. Colombina and Pierrot, or the beautiful and the eternally unlucky lover. The other work shows a musical band with a figure dressed in the Turkish style playing a baglama.