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Lot description
pencil and ink on cardboard, double-sided, unframed 20.5 x 28.7 cm PROVENANCE Cornelio Di Marzio Collection, Rome; Di Marzio heirs, Rome; private collection. The fruit of a twenty-year friendship with Gabriele D'Annunzio and years of work for the Treves brothers of Milan, Adolfo De Carolis's illustrations for D'Annunzio's Notturno represent one of his moments of greatest maturity as an illustrator. The Art Nouveau and Pre-Raphaelite influences associated with the In Arte Libertas movement are streamlined by the specifics of the woodcut technique, resulting in elegant figures with clean-cut profiles that are nonetheless in tune with the Italian Renaissance tradition. This study and the following ones (lots 138-141) provide insight into the creative process that led to the final woodcuts. The composition of the page and the poses of the figures had to be perfectly clear in the artist's mind before proceeding to the actual engraving, also because, unlike a copper plate, wood is unforgiving. These sketches therefore represent an essential phase in the creation of those illustrations inextricably linked to D'Annunzio's imagery.