Adriano Bonifazi

Christie's, London, 21 June 1991, lot 79

Typical of Bonifazi's style, this impressive oil depicts a cherubic young girl intently listening to a boy playing his instrument. Bonifazi worked in Capri and Rome and often produced idealised or Romantic portraits of young boys and girls in rustic clothing. Rather than producing naturalistic identifiable portraits, Bonifazi would mostly paint pendants depicting a young girl and a young boy offering flowers to their beloved or looking wistfully out of the picture space. The present work is unusual for the artist in terms of scale and composition, instead capturing an innocent interaction between the two children seated on the rubble of a building. Bonifazi's paintings of beautiful children and young adults attempt to capture an idea of innocence or emotion rather than capturing the likeness of an individual.