Whilst twentieth-century criticism often dismissed genre painting as mere "tourist art", the works of Adriano Bonifazi stand here today, demanding a reappraisal of that judgement.

One need only meet the gaze of one of his subjects to understand that we are not dealing with simple postcards of Italian folklore, but with portraits of the highest mastery.

This website was established with an ambitious and necessary objective: to restore Adriano Bonifazi to his rightful place as one of the most refined and sensitive interpreters of childhood and adolescence in the European nineteenth century.

Upon observing the masterpieces we are gathering and cataloguing—works often dated between Rome and Capri in the 1870s—a striking pictorial truth emerges.

Bonifazi did not merely paint Ciociarian costumes or Capri faces; he painted souls.

His children and young women possess an ancestral solemnity. In their eyes, rendered with a liquidity and transparency with few equals in contemporaneous painting, we find not a polite smile, but profound thought, a subtle melancholy, a regal dignity. Bonifazi was able to investigate the psychology of the formative years with a seriousness that today appears thoroughly modern, liberating his subjects from the role of extras to render them eternal protagonists.

Whether it be the lustre of a red coral necklace, a 'Perla' [Pearl] or a 'Fiore' [Flower] of Capri, the rough texture of a peasant headdress, or the diaphanous delicacy of the complexion, Bonifazi’s technique is impeccable. Yet, it is a technique always at the service of emotion. The light in his paintings is never contrived: it caresses the faces and reveals their interiority, transforming a portrait from life into a timeless icon.

Until yesterday, Bonifazi’s life was shrouded in fragmentary information and erroneous dating. Today, thanks to rigorous archival research, this portal rewrites the artist’s history, restoring to us the profile of an absolute protagonist of the nineteenth-century art market.

We have bridged the biographical gaps: born in Rome in 1839, Adriano Bonifazi passed away in Genoa on 10 January 1895, at the age of 56. Yet, what emerges from the documents is the stature of his success. Bonifazi was not a marginal painter, but a name sought after by the most prestigious centres in Europe.

In the United Kingdom, his presence was widespread and prestigious: his works not only merited full-page engravings in The Illustrated London News, consecrating him to the general public, but were regularly exhibited in the most important institutions. From 1874 to 1883, his paintings appeared at the New British Institution, the Society of British Artists, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and the Glasgow Institute, being auctioned by Christie, Manson & Woods as early as 1876.

A fame that also conquered Belgium, where the artist was present at the General Exhibition of Brussels in 1875 and the Ghent Triennial in 1877.

In Paris, he maintained direct relations with the legendary Maison Bernheim-Jeune, the dynasty of dealers who would shortly thereafter launch the Impressionists.

In Munich, his images were distributed in series by the celebrated publishing house Hanfstaengl, demonstrating a commercial demand that transcended national borders.

An international career that intertwined with major Italian events: his exhibitions at the Rome exhibition of 1883 are documented, as well as, towards the end of his life, at the great Italo-American Exhibition in Genoa in 1892, during the year of the Columbian celebrations.

Bonifazi's production is dispersed across the globe, jealously guarded in private collections that have always intuited its value, long before official criticism did so.

We have already documented approximately 80 works, but to complete the First Catalogue Raisonné of the artist, we require your assistance.

Contact us. Every report will be treated with the utmost discretion and will contribute to the study of an excellent artist of Italian painting. Help us to recompose the history of these unforgettable gazes.