El Asado

"El asado" is a late work by Manzoni, perhaps one of the last produced before his return to Italy, and demonstrates the his mature skills. With the baroque style and the thick impasto of his works from the 1850s now moderated, a more solid resolution of the figures come to the forefront, without losing the brilliant color. Themes of rural cutoms and manners, although present, would not centrally occupy the artist who was now more interested in quickly solved exercises of heads of popular types. That practice must have served him well in the depiction of the four heads of the figures of "El asado", with the force of the painting lying in the photographic setting.