Purissima

Joseph Stella depicted the world around him, offering an idiosyncratic vision of the early twentieth century. Supported by his older brothers, who had already achieved success in America, Stella arrived in New York in 1896 as part of a wave of Italian immigrants from poverty-stricken southern Italy. After receiving traditional academic training, which he quickly rejected, Stella joined the ranks of Modernist art in 1913, painting dynamic and jarring compositions of the Brooklyn Bridge in what became known as the Futurist style. Always reinventing himself, Stella turned to a series inspired by the art and environment of his native Naples. Purissima is one in a series of exquisite large-scale paintings featuring Madonnas painted to resemble early Christian icons set in stylized, paradisiacal Italian landscapes.