Neoclassical Nude (Nudo Neoclassico) by Francesco Trombadori

In the catalog , this painting was initially called Donna Nuda, but later on artist himself changed the title to Neoclassical Nude, taking on the “neoclassical” attribute, which was a term that critics had used negatively to define his painting during the Biennale of 1923. 

The clear resemblance of the bathers by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres seems to justify both the label of “neoclassical” and the relationship with the “classic” and Roman Picasso of the same years.

The painting depicts a naked woman covered only by a white sheet, with her face turned in profile to the right. A bathing figure whose purity of forms is distinguished by a strong refinement recalls artwork from the beginning of the previous century. 

“Art is certainly not modern because it reflects our time, which would then be a matter of fashion and form. Art, modern as well as ancient, is only that which manages to express the essential truth of things with profound humanity and spirituality.”

Francesco Trombadori is an artist who has always been “secluded and poorly aligned”. For him, modern and even ancient art along with painting translated into the incessant effort to study and precisely express “the essential truth of things”.