Pietro Annigoni: First Frescoes

Pietro Annigoni's fresco at the convent of San Marco

"The year 1937 was an important one for me. I began my first important work in fresco - and I decided to get married. I had begun to use fresco in a small way as early as 1934 but did not get the opportunity to paint an entire wall until 1936, when I made a large trompe l'oeil mural in a restaurant which my friends and I patronised and which, incidentally, was destroyed during the Second World War. All the work was done after dinner, by candlelight and with the aid of a flask of Chianti, starting at about ten o'clock and going on until the early hours of the morning.

Now, through an interest in transcendental philosophy, I had become very friendly with Monsignor Tanzella, who was a Professor of Philosophy in the Dominican Order and a man with a serious interest in painting. With his encouragement, I volunteered to paint a series of murals in the convent of San Marco, in Florence, my first ecclesiastical work in that medium, and the first of many that I was to undertake. I regard my frescoes as the most important things I have done, and, certainly, the works that have given me most satisfaction and pleasure. When painting portraits in my studio I have always felt a longing for the hours on the scaffolding, those lonely hours after the plasterer has done his job, and I am left entirely to my own thoughts. For many years now, portraiture has been only a minor part of my work and I have given more and more of my time and thoughts to religious frescoes. Ideas that I would like to realise in churches are going round in my head all the time.

I started the San Marco fresco with a 'Descent from the Cross', and, during the following four years added two groups of Dominican Saints and in two lunettes, 'Adam and Eve' and 'Cain and Abel'. For the first part of the work I decided that I must have a dead body as a model for the figure of Christ, so I consulted the Professor of Anatomy at a teaching hospital and was given permission to choose one from the refrigerator. I took the only one that could possibly serve my purpose and tried to hang it on a ladder, but it was far too stiff for me to do anything with it. In the end, I had to use a living model."

To be continued

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)