Pietro Annigoni: The Last Word

Pietro Annigoni's self-portrait as "Gulliver"

We now leave Pietro Annigoni's autobiography, which was published in 1977, eleven years before his death in Florence on October 28, 1988, of kidney failure. He was a controversial figure - definite in his classical approach, searching for the raison d'etre behind his subject matter, unabashedly expressing his thoughts on art and not caring overmuch what his critics thought.

In "Pietro Annigoni: A Retrospective," a catalogue for a 1969 exhibition, it is observed:

'Annigoni is a 'rara avis' [rare bird] among contemporary artists; a painter who has never abandoned his faith in the importance of humanist traditions, and who derives his strength as an artist directly from the inspiration of the Renaissance. He is an extraordinarily gifted draughtsman, and he has applied his talents during the last twenty years to the business of painting portraits - and so he is known to the world at large. His admirers - those who know the man and his work in depth - and his critics who do not respond to the substance of his art, are both taken by his mastery of drawing. 

The admirers largely fall into the category of votaries - those who seek him out because he can render a portrait or a landscape with all the apparent virtuosity of a living Old Master; those, who, as students, find his re-assurances of the values of realism nourishing to their own ambitions; and those who see him as the exponent of a wished-for artistic 'revanche*' against the tide of modern taste. 

His detractors tend to view him with dismay, seeing his career as the misguided use of a prodigiously talented hand spending itself in the pursuit of discredited ambitions. But Annigoni seems to care very little for all of this. He is content with his friends and he is sufficiently intellectual to deal with the hostile theories that assail his position. He makes but one request of the world: despite differences of opinion, his integrity be not doubted.' 

* revanche: a policy or movement aimed at achieving the return of a nation's lost territory.

(Excerpt from the introduction, by Donelson F. Hoopes, in "Pietro Annigoni: A Retrospective Exhibition," 1969.)