Vittorio Reggianini was born in Modena in 1858, only a few years before Italy had been unified as a nation. He attended the Modenese art academy from a young age where he was particularly influenced by his professor, Antonio Simonazzi. At art school, he studied alongside his contemporaries Gaetano Bellei and Eugenio Zampighi, both of whom would go on to great fame as genre paintings; although neither adopted the ‘silks and satins’ approach that would make Reggianini’s paintings so popular. After completing his training and still in his early twenties, Reggianini was soon after elected a professor of the academy in his own right by his peers: a mark of prodigious talent. At this stage his work was still firmly historical realist in tone, far more likely to depict a peasant that a princess.

 

In 1885, Reggianini decide to leave the academy and establish a studio in Florence where he was supported by Pisani, his local dealer. His style immediately began to shift to depictions of opulent 18th century settings where he could deploy his skill for rendering lavish drapery. The new approach matched perfectly with the tastes of the wealthy British and American Grand Tourists for whom Florence was the centrepiece of their travels in the continent. Reggianini saw instant success, both national and international. During the last decade of the 19th century his artworks were some of the most popular genre scenes in Europe, and he was at the forefront of what has been described as the ‘silks and satins’ school of late Victorian painting.

 

Reggiani’s painting has been aptly characterised as:

 

 “A pretext for showing extremely elegant people in utterly luxurious surroundings. Regginanini … dwelt lovingly on the richness of texture in lady’s dresses and in upholstery and draperies. Magnificent furniture was rendered in all its pristine glory. A materialistic society was paying its respects of another society of wealth in which money had not created more and more factories and coal-mines, but more and more muslin and brocade, not railways but sedan chairs, not grossness but refinement”.

 

Hook, P., & Poltimore, M., Popular 19th Century Painting, (Woodbridge, 1986), 296.

 

Today, Reggianini’s paintings can be found in a range of collections across Europe and the United States. He passed away peacefully in Florence in 1939, leaving a legacy as an enormously successful and popular painter who had helped shape a new taste in historical subject matter.

 

 

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