The historic Studio Bolzani Gallery in Milan which celebrated the hundred years in 2022 and very active on the side of modern and contemporary art, offers us for 2025 “The picture of the month”. So in the windows of the Strasbourg Gallery close to Piazza San Babila we will find every month a painting of exceptional value and an artist of clear fame. For February 2025 it is the turn of a painting by Vincenzo Caprile (Naples, June 24, 1856 –
Naples, June 23, 1936), A artist of clear fame of the Neapolitan school, and Bolzani have always been interested in numerous painters from this regional school who has conquered the whole world.
The work exhibited at the Bolzani Studio in Milan (in the Strasbourg Gallery) in this February 2025 has a title “Woman with child in a courtyard” an oil on canvas in 51 × 62 format, signed on the bottom right, datable 90s of the 19th century, on the authentic verse of his nephew Teodoro Lienhardy-via Mergellina 156-Napoli. Work of evident impressionist readability, a popular scene but of great humanity; This mother with a child in the arms, the son, reveals a pictorial communication of emotion, affections, as was had within the then prevailing peasant civilization. The figure of the woman with child is part of a rural context that is also traced in another work entitled “Peasant and Caprette”, the housing scene would seem the same. Work of exceptional pictorial value, I consider among the most beautiful among those of a rural nature; It is measured on the graceful of the subject and the freshness of the complexion. Even more this particular painting shows that his painting is kind, in the sense of an adjective that includes a subject as a noble election. Vincenzo Caprile He was the Italian painter who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, with Domenico Morelli and with Gabriele Smargiassi, he is a painter of impressionist system, he was linked to the school of Resìna, and dedicated himself to the representation of village scenes and popular characters. His pictorial technique denotes great freshness of stroke, which recalls influences of Filippo Palizzi to mind, and have led to an excellent commercial success. He lived for long periods in Venice, alternating paintings from the lagoon with Neapolitan landscapes. With other Neapolitan painters (Luca Postiglione, Pietro Scoppetta, Vincenzo Volpe, Edoardo Matania, Attilio Pratella, Giuseppe Alberto Cocco, Giuseppe Casciaro, Giuseppe Chiarolanza, Gaetano Esposito, Vincenzo Migliaro, Vincenzo Irolli) was called to decorate the halls of the Caffè Gambrinus in Naples . Vincenzo Caprile, It was formed in the Palizzian atmosphere, indirectly, through the Smargiassi, which proposed the themes of the School of Posillipo and then of Rossano, somehow approaches the aesthetics of the Republic of Portici, Working and studying for a long time in the company of Federico Rossano and Alceste Campiani; but the painter does not adapt to a determined address, despite having, together with the “Porticese” friends, Even a certain propensity to adopt the “stain” that resists with him and Vincenzo Volpe, and then be abandoned in Naples with the start of the artistic operation 
who was by Vincenzo Ciardo, who looked at the French and especially to Paul Cézanne and Pierre Bonnard. Caprile was an eclectic and passionate experimenter, this led him to orient himself in part also towards anecdotal painting, which was expressed with quite another compositional and chromatic “civilization”; In this anecdotal line, the painting exposed to Studio Bolzani must be understood these days. The painting “The dowry of Rita”, from the Angelo collection, a picture dominated by the red of the model skirt, a red that is also found also The rustic interior. But, in addition to gender painting, Vincenzo Caprile is happily expressed in landscape painting, in which instinctive freshness and grace are found. Paesistically he prefers the nature of Positano and the decadent and refined atmosphere of the Venetian reasons; Thus the artist is divided between the two favorite themes, finding in the nature more congenial to him on the Amalfi Coast the elegite and at all conventional motifs of a painting that comes from afar, from the examples of a certain eighteenth -century seer, relived by the artist on plan of a punctual description of the life and events of the sea populations that populate the rocks and beaches of Positano, Amalfi and other countries that They look after the Gulf of Salerno.
Vincenzo Caprile (1856 – 1936). Born in Naples to a wealthy family he had from an early age the passion for painting that was opposed by the parents who started with the still disciplines. At only 17 years old, in 1873, as self -taught he presented one of his painting, as a dilesome on the Neapolitan promoter, who was accepted and included in the catalog. Perhaps for this success, and certainly for his insistence, the father convinced himself to present some of his works to Morelli who decidedly advised him to make him continue on this path. In 1874 he enrolled in the Institute and obtained an encouragement prize. His masters were Morelli himself, Carillo, Mancinelli and Gabriele Smargiassi and from the latter he suffered the influence of the set school of Posillipo. In 1876 his landscape exercise was rewarded with the sum of 40 lire; After just over two years, after completing his studies left the institute; In 85 he was appointed honorary professor. Vincenzo Caprile was a friend of Federico Rossano and Alceste Campriani, animators of the Resin School. With these he worked for a long time in the countryside, from the truth, and this allowed him to free himself from the aftermath of the rigid academic teaching and to form a pictorial personality that will remain unchanged throughout his career. In 1877 he presented at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts “Always lives them“And in the same year to the Neapolitan promoter”The courtyard“Which collected a big success and was purchased by King SM Vittorio Emanuele II. This success favored the rapid ascent of the artist just over twenty years old. His best period we can consider it between the 80s and 90s. In the 80s he presented the “”Dow of Rita“That he sanctioned his success in the national field, acclaimed by critics, so much so that Corriere della Sera performed a reproduction in color printing that was donated to all his subscribers. Success is repeated the following year with “Who loves me follow me“Presented at the Milan exhibition; The painting depicts a smiling shepherdess with a bundle of rods and grass that some sheep are about to ugly. We report a passage of the critics taken from the Italian illustration of 1881: “Caprile painting is like that figure, young, robust, healthy, frank and alive“. Vincenzo Caprile was a versatile artist who space from the portrait to the landscape, to the scenes of interior and to those of Neapolitan popular life, had a vast production, accumulated and jealously stored hundreds of small studies on tablets, preparatory to works performed in the studio of the larger studio I commit. Resto to leave Naples, he made very few trips often due to the need to accompany his paintings to exhibitions, if his stay in Argentina lasting about a year is excluded. The Italian locations that exerted on Caprile a large charm were certainly, Naples, Positano and Venice, where the artist has gone for years on holiday, portrayed countless times and that we can consider among the best part of his production. The artist, together with his friend Giuseppe De Santis, opened a private design and painting school that was attended by the best Neapolitan society and above all allowed him to teach outside the institute, without the rigid patterns that imposed the era. Caprile had many illustrious clients: King Umberto bought it in 1985 “Zuffegna water“Presented to the promoter of Naples; At the Triennale di Fine Arts in Milan of 94 he purchased “Monkeys cage” And “Bridge of the farmhouse“; at the Florence Exhibition of 96/97 he purchased “Old carob“While Queen Margherita preferred”Idyll“. In 93 the same queen bought “Santa Lucia” And “Old Naples“To give it to the Empress of Germany. The artist also performed portraits of almost all the real and in 1901, on commission of the Senate he performed the portraits of the principles of Naples. In 1910 Vittorio Emanuele III bought “Campo San Zanipolo“In addition to the real he had a thick and aristocratic client, including Russia’s mother’s Empress. Countless private collectors, galleries and museums. He was gratified by many honors: Honorary Professor in Naples, at the Royal Institute of Fine Arts of Urbino and in 1933 he was appointed together with Paolo Vetri and Vincenzo Migliaro academic of San Luca.
Carlo Franza