Florentine artist Alessandra Marrucchi continues to paint in the tradition of artists whose lineage can be traced directly to renowned French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904).
Using these age-old art techniques, she’s won many awards, including winning second place in the non-commissioned portrait category of “The Portrait Society of America’s 2021 Members Only Competition” for her painting “A Self Portrait With a Pearl Earring” and most recently, an outstanding technique award for the same painting at “The Sixth NTD International Figure Painting Competition (NIFPC).” NTD, New Tang Dynasty, is the sister media of The Epoch Times.
Learning Traditional Art
Fifty years ago, Ms. Marrucchi longed to learn traditional figure and portrait painting in Florence, Italy. Yet, remarkably, she found it hard to find a teacher. Modern and abstract painting had begun to replace time-honored painting traditions, and not many people were teaching even basic painting techniques, she explained in an interview. Then, she discovered Studio Simi, an atelier founded by painter and sculptor Filadelfo Simi (1849–1923) in 1886.Famous in his day, Simi had studied art in Florence, and he also spent four years in Paris and frequented renowned artist Gérôme’s atelier. At the time, Gérôme taught the 19th-century style of painting known as academic art at the city’s Ecole des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts). The academic style incorporates elements of Neoclassical and romantic art.
Simi passed his art knowledge on to his children, Renzo and Nerina. Nerina dedicated her life to teaching traditional art techniques to the next generation of Studio Simi artists. And artists from around the world came to learn from her.
For six years, Nerina taught Ms. Marrucchi at Studio Simi, where students created all artworks directly from life, using studio models. Nerina told her students, “Remember, I am your guide, nature is your teacher.”
Ms. Marrucchi explained that for the first three years, the students worked solely in charcoal before they were allowed to graduate to oil painting. In the morning, they would draw from a nude model, and in the afternoon they created portraits from studio models, too.
Preserving Traditional Painting
Fifty years on from her student days, Ms. Marrucchi stays true to those same Studio Simi principles. She took three weeks to paint her multi-award-winning painting, “A Self Portrait With a Pearl Earring.” That’s the minimum timeframe for her portraits. “I study the person, and I talk with the person, because you need to see many expressions before you can take one expression,” she said. This includes conveying a person’s innate “beauty and serenity.” “When I’m painting, I try to find everything that is good,” she said.She works eight hours a day in her studio, using only natural light that enters from the north. She explains that sunlight from the north stays fairly constant throughout the day. And, of course, she always paints from life.
She advises aspiring artists to immerse themselves in drawing from life. Unfortunately, she sees that many artists today are overreliant on painting from photographs, without a good or even basic understanding of anatomy. Photographs, she said, should only be used as references for artists with years of life-study experience.
For years, she too taught the traditional art techniques she'd learned throughout her life. She believes that every aspiring artist should study time-honored techniques.
Now at 72 years old, Ms. Marrucchi has stopped teaching, but she’s still striving to improve herself as an artist. She sees competitions such as the NIFPC as important to her artistic growth. It’s a chance to meet artists from around the world and be exposed to different styles and ideas. She’s especially eager to see young artists’ work in order to keep up with how they see the world and stay current in her own art.
Studying Ms. Marrucchi’s face in “A Self Portrait With a Pearl Earring,” we can see the innate beauty and serenity she aims to convey in all her portraits, and the surety of an artist ever-ready to master more.
