Paesaggio del Sarno

This view of the Sarno river in Campania depicts the places frequented by Rubens Santoro during the period of his studies with Domenico Morelli at the Naples Fine Arts Academy, before he ventured northward without, however, abandoning his fine feeling for landscape. Santoro’s quest for the “true” manifests itself in this work in the form of keen receptiveness to the ideas of plein-air painting, with an intense sensitivity to the contrasts between the white tones of the façades of the houses in full light and the more sombre tones of the thick vegetation along the banks of the river. Virtuoso effects of “optical Verism” achieved in the iridescent rippling of the water that flows on, reflecting the forms along the flower-covered banks, and disappears in a final bend of the river at the edge of a town whose roofs stand out with accents of red against the distant background of trees and hills.