Pescatorello con canna

In his works on the “fisher boy” theme, like his other depictions of typical Neapolitan characters, mostly young boys, Vincenzo Gemito combined his extraordinary talent and inner drive to realism with the results of his profound study of the Hellenistic sculptures in the collection of the Museum of Naples. In these works Greek plasticity abandons the supreme harmonies of the high classical phase to embrace the simple themes of daily life, the immediate rendering of a gesture, a human type in action.
Vincenzo Gemito grasped the immediacy and typicality of Hellenistic art as the possibility of enhancing and in a sense ennobling the local and popular themes that so perfectly suited his realistic bent and technical mastery.