Ritratto di ragazza con mandolino

This “Portrait of a girl with mandolin” (sometimes also called simply Mandolino) is a perfect, radical example of Socrate’s adherence to the neo-museum school. Seen frontally with a slight inclination towards the left side of the painting, the girl is playing her musical instrument. Her bright face, the mandolin and the skirt pick up the light, standing out against the dark tones of her blouse and stockings.
This 1922 work quite effectively evokes a peaceful, orderly world inhabited intensely by an intimate quiet. This was the period when Socrate attained artistic maturity and made, in the “return to order” that drew much of his generation, the characteristic choices with which, in his own independent way, he flanked such Roman artists of the day as Francesco Trombadori and Antonio Donghi.