Diana di Efeso

Part of Aristide Sartorio’s complex research into the various facets of artistic language, this work illustrates the aspect most closely associated with literary or mythological references, against the backdrop of the particular direction taken by Decadentism in Italy, above all within the Roman artistic scene.
This monochrome painting is dominated by the statue of Diana of Ephesus, a cat curled up at her feet and a male figure kneeling before her in worship. The image portrays an aspect of Sartorio’s art that appears to diverge from what he expresses in another important work, also in the Bank’s collection, titled Ninfa pastorale, which is commented in the section “Figurative Painting at the Beginning of the Century”. This variance also reflects the alternate meeting and clash of different solutions during cultural crisis of the late 19th century.