Angelo Morbelli, Dancer at La Scala

In Dancer at La Scala Angelo Morbelli proves to be an unsurpassed master of light and shadow as he portrays, in a classic style, a shy teenager wrapped in a transparent dust that hovers in a timeless space.

The atmosphere allows the beauty and perfection of the forms to avoid the excesses or obviousness of an over-exposed realism. Here, rather than a realistic representation, we find the exaltation of a "new expressive intensity, occasioned by having given the figure the power to expand its internal luminosity, in close relation to the quality of the light-environment into which it finds itself".

This is achieved through an impeccable technical skill with which the painter entrusts the task of blending nature and art: a golden light warms the hair gathered in chignons, then glides softly over the rosy arms and finally palpitates on the candid white and pink of the garment. To contrast the warmer hues, a symphony of colder tones soften the contours, thus favouring the vibration of the figure, caught in the fugacity of a moment backstage before her performance. 

Angelo Morbelli
(Alexandria 1853 - Milan 1919)

Dancer at La Scala, 1909
Oil on canvas 41,5 x 30,2 cm
Signed and dated bottom left: Morbelli 1909

Provenance
Private collection, Milan