GIUSEPPE BONITO (Castellammare di Stabia, 1707 - Naples, 1789) The Card Game Oil on canvas, 76X182 cm Provenance: Ohio, USA, private collection New York, Christie's, 9 January 1981, lot 236 Bergamo, Galleria Previtali Bergamo, Previtali Collection Bibliography: Zeri Archive, no. 63259 (as Giuseppe Bonito) The value and importance of Giuseppe Bonito within the sphere of 18th-century Neapolitan painting is still unclear to most, let alone his role as 'cultural' director for the Bourbon court. A pupil of Francesco Solimena, Bonito was an excellent portrait painter but also skilled in frescoes and refined decorations. To his hand are also owed singular genre scenes depicting sewing schools, card games, and gallant entertainments that, according to De Dominici, 'were praised by the entire public' and 'made him acquire a great name'. Modern critics, in fact, interpreted these works as authentic documentations of Neapolitan society (cf. O. Ferrari, Le arti figurative, in La storia di Napoli, vol. VI, tomo II, Naples 1970, pp. 1329-133- 1343_1344), giving rise to an illustrative genre that characterised the subsequent production of Gaspare Traversi, the artist to whom his creations were often attributed (cf. Roberto Longhi, Di Gaspare Traversi, in Vita artistica, II, 1927, pp. 145- 147). Having said this, the painting presented here can be considered paradigmatic, in which portrait wisdom and narrative taste intersect, achieving excellent expressive results. We can note how the protagonists are depicted with fervent realism, highlighting a true observation from life and an enlightened irreverence, a fact not to be underestimated if we think that the execution of these works falls in the preponderant and triumphant moment of Solimenes' late Baroque rhetoric. Finally, the wall size of the painting must be taken into account in our case, bearing in mind that these kinds of compositions were generally smaller in size. Reference bibliography: B. De Dominici, Vite de' pittori, scultori ed architetti napolitani, III, Naples 1763, pp. 712-714 N. Spinosa, Pittura napoletana del Settecento. From Baroque to Rococo. Naples 1988, pp. 57-61 C. Gelao, La Pinacoteca provinciale di Bari, Rome 1998, pp. 197 199, nn. 51-54