Technique: smoke drawing Smoke drawing on glossy pasteboard, Work correlated with Carlo Siviero's 1922 study also present in the images of the lot. The artist succeeds in rendering every single detail of the animal with this meticulous technique. Passepartout and gilded frame Francesco Paolo Michetti (1851-1929) - initiator of an artistic coterie of which Costantino Barbella, Basilio Cascella, and Gabriele D'Annunzio were also members - was an eclectic and versatile artist, interested in exploring all the possibilities of different artistic languages. This small but precious work - depicting the animal that symbolises Abruzzo sheep-farming - fits fully into this experimental groove, in which Micheletti's realism is expressed through the use of lampblack. A letter from the well-known painter Carlo Siviero (1882-1953) praises this singular work - which he was able to see in the De Marco collection in Naples - obtained on "a white shiny paper pulp" on which a thin smoky veil was "spread over the flame of a candle"; the figure was then obtained by acting on this layer "with a stick and a wad of cotton wool, and using the fingers as if to make a shade". The effect is truly effective, so much so that Siviero himself jokes that many would bet it was a print, deceived by the perfect result achieved. As proof of this empirical approach to artistic techniques, it suffices to recall how, in one of his most famous paintings (La figlia di Jorio, 1895), Michetti had experimented with a mixture of glycerine-based colours - of his own invention - which over time proved to be subject to alteration, eventually compromising the conservation of the painting's original colours (CIGLIA, 1977, p. 70; OJETTI, 1910, p. 404). Siviero's letter - which accompanied the work at auction, and which took its cue from a solicitation by the journalist and art critic Guido Polisiero - is dated 20 January 1922, thus providing us with a secure termine ante quem for the dating of the work. Reference bibliography: CIGLIA 1977: R. CIGLIA, La figlia di Jorio. Opera pittorica di Francesco Paolo Michetti, Pescara 1977; OJETTI 1910: U. OJETTI, Artisti contemporanei: Francesco Paolo Michetti, in "Emporium", XXXII (1910), pp. 403-428; Support: glossy pasteboard