I'll take what's behind the curtain - satin drapery and satin ladies by Frédéric Soulacroix and Vittorio Reggianini

Soulacroix.

I can't make any argument for the worth of these paintings. They're sugary and empty-headed and vulgar. It's also a little shocking how both artists duplicated their own work and the work of the other artist with only the slightest of variations. They both painted very effeminate, historicist genre scenes, the sort that were very popular at the end of the nineteenth century. And the pieces I'm focusing on here - examples of a sort of sub-genre with both artists - are variations on an image of a doll-like young lady dressed in satin and toying with, or making an appearance through, full-length satin drapes. A single figure, or a trio, with sometimes an attendant dog, all reflected in highly polished floors. While, as I said, quite vulgar, the thing that nonetheless captures my eye and elicits my grudging admiration is how expertly - especially with the work of Soulacroix - all that damn satin is rendered. The fabric has very specific visual properties which can be quite tricky to capture. And so, with whatever reservations I might have about these two fellow's taste or "artistic integrity", I have to give them their due.

Soulacroix.

These paintings all have quite predictable titles - An Elegant Entrance, A Peek Behind the Curtain, An Illicit Letter, Eavesdropping, Elegant Lady in Pink, etc. - and all were painted at the end of the nineteenth, beginning of the twentieth centuries.

Reggianini.

Reggianini.

Soulacroix.

Reggianini.

Soulacroix.

Reggianini.

Reggianini.

Reggianini.

Reggianini.

Soulacroix.

Reggianini.

Soulacroix.

Reggianini.

Sketch by Soulacroix.

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Frédéric Soulacroix (1 October 1858, Rome - 3 September 1933, Casena), French-Italian painter. The son of the French painter and sculptor Charles Soulacroix, at the age of fifteen he entered the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence, three years later being admitted to the Scuola di Pittura. It was in the historical costume genre - images depicting fashionable figures, from the seventeenth century through to the Empire - that he would become successful. He married in 1890; he and his wife had four sons and a daughter. Highly successful and widely collected, he mixed with high society in Florence and Rome, was commissioned to paint Queen Margherita of Italy, and his daughter married a nephew of Pope Pius VII.

Vittorio Reggianini (1858, Modena - 1938, Florence), Italian painter. He studied at the Accademia Belle Arti Modena, and later became a professor there. Like many of his contemporaries, Reggianini eventually migrated south, to Florence, which was then well-known as a center of historical genre painting.

Reggianini.