The cobbler

The Cobbler by Teofilo Patini (1840-1906) was exhibited in 1873 at the exhibition of the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti in Naples.
The painting, created during Patini’s stay in Rome but inspired by Abruzzo, marks a turning point in the artist’s work when his exploration, tending toward plasticity and analytical description, shifted toward scenes of everyday life among the lower classes.
For the first time, it is in this work that Patini experiments with one of his most characteristic talents: the ability to be both spare in his use of colors, here played on shades of brown, and dramatic in the scene depicted.
Preserved in the art collections of the Banco di Napoli (61.5 x 48.5 cm), until now only two other replicas of The Cobbler were known, both of unknown location (45 x 35 cm and 38 x 30 cm, respectively).
The work presented here, acquired by the National Museum of Abruzzo, is therefore a third version (60 x 45 cm), previously unpublished.
Probably painted in the 1880s, a period in which Patini was working on large canvases of social commitment, the work demonstrates not only the subject’s continued popularity but also an interest in a pictorial style that, compared to the first version of 1873, now appears more detached from drawing.
The presence, alongside The Redemption, of this third version of The Cobbler will offer visitors the rare opportunity to compare two crucial periods in Patini’s artistic production: the beginning of his fame as a leading figure of Italian Verism and the final period of his life, when the artist focused on religious themes with strong symbolic and Masonic content.