Reviewed by: Anna Marongiued. by Luigi Fassi Francesca Orestano (bio) Anna Marongiu. Catalog of an exhibition held at the Museo MAN, Nuoro, Italy, 811. 2019–1 03. 2020. Bilingual edition. Edited by Luigi Fassi. Marsilio Editori, 2019. Pp. 168, with 163 color illustrations. €25.00. ISBN 978-88-297-0486-6. Images sometimes need examining without preconceived ideas as to the race, class, gender, cultural or religious beliefs of the artist who created them. The horses, lions, bison in the Chauvet Cave, discovered in 1994 in the Ardèche region of France, inspired a fascinating documentary by Werner Herzog, Cave of Forgotten Dreams(2010), in which he confronts us with images from the Upper Paleolithic without posing the customary questions as to their antiquity, or the identity of the artists who made them. Actually those questions can be bypassed, or delayed, inasmuch as images have a force of their own, that dwarfs all attempts at attribution, or interpretation. "Marongiu" does not tell us much; nor does "Anna," apart from gender: when opening the book entitled Anna Marongiu, resulting from the exhibition of her art held at the MAN museum in Nuoro, Sardinia (8 Nov. 2019–1 Mar. 2020), and containing essays by Luigi Fassi, Michael Hollington, and Paola Pallottino, one is directly drawn to the art work. Luigi Fassi uses the word "rediscovered," and this draws our attention to the 163 images the book contains. Other questions can be delayed: the age and place she lived in, between 1907 and 1941, the school and teachers who guided her, in Cagliari and in Rome, the Fascist regime then in its full sway and the role of women in it. Marongiu's short life was terminated by an air crash, as she was flying back to Rome, from Sardinia. But what demands to be examined are the 163 images, the vivid colors chosen by the artist, the lines and strokes of her pencil, without pentimento, the animation that characters acquire in her drawings, gouaches, watercolors, etchings, and burin engravings. A first series of 38 images in pencil and gouache, dated 1926, illustrates I promessi sposi( The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni. This text has been, and still is today, mandatory school reading in Italy: students are familiar with its characters, a staple of the Italian literature syllabus that requires discussion in the classroom, analyses and written compositions. Students often make fun of them, as Manzoni's characters look like the stuffy literary heroes of a past age. The first character portrayed by Marongiu is Don Abbondio, famously frightened by the Bravi – the thugs – at the very beginning of the novel. In black clerical dress, but with red socks, breviary in hand, fat and round, he moves with long strides. A vertical frame in deco style decorates the margins of the ochre cardboard background: but Don Abbondio has nothing of the static fixity of deco. He comes towards us, in lively buoyant manner; from his feet the artist has traced an oblique shadow that marks the [End Page 215]ground and gives depth to the image. The gouache forms a thick layer, almost a glazing. In addition to the portrait, and the caption below, Marongiu adds her own touch of irony: in the right upper corner there is a small emblem with a rabbit that suggests the inner quality of the apparently courageous but easily frightened Don Abbondio. And so for other images belonging to the same series: the characters of Gertrude, Don Rodrigo, Lucia, Renzo, stand out in bold relief against the uniform background – grey, sepia, black or pale blue cardboard. Could these portraits match Manzoni's invention? Yes, because we recognize them even before reading their names. One may add that Marongiu's irony is something we Italians are familiar with, since our school years and long hours spent on the book. But the second series, on Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers, dated 1928–29, shows ulterior skills in the delineation of character and situation that have nothing to do with our national culture. 1The work on Pickwick Papersis of specific interest for us Dickensians, as there is a substantial corpus of 262 illustrations for the first half...
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Jan 16, 2023
Łukasz Bukowiecki 
Open Access