Follower of Giuseppe Bonito, 19th century

Italian school of the 19th century. Follower of GIUSEPPE BONITO (Castellammare di Stabia, 1707 - Naples, 1789).
"Girls being taught to sew by a seamstress".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 107 x 154 cm; 134 x 182 cm (frame).

This work is based on a painting by Giuseppe Bonito, Italian painter who made a scene contextualized inside a sewing workshop. As in Bonito's, the protagonists are a group of girls who are being taught to sew by a seamstress. The wise woman gives guidelines to a little girl who, concentrated, delicately handles the sewing utensils. The rest of the girls listen attentively as they go about their work with their heads down, looking directly at their creations. Formally, the directed lighting that focuses on the faces and bodies of the main characters stand out: the woman, the three girls to whom she gives guidelines and a last young woman who sews protecting her finger with a thimble. The rest of the students are ultimately camouflaged in the half-light.

Giuseppe Bonito was one of the most influential Neapolitan painters of the 18th century. A disciple of Francesco Solimena, he soon turned to Rococo delicacy. It was his portraits that opened the doors of the Neapolitan court to him, along with the receipt of numerous commissions for altarpieces and frescoes for churches. As a court painter, in 1741 he portrayed with remarkable realism the embassy of the Ottoman Sultan in Naples, a canvas that was immediately sent to Madrid and is preserved in the Prado Museum. Around 1745 he portrayed Charles VII of the Two Sicilies, future Charles III of Spain, and his wife Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony in two portraits also kept in the Prado Museum. Very remarkable is the portrait of the Infantes Don Fernando and Don Gabriel that is conserved in the Palace of Caserta, painted shortly before the proclamation of Fernando, of only eight years, as king of Naples, surprised in the study, with a compass in the hand and in front of a terrestrial globe. In 1751 he was appointed chamber painter, member of the Academy of St. Luke in Rome in 1752, director of the newly created Academy of Fine Arts of Naples in 1755 and director of the Royal Tapestry Factory of Naples, for which he provided series of cartoons of allegorical and literary character, including the first cartoons of a series of illustrations of Don Quixote woven between 1758 and 1779 destined for the Royal Palace of Caserta.