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| Ernani’s gift * |
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by Francesca Brandes |
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Oh God, what great kindness
Have we done in times past
And forgotten it,
That thou givest this wonder unto us…
Ezra Pound |
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| White chrysanthemums,
1974 |
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White Chrysanthemums, a small
oil painting on canvas, is dated 1974: in the world of Ernani Costantini,
it is a touching paradigm. The centrality of the minimalist subject,
presented fondly and with high regard, suspended in a dreamlike timelessness;
with its broad luminescent range, it is airy, in combination with recurrent
graphic elements: this is what the artist means by an image’s
power of meaning, and the sentiment of existence. As an offer which
purifies, without a hint of malice, according to the principle of an
inner need. Through a sweet grace, as a gift.
There is much beauty in these intimate works, which focus on everyday
life: an olive branch, a cluster of clementines, a flower in a glass
or the colour burst of a spring bouquet. This is what the Master defined
as “aspiration to substance”. Beyond the commendable formal
aspect, beyond the subject itself, this is the space in the world which
belongs to the painter, and no other.
Ernani maintained, also in his later years, that he painted in order
to express that part of his self, of his own sensibility and faith,
which was able to rise to the state of conscious awareness. A state
of solemn equilibrium, which coincides in himself with the continued
grace of creating: it is the flow of little things – we understand – and
of the pain of life which we perceive in them because, as the artist
has explained, even moments of intense happiness are filled with it. |
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The pietas in Ernani Costantini embraces
the existing. Venice, symbolically and physically, is infinity beyond
the window, the flower in the vase, the portrait. As our eye glances
at the traces – even minimal – of what is living, it scans
near and far, inside us. In the triumphant Sunflowers, in the peaceful
mountain views, in the portraits of the young girl who herself is tree-like,
virginal, or in the jubilant interiors, the impressionist teachings
and Cezanne’s consolidation of space are denoted, as is the graphic “correction” of
the Nordic artists. The external light gathers without losing air,
maintaining luminescent shadows.
The history of this style of painting, always autonomous and feisty,
has been built on itself, until the beginning of the second half of
the twentieth century and beyond. Obviously, there are some precursors
(inevitable with such an inquisitive and sharp mind as that of Ernani),
and in any case the painter – after having met them along his
artistic path – leaves them be, for what they represent, until
they are absorbed into the plot of his own inspiration. |
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The Wait, 1996 |
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Let us consider the cubist influence and
the gladioli in Lina’s Birthday from 1957, so light
and delicate, already resolved in other forms; or perhaps the Art Noveau
visionary perspective of the Cafè in Rapallo from 1954,
which recalls the works of Ugo Valeri, but transforms them, with a
flamboyant taste for foregrounds which brings to mind cinematic techniques.
And what can be said of certain high diagonals, typical of his own
cycles of sacred art, which emanate from Tintoretto in San Rocco and
from his wild nights? It is a vibrant sense of reality, that of Costantini,
whether dealing with wooden huts in the mountains or the most majestic
nocturnal scene. In any case, the artist never weighs down the perception
on the canvas, he doesn’t overload either his mark or his timbre,
so as to maintain that intimate sensation as long as possible. “Nature
is the immense thing that never lets up”, wrote Francesco Arcangeli, “because
you feel it alive as it trembles inside and outside of you: a deep
layer of passion and senses, happiness, and torment. In such a relationship,
all that is being revealed is included.” In “all that is being
revealed”, Ernani includes the sacredness of Creation, that moment
of enchanted anticipation which the painter faces when he is about
to put his hand to the canvas. It may be the crown of the Dolomites,
with the same pink tones of the faces of his Bellini-esque women, or
the quiet refuge of a little Venetian square, it could be the moonlight
filtering through the magnolia or the brio of a balcony by a canal:
places in the soul which become the space for life.
Painting is life, Ernani seems to be telling us. A painting is a point
of arrival, the equilibrium to which he aspires, and possesses its
own fundamental dignity because – as the artist maintains – “painting
serves to recall sentiments.” The two poles, between which Guido Perocco – critic,
friend and and confidante of Costantini – placed the artistic
and human journey of the painter, for their prevailing pertinence:
order and passion, where the religious sense of life joined with an
ever affectionate sentiment towards the current existence. “[…]
I believe therefore in loving relations between mankind, intended in
the Christological sense”, writes Ernani, in an antithesis to
the pseudo-conceptual experiments gradually emerging on the artistic
scene, “I hate all forms of expression”, he explains, “which,
based on assumed meanings and motivations, pass off as works of art
and artistic processes childishness and senseless displays.’ |
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Lina’s Birthday, 1957 |
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Beginning with declarations such as this,
which significantly bucked the trend, we can deduce how the order to
which Perocco refers to constituted a one-off, or somewhat of an oddity
in the Venice milieu of the post war period. The semblances of a peaceful,
orderly life, which was accordata all’arte [finely tuned
to art], like the life of one who proceeds boldly along his chosen
path, without letting himself be affected by fashion, may seem – at
first glance – very
far removed from the vis poetica which was superficially attributed
to artists. Nothing could be more wrong or further from the truth:
in the footsteps of this understated and cultured Venetian, with whom
it is said it was very difficult to argue, we can interpret a celebration
of the world in his truth, which the sadly missed Bruno Rosada defined
“the profound sense of the creaturality of things.” A dazzling integrity
defines Costantini the man and the artist, whether it is a minimalist
view, a portrait dedicated to his beloved wife Lina or a religious
fresco, in one of the many churches in the area (especially Venetian
ones, but not exclusively) for which Ernani created authentic masterpieces
over the decades. In him, we always witness the prodigious congruence
between intention and fulfilment, as can happen only with the greats:
one may think of Antonello da Messina and his Annunciation, or Mantegna,
or Giotto’s vital instinct. The highest analysis in a carefully
considered summary, which seems light despite its accuracy, despite
its orderliness, like the figure of a dancer in the air, like a moral
code of inner need.
“It is only by searching inside and through form”, these are the
fundamental words of Roberto Longhi for all those who, in different
roles, come into contact with the works of art, “and by layering ‘recollections’ of
tones, one can succeed in the light of a more intact and pure sentiment
[…] and only sentiment, as we know very well, is expressed.”
As to how the miracle of Ernani comes about, is once again suggested
by Perocco, when he combines order, the strictness of the
artist, with the phantasmagorical category of passion. Without contradiction. |
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An avowed, proudly catholic man, imbued
with the tradition of his land (many will recall his great canvas La
polenta, with his mother making the sign of a cross on the large yellow
sun in the centre of the table), Ernani lives his religiousness in
a complete and sincere way. It is his faith which permeates every atom
of his day with its shining passion. “Every aspect of life is sacred”, wrote
Bruno Rosada with rare insight, “everything sacred is lived.”
Proceeding in this way, with order and passion, certainly meant the
artist going against the flow. A member later also president of the
venetian section of the U.C.A.I., not very inclined to follow the temptresses
of contemporary “isms” , with determination, but always
with his offer of a smile to the world, Ernani Costantini has carved
his own autonomous path, culminating in the construction of a unique
and clearly recognisable artistic identity. The canvas The
loaves and the fishes from 1959 already speaks clearly, indicating a clear and
absolute progression.
It is essential to emphasise as strongly as possible, Ernani’s
artistic and ethical freedom: freedom in his subjects, in an environment
which favoured in-depth research into the conceptual aspect; freedom
of expressive forms which absorb the ethereal approach of Tiepolo and
remodel it, or look to Tintoretto, or even to Caravaggio for constructive
will. He often said “I would like to give joy”, and he has always
done so with awareness, but without a declared poetic intention. An
elementary joy, structured, and proposed without mediation: a plant
is a plant, the moon is the moon, nothing needs to be called by another
name, if the eye can narrate it well. Costantini’s works feature
an intimate morality closely connected to their external perception,
and also to their contradictions. In any case, there is no joy – Ernani
seems to say to us – if not in the solution, in the overcoming
of the contradictions themselves: everything becomes commonplace without
becoming banal; form does not blot out the morning light which enlivens
the vision which the artist obstinately pursues: “by giving / my paintings
a clarity / auroral / of first communion / of first love…” he would
write in a lovely lyric taken from the collection L’Abbaino
[The Dormer] (1995). Ernani is also a poet, and a novelist, with the same
light in his mind and heart (there is still plenty to analyse in his
literary work, with reference to which we will only embrace here as
a pointer, just enough to understand the depth of this artist’s
expressive force, and the his wide range of interests). |
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The loaves and the fishes, 1959 |
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| The Newspaper seller,
1954 |
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Exist – consist: a condition which
Ernani has in common with another great “free hitter” of
his time, Arturo Martini. The intimate correspondence between his portraits
illuminated by Martini’s grace and Leda would alone be sufficient
to explain Costantini’s classic intent, the careful study of
the luminist technique, like the lustre of the hanging washing, the
rosiness of the figures and the petals. Material which exists-consists
with the dignity of tradition, of time elapsed, of past experiences.
Each face, the Newspaper seller, the Cousins, the young ladies of his
modest and splendid nude portraits, seem distilled, purified by every
terrestrial chance event, like the ovals of Francesco Laurana. It is
difficult therefore, to include Costantini among the petits maîtres
post-impressionists of Venice’s postwar period. The recollections
are different, the routes followed by Ernani are others, in that painting
of timbres, much more difficult to analyse than it seems happy, peaceful,
and harmonious in the resulting artistic harmony. As we look for its
origins, we could not forget the great melting pot of the Carmini School
of Art which Costantini attended, gaining his diploma in 1942. An incubator
of excellence, where great masters like Ercole Sibellato taught painting,
Mario Disertori taught figure drawing, Giorgio Wenter Marini architectural
composition and the great Giulio Lorenzetti history of art. It was
they who, from the very outset, influenced, in terms of quality and
intellectual honesty, the course the artist’s path would take.
Ernani lived as a Venetian, but with an aspiration – from the
beginning – entirely focused on the Tuscans. It is the solid
route of the Giotto school which impressed him, but – as often
happens in Venice – also the atmosphere of the Flemish artists
permeated his reflections, like a wind of truth. Besides, the connection
between the affairs of Venice and the culture of the northern lands
inspired the whole of the nineteenth century in Veneto and Friuli,
(do not forget that continuous thread, discreet but strong, which links
Ernani to the heartfelt choice of Giacomo Favretto or the landscape
painting of Ippolito Caffi, not to mention Felice Casorati of the Signorine,
the ‘painting-painting’ of Guido Cadorin’s Tobacco
women workers, with it’s subject taken from daily life representing
the utmost simplicity). |
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The cousins, 1975 |
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| St. Mark’s: interior day,
1987-88 |
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Ernani, as he gradually defined his own
personal identity (by now father of a family and a teacher), enjoyed
painting as a life choice, a robust figurative painting, based on the
best drawing. Anyway, the linear perspective, dealt with using the
greatest precision (as is fitting for someone who has correctly read,
and interpreted the experience of Antonello da Messina, the construction
of Piero della Francesca), it is softened by the atmosphere of the
lagoon. In the construction of his plans towards the horizon, Costantini
softens the tones and blurs the shapes, so that it is the perspective
itself which makes itself airy; as Perocco observed: “where everything
becomes airy and lofty and the angels fly together with men, the female
virtues, soft and well-nourished, to glory, time and fame…” We
will remember him, as we observe St. Mark’s: interior day, a
canvas from 1987-88, featuring the presence of angels in a marvellous
and familiar context such as the St. Mark’s Basilica. This, furthermore,
is also the magic perspective of Ernani: an estranged view, but for
little touches, with as much deviation of meaning as reality permits.
The painter’s Venice has nothing to do with stereotypes, or with
the useless repetition of spaces. It is not even a luxury shop window.
One can read there, in contrast, the indomitable desire to affirm with
courtesy and conviction – that painting is an absolute essence
of existence, where miracles are still possible. |
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The portrayal of figures, in Costantini’s
work, presents life without removing its mystery, its profound evidence.
It is also for these reasons that the artist’s art work is characterized
by an extreme coherence, whether involving secular subjects or in his
great works of religious art which – since the Fifties – Ernani
has produced on commission for numerous churches in Veneto: from Padua
to Auronzo, from Sacca Fisola and Mestre in the Venice area as far
as Rovigo. From painter to fresco artist: the stories remain, narrated
with the same figurative approach, the same complex simplicity; there
remains a uniquely personal expression in the dimensions of the characters
which sometimes seem to fly or are illuminated by an extraordinary
dramatic light. Even though an analysis of Ernani Costantini’s
religious art would merit, without a doubt, a specific discourse, we
cannot help but recall here the exhibition Christian Veneto, presented
in Venice in the autumn of 1991, in which the artist recounted his
relationship with his own origins, starting with the principal locations
connected to his religious faith: St. Anthony’s Basilica
in Padua,
view of St. Justine’s Abbey from Prato della Valle square, Sanctuary
of Monte Berico and Redentore Votive Bridge and view of the bell towers
of Verona from curve of the Romano Theatre. And once more From Eve
to Mary, the great pictorial cycle dedicated to the women of the Bible,
which Costantini completed in 1985 with contributions of verse by Antonio
Bruni.
Ernani’s clear eye, benevolent and intelligent, rests lightly
on the world: “I wonder”, he writes, “if there could be
a dichotomy between paintings with a religious theme and those with
a secular theme. I decide not and I try to make a summary […]
I reaffirm myself – he concludes – in the concept that ‘all
is sacred’ when there is sacredness in us as we face the matters
of life.”
Today, a few years after the death of the Master, there remains not
only our nostalgia of that clear vision. We also have Ernani’s
gift: the light, the colour. His example of how we should engage with
art, literature and music, in a world where the essential is increasingly
ignored, remains: with dignity and courage. With the willingness to
offer, through silent and continuous process of research, with intellectual
honesty. We might say, with order and passion. |
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Venice, the Redentore votive bridge,
1990-91 |
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June
2014 |
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*^ from the catalogue
of the exhibition Ernani’s gift, 2014 |
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