Art

Tutto is [Ford’s] first body of work to focus on a single individual: the eccentric Milanese heiress Luisa Casati (1881–1957). Depicting the exotic animals that she kept, Ford portrays her years in Venice shortly before World War I.

Known as La Marchesa, Casati was one of Europe’s wealthiest women and is legendary for her extravagant pursuit of aesthetic extremes and social recognition. Startled onlookers describe how she wore snakes as necklaces, walked with a pair of cheetahs in Venice’s piazzas, and attended an opera clad in a headdress of peacock feathers that were stained with the blood of a freshly killed chicken.

This painting shows the view through the window of Morandi’s now-renowned studio in Bologna, a sacred place for his artistic production. Morandi’s growing inclination toward abstraction is evidenced in this 1954 work by its distinct dividing line: the imposing presence of a light-colored wall, which occupies nearly half of the left side of the painting. The wall serves only to animate the right side of the work.

A brilliant constraint and framing.