Francesca Alexander (Boston, 1837 - 1917, Florence)
Decorating a Shrine, 1865
Oil on canvas , 125.2 x 93 cm (49 5/16 x 36 5/8 in.)
General admission for children 17 years and under is always free
This oil painting depicts three light-skinned girls of various ages at an outdoor shrine in Italy. The figure at the center is the oldest girl. She is depicted in profile facing our left, but directly in front of and looking into the shrine. She is dressed in sandals, a full length dark skirt with thin red vertical stripes, a bodice saturated in red over a white blouse and a purple half shawl over her shoulders and tied at the breast. Her dark hair is covered with a muted gold kerchief, and she holds a vivid blue fabric bag at her left hip overflowing with multicolored flowers. She is framed by branches from a tree growing to the right of the shrine. Her right hand and arm are raised, and she is placing flowers in a vase within a covered arch-shaped niche in a tall stone wall. Within the recessed niche is a painting of two figures with halos in gold and red. A splash of blue is visible to the right of the figures. There is a plaque below the niche with three rows of writing. A girl, seated to our right is dressed in a full length light blue skirt with a brown apron, a long- sleeve white blouse and a muted purple bodice. Her long brown hair is undone, parted in the center and draped casually over her right shoulder. She is holding a flower garland, while gazing up at the older girl, and there is an empty basket at her feet. She is framed by a background of a vast muted countryside; a distant scene with a pale blue sky, billowing white clouds, a horizontal mountain range and scattered buildings that appear to be a town. On our left is the third and youngest girl, who sits on a low stone ledge. She is leaning back in a resting pose, small bare feet outstretched and crossed at the ankles peeking out from under her long brown skirt covered with a large bright white apron. She wears a long sleeved black shirt with a thin twisted scarf knotted at her neck. Her brown hair is neatly pinned back which reveals she is wearing small dangling earrings. She is holding a single pink flower and looking at the viewer.
Short Gallery
Commentary
Esther Frances (“Fanny”) Alexander was born in Boston in 1837 and moved to Florence, Italy with her parents when she was a teenager. Early in her career, Esther created drawings of poor Tuscan farmers for American donors to help support her mother’s charity work in the region. In this painting, commissioned by Isabella’s mother-in-law, the landscape we see below the shrine is a view of the Val d'Arno from the hill of Bellosguardo outside Florence, where Alexander was living with her mother. The shrine is inscribed, “In thee mercy, in thee pity, in thee great works, in thee is united whatever there is of goodness in creation,” reflecting Alexander’s interest in religious subjects.
Alexander met English art critic John Ruskin in 1882 and he became interested in her images of local life and translations of Tuscan songs. Over the following two decades he published many of her works to great success in the United States and Great Britain. Several of Alexander’s books are in Isabella’s collection.