Neapolitan Song
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Object Details
- Artist
- Joseph Stella, born Muro Lucano, Italy 1877-died New York City 1946
- Gallery Label
- Stella believed that every day should "begin and end [with] the painting of a flower." The exotic plants he sketched in the Bronx Botanical Garden resurface in this imaginary scene of the Bay of Naples, drawn with the precision and love of nature that Stella absorbed from Italy's Renaissance painters. The tips of the palmetto leaf radiate across the picture plane like a visible, unfolding wave of sound. Stella had moments of homesickness, when images of his homeland came to him as clearly as when he first arrived in America in 1896. Here, it is as if the Neapolitan song is reaching across the sea, bridging the distance between Stella's old home and his adopted country.Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
- Credit Line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Françoise and Harvey Rambach
- 1929
- Object number
- 2000.11
- Restrictions & Rights
- CC0
- Type
- Painting
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 38 3/8 x 28 1/4 in. (97.5 x 71.7 cm.)
- See more items in
- Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection
- Department
- Painting and Sculpture
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Topic
- Animal\bird
- Landscape\mountain
- Landscape\plant
- Record ID
- saam_2000.11
- Metadata Usage (text)
- CC0
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/vk7fea5e3b4-0d55-43b1-b19b-d63dcac70ed2
This image is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Open Access page.
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