Marino Faliero (1948) - Patatrac

The oil painting on canvas signed Marino Faliero (Naples, 1948) depicts a lively domestic genre scene, inspired by the famous 'Patatrac' by Gaetano Chierici, a master of the nineteenth century renowned for his narrative painting in a verist and anecdotal style.
The work tells, with irony and liveliness, of an episode of daily life in which a child finds himself involved in a sudden domestic chaos caused by the attack of a group of geese. The geese, animated by a rapid and surprising movement, ambush the little protagonists, causing objects, dishes and the arrangement of the environment to be overturned.
The scene is characterized by strong compositional dynamism: the child's body, the astonished faces, and the moving wings of the geese create a “patatrac” effect — an abrupt and unpredictable action captured in a split second of intense emotion and comic mood.
The childlike figures, rendered with particular attention to facial expressions and gestures, express surprise, fear, and amusement—elements typical of Chierici's pictorial tradition, here reinterpreted with compositional fidelity.
The oil brushwork is fluid and descriptive, with a warm, earthy color palette that helps create an intimate, everyday atmosphere. The spatial construction is balanced, while the diagonal arrangement of the bodies and animals emphasizes the sense of sudden movement. Noteworthy is the rendering of the details—from the children's clothes to the domestic objects—that enriches the scene without weighing it down.