Pietro Scoppetta (1863–1920) - Allo specchio

PIETRO SCOPPETTA
(Amalfi, SA 1863 – Naples, 1920)
Allo specchio
Pastel on card, 32.5 x 28 cm
Signed ‘P. SCOPETTA’ at the bottom left

NOTE: Intermidiart catalog publication. Signed at bottom left. Certificate of Legitimate Provenance. Work without frame:

This fine painting, known under the title Allo specchio, centers on the early 20th-century female figure and was realized by the celebrated Neapolitan painter Pietro Scoppetta (Amalfi, 1863 – Naples, 1920).
Executed with the pastel technique on paper, the work depicts a woman adjusting her hat in front of a mirror. It is a significant example of Scoppetta’s style, an artist of Amalfi origin active in Naples, known for his figure studies captured in moments of spontaneous intimacy.
Straddling two centuries, Scoppetta’s figure was animated by tendencies—personal as well as artistic—that were fundamentally divergent. The artist was initially heir to a poetic impulse toward a rigorous representation of the truth, which reached him filtered through the teachings of Gaetano Capone and later of Giacomo Di Chirico, while he was still frequenting the scenes of his native Amalfi and its coast.
At the end of his military service, it was the great Neapolitan painting school, with its prestigious representatives—including Edoardo Dalbono—who guided some of his thematic and stylistic choices.
In Naples, however, a new climate was in the air, eager to break free from the heavy heritage of the past: the first Liberty trends began to spread, with renewed attention to applied arts and graphics. Scoppetta, a passionate draftsman, was inevitably influenced by this. His brushwork thus became quicker and more synthetic, while the palette narrowed to an essential chromatic range.
A natural consequence of what can be defined as a sort of Neapolitan belle époque was the journey to the core driving these trends, namely Paris. Following the example of many Italian artists—including Carlo Brancaccio, Ulisse Caputo, Lionello Balestrieri, Raffaele Ragione, and Vincenzo La Bella—Scoppetta moved to the French capital. From there he continued his travels across Europe, always in search of elegant subjects to capture quickly in his notebook.
The privileged protagonist of Scoppetta’s drawings and canvases is the female figure, represented both in the spontaneity of an intimate solitary dimension and in more studied outfits, immersed in refined metropolitan contexts. The work at hand manages to reconcile these two tensions, returning a private moment in the life of an elegant bourgeois lady of the city.
The described piece is presented in good conservation state, despite aging signs visible in the photographs, and bears the artist’s signature at the bottom left.
The painting is sold without a frame, although it is enhanced by a fine wooden frame.

PROVENANCE: Private Collection

PUBLICATION:
- Unpublished;
- I MITI E IL TERRITORIO in Sicily of a thousand cultures. INEDITA QUADRERIA, general catalog of the paintings from the cycle “I Miti e il territorio,” Editor Lab_04, Marsala, 2026 (Pdf).

In the case of sale outside Italian territory, the purchaser must wait for the processing times of export procedures.