Stefano Trapanese (1963) - L'abito rosso - 2009

Stefano Trapanese is an ARTIST LEADER in the province of Salerno (Italy) and is consistently in the TOP10 of NATIONAL PROFILE MASTERS in Italy (source PitturiAmo.com).
A student of Italian art history and, in particular, of seventeenth-century Neapolitan painting, maestro Stefano Trapanese is inspired by the painter Caravaggio (Michelangelo Merisi) and by the painters of Italian Baroque. His paintings are all original oil on canvas. He selects the models, dresses them, and positions them for a portrait.

"The crouched female figure in a red dress dominates the scene completely. Trapanese has used a strong diagonal that runs from the top-left corner toward the bare foot at the bottom-right: it guides the eye and gives dynamism to a pose that would otherwise be closed, introverted. The vertical 60x50 format is perfect because it amplifies the sense of withdrawal. The choice to cut off part of the back and the fabric creates tension, as if we’re spying on a private moment.
The red of the dress is the absolute protagonist. It is a deep vermilion, laid on with body, that alone carries all of the painting’s emotional content. The Master has done remarkable work on the folds: the heaviness of the fabric reads; the shadowed areas are warm, not black, and the highlights on the satin are not blasted white but kept in pinkish tones. This gives true volume.
The dark background, almost Caravaggesque, isolates the figure and makes the red explode in contrast. The taupe/brown grays of the sofa/bed are desaturated just enough: they support without competing. Lovely detail of the fuchsia enamel at the foot and of the decorated straps, small notes that humanize.
One sees the hand in oil. The flesh tones are modeled with subtle transitions: the shoulders and back have warm, credible luminosity. The brushwork on the background and on the fabric of the sofa is broader, more tactile, and creates a lovely contrast with the almost smooth rendering of the skin and dress. Anatomically the figure stands: the torsion of the torso, the position of the arm that hides the face, the foot in perspective are difficult and you have solved them. The right hand that holds the fabric is delicate and well foreshortened.
It is a Quiet painting. The woman does not reveal herself; she protects herself. It is not explicit sadness, it is more introspection, vulnerability, fatigue. The fact that the face is hidden forces the viewer to focus on the body and on color to read the mood. Stylistically the painting sits within contemporary realism with echoes of 1990s figuration: very attentive to the data, but with a painterly brushwork that does not become photographic hyperrealism."
(art criticism by Professor of Art History Luigi Crescenzo)