Blog post four

 Massani Pompeo (1850-1920)

“The Money Counter”

This is a 2D representational painting of genre. This painting portraits on everyday scene of  the life of two ordinary couple counting their money. In this particular painting, light plays on important role, all the attention seem to be focused on the faces of the old couple. I love the way the author provided the spectator with so little, but at the same time so much details about the painting. Just by looking at the painting I can tell that  by the clothes they are wearing this couple is  very poor people, also by looking at the money they were counting, I can tell that they get paid very low wage. However, as I analyze their faces I can see that the old couple appeared to be very humble and  happy with each other despite the little money that had. It feels to me like If the author this is intentionally to give us a message that happiness doesn’t came as the result of wealth, happiness is recognizing and appreciating the things we do have.

 In this painting we can observed the use of positive and negative space. The author Massani Pompeo uses the Dominant object “ the old couple” to focus all the attention from the spectators. The author  did a very good job painting emotion to the faces of the couple, this particular art make me witness and feel the original scene., their faces are so detail and so real that it seems like if they were real to me.  Our attention seems  to also dragged to the table where we can see a newspaper, and some coins and bills, In terms of what we discussed in class, the  symbolic meaning of  money is represented by  value, power, balance, freedom, appreciation, control, and materialism.  The negative space is represented by “the emphy” back area, there is something else behind the couple that the author did not cover or did not wanted us to see.

As did some research , I did not find much information about the work, but I did found more about the artist. Massani Pompeo  was an Italian painter, mainly depicting genre subjects, often in satirical poses. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, where later he was name Honor professor of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Florence . Massani painted on depicting lively public scenes, he often painted elderly individuals engaged in apparent buffoonery or celebrating inebriation.