Prayer in Chioggia

In 1897 Leonardo Bazzaro exhibited Prayer (in Chioggia) at the 2nd Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte della Città di Venezia where it was given a lukewarm reception by the critics on the whole, due to the fact that the subject was not new in the artist’s output. Indeed, the theme of mourning expressed through a lyrical blend of figures and landscape had already inspired Ave Maria (Milan, Galleria d’Arte Moderna) dating to 1882, although this work was set in the Charterhouse of Pavia, and it recurs again in Peace to the Shipwrecked (whereabouts unknown) of 1897, which was awarded the gold medal at the III Milan Triennale that year and shown at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900. In this painting, as in Peace to the Shipwrecked, Bazzaro depicts two young widows weeping for their drowned husbands against a lagoon-scape depicted with the consummate skill that made him one of the leading exponents of Lombard Naturalism. In the following years, the artist would return to this theme several times, also with considerable commercial success, enriching it with narrative accents, as can be seen in After the Shipwreck (whereabouts unknown), winner of the Prince Umberto Award at the Esposizione Nazionale di Belle Arti di Milano in 1906.