The Hopeless Case (Rotta)
The Hopeless Case (also known as Il caso senza speranza) is a 19th-century painted in oil by Antonio Rotta, in 1871, in Venice, Italy, exhibited at the Walters Art Museum.
| The Hopeless Case | |
|---|---|
| Italian: Il caso senza speranza, French: Le cas désespéré | |
 | |
| Artist | Antonio Rotta |
| Year | c. 1871 |
| Type | Oil on Linen |
| Dimensions | 1,610 cm × 130 cm (63,5 in × 52 in) |
| Location | Walters Art Museum, Baltimora, United States |
History
changeThe painting was finished in August 1871, and is exhibited at Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, in Maryland (United States) of which was the President Vittorio Sgarbi. It is one of the best-known pictorial works in the history of the genre painting movement.
The work was purchased for the museum, personally by the president William Thompson Walters (1819–1894) in 1878, and exhibited in the permanent collection. It is identified with the catalog number 37182.
Description
changeA young woman wearing a typical Venetian shawl, she listens to her cobbler, who exposes the desperate condition of her boot. Antonio Rotta interpreted this messy interior with characteristic details of the Venice of the time. The work "The case without hope", tells the time when things were repaired, because there was not enough money to buy new ones. Especially the shoes. Wrapped in her colored shawl, the girl is listening to the cobbler's sentence, which decrees that it is impossible to repair that boot once again. For this the painting was initially called "Without escape". In the sad gaze, in the tilted head, in the firmly intertwined hands, one feels the full weight of poverty.
Exhibitions
change- From Ray to Raphael: The Walters Story, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, 2014-2016.
- A Baltimorean in Paris: George A. Lucas, 1860-1090, The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, 1979
Bibliography
change- Jane H. Hancock, Sheila Folliott e Thomas O'Sullivan, Homecoming: the art collection of James J. Hill, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1991, p. 13, ISBN 0873512596.
- Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, Md.), William R. Johnston, The Nineteenth Century Paintings in the Walters Art Gallery, Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1982, ISBN 9780911886252.