ROME.- In Italian popular culture, the “Derby” indicates above all the soccer matches, derby marked by a strong rivalry between the supporters of the two teams. But the same definition of clear English origin, has a distinguished history also in the field of horse-racing, able to transcend national borders. If, in fact, the origins of this prestigious horse race are due to the Count of Derby, Edward Smith Stanley, who gave his name to the race reserved only to foals males of three years (the first edition was held in Espom, Surrey, on May 4, 1780 on the distance of a mile), in the space of a century, the competition took root in the culture of the European Belle Époque, reaching an incredible popularity in Rome, too.

Until the unification of Italy, trot races had not aroused a particular interest: considered as secondary events, to be played during folk festivals, without game collection, differed from the gallop races, in which the races companies are also involved in the management of the bets and distribution of winnings. But, just in parallel with the events that scanned the process of unification of Italian Country, first in Turin – the first Italian Derby was disputed in 1860 in the Savoy city – and later in Rome, where in 1884 at the Capannelle racecourse was held the first Capitoline Derby, now in its 129th edition, the competition became the most important of those scheduled by the Italian gallop races’ calendar.

In the extraordinary painting offered by Ottocento Art Gallery, Matteo Lovatti, painter trained in Rome as member of the circle composed by the Spanish painters followers of Mariano Fortuny, specialized in genre scenes, in portrait and landscape, captures the typical atmosphere of vitalism that was breathed during the races horses, unmissable opportunity of worldliness for the upper classes of the late Nineteenth century’s Rome. In the painting, easily approachable to paintings of similar scenes by the greatest interpreters of European painting from the Belle Époque, like De Nittis and Tissot, the racing field is portrayed as a lively, very fashionable place of socialization: the observer’s eye loses itself in the countless anecdotal details, in the amorous glances, in the fashion accessories worn by women of high social class that dialogue with representatives of the local aristocracy, gathered in the open air restaurant.

Scrolling through the Lovatti’s exhibitions’ curriculum, we know that this was not the only painting devoted to the theme of the horse races: in fact, among several appearances between 1877 and 1886 that the painter accumulated with the Society of Amateurs and Connoisseurs, in 1879 he exposed a “Racing cowboys at the Circus of Romulus”. Lovatti continued his distinguished career, exposing with the Association of watercolourists and also participating in the exhibition in Turin, Rome ( 1883, “Modern Life” ) and Antwerp ( 1885 ).