ROME.- With this work, dating back to 1931, the artist pays homage to his second wife, Isabella Pakszwer (later Isabella Far), a Russian refugee active in an important fashion atelier, known in Paris in the fall of 1930, a few months later his marriage with Raissa Gourevitch, the Slavic actress met by the painter in the scenery flats of the Art Theatre in Rome during the performance of the tragi-comedy “The death of Niobe” written by his brother Savinio, with scenes created by the same Giorgio de Chirico.

At the end of 1931 – in the same year, De Chirico exhibited at the XVIII Venice Biennale in the hall dedicated to the Italians artists settled in Paris – the breakage with Raissa is final. De Chirico and Isabella move for a year in Florence: it is the beginning of a love story that will culminate with the marriage bond celebrated in May of 1946.

This painting, offered by Ottocento Art Gallery, is part of a series of female nudes by the sea that convey a clear tribute by de Chirico to Pierre – August Renoir that, at this stage of his painting, the master of Metafisica imitates in color and brushstroke. Through the recovery of volumes with the light (now very far from poetry of Impressionism), through the dimples on the hips of loved woman’s beloved ( infantile, rather than sensual ), through the play of folds drawn by white cloth lying on the Isa’s belly, de Chirico takes the harmless veils, the flesh-colored shades that change color to blue, the fullness of the bodies, typical of palette inspired by the manner of Renoir.

A bather, almost identical because of posture and formal construction to the protagonist figure of this painting, will return, this time into the background, in the painting, made in 1945, titled “Bathers (with red drape in the landscape), another tribute to his second wife Isabella, to which, over the years, de Chirico will devote many of his portraits.