Silvio Giulio Rotta (

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...

, 1853- Venice, 1913) was an Italian painter. While his first canvases were light watercolors of

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other ...

subjects in his native city, that is, the daily life of Venetians; his later career focused on realistic depictions of the darker side of human nature, including the interior of insane asylums.

Biography

His father was the painter

Antonio Rotta Antonio Rotta (28 February 1828 – 10/11 September 1903) was an Italian painter, mainly of genre subjects. Biography Rotta was born on 28 February 1828 in Gorizia in the Kingdom of Illyria. He enrolled at the Accademia Reale di Belle Art ...

(born 1828 in

Gorizia Gorizia (; sl, Gorica , colloquially 'old Gorizia' to distinguish it from Nova Gorica; fur, label=Standard Friulian, Gurize, fur, label= Southeastern Friulian, Guriza; vec, label= Bisiacco, Gorisia; german: Görz ; obsolete English ''Goritz ...

), who had studied at the

Accademia di Belle Arti This is a list of the tertiary-level schools or academies of fine art in Italy that are recognised by the Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca, the Italian ministry of higher education. Accademie di Belle Arti The offi ...

of Venice, and worked as genre painter. One of his Silvio's works, ''Head of a Veteran'', was a watercolor portrait completed at the age of thirteen. At the 1878 Universal Exposition in Paris, he was awarded a gold medal for his painting of ''Costumi popolari veneziani''. After 1887, likely after a personal illness, his thematic became melancholic, even lugubrious. An example of this change is the painting ''I forzati'' (prison laborers filing back to jail), which was displayed at the International Expostion of Venice, and now in Szepmuveszeti Museum, Budapest. In 1895, at the first Biennale of Venice, the painting ''Nosocomio'' (Asylum) won an award. The realist painting in earth tones depicts the inmates of a mental asylum, in a wintry courtyard during recreation, sporting in a disarray of positions or actions. A dark priest and a confessor appear to be the only purposeful humans in the painting. The canvas was re-exhibited in 1900 in Paris. This is a topic that had been addressed by painters such as Signorini. Meanwhile, the worsening of Rotta's illness, diminished his output. In 1912, he displayed his last major work, ''Nelle tenebre''. Pittura Veneziana
Fratelli Alinari Editors, Florence, 1903, page 137.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rotta, Silvio Giulio 1853 births 1913 deaths 19th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 20th-century Italian painters Italian genre painters Painters from Venice 19th-century Italian male artists 20th-century Italian male artists