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Overview
San Domenico Maggiore is a 1928 drypoint print that depicts this Neopolitan church and the surrounding piazza. The church, formerly a Dominican monastery, rises majestically above the crowded square. The soft drypoint line picks up the cracks in the plaster, drawing attention to the church’s weathered appearance. Still more striking is its complex, higgledy-piggledy facade, incorporating as it does a smaller, original 10th century church, revealing its modifications over the centuries. In the foreground the piazza is crowded with horses pulling carts and people chatting. One man in the foreground wears the wide-brimmed cappello romano that identifies him as a Catholic priest.
On either side of the church are the façades of the surrounding family palaces. The façades, particularly the balconies, are highly ornamented. The way the sun strikes the façades causes a wonderful play of light and shade, which draws the eye further into the street beside the church.
While Lindsay had a dislike of organised religion, he loved the ostentatious monumentality of the Catholic churches that he encountered in Italy and Spain. They would have been a far cry from the colonial Wesleyan churches that he would have known in his youth – his grandfather was a missionary. The architecture, ceremonies and regalia of Catholicism served the dual purpose of offering him ample opportunities to display his skill as a printmaker and satisfying his love of apparently timeless tradition.
There are two impressions of this drypoint in Te Papa's collection: this one was presented to the National Art Gallery by the widow of London art dealer Harold Wright. The other (1952-0003-40) came from Wright's good friend, Wellington collector and philanthropist Sir John Ilott.
Sources:
David Maskill, (ed.), Before Addled Art – The Graphic Art of Lionel Lindsay (Wellington: Adam Art Gallery, 2003)
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art July 2018