“From the geographical viewpoint, it was fatal that an event of this kind, conscious of great Metaphysical painting, was generated in Italy.”

Born in Greece, to Italian parents, Giorgio de Chirico received a classical education from childhood, which he spent in Athens alongside his brother Andrea, a musician, writer and painter who worked under the name Alberto Savinio from 1914 onwards. Following the death of their father (1905), the brothers and their mother moved to Munich (1906-09) and then to Italy (1909), firstly to Milan and then to Florence (1910-11). De Chirico’s highly original imagery took shape during these formative years, which included visits to Rome and Turin. In his work, personal memories transfigured through a reinterpretation of classical mythology subjected to modern literary stimuli, particularly the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (Röcken, 1844 - Weimar, 1900), overlap the palimpsestic iconography of the long classical tradition and the stylistic variety of Italian heritage. 

In Paris, between 1911 and 1915, de Chirico came into contact with the international avant-garde thanks to the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (Rome, 1880 - Paris, 1918), who was the first to describe the artist’s painting as “metaphysical”. He began to theorise his aesthetics, working together with his brother and Apollinaire to create the figure of the mannequin that proved such a success in avant-garde art between the two wars (see cat. pp. 734, 740). After enlisting in the Italian army in June 1915, de Chirico and Savinio were stationed in Ferrara. While maintaining their Parisian links through Apollinaire and de Chirico’s first art dealer Paul Guillaume (Paris, 1891-1934), they wove new and ever closer ties with leading figures on the Italian art scene, turning Ferrara into the centre of Metaphysical art, which expanded to become a movement. De Chirico, who was deemed unfit for war due to reasons of health, devoted himself to painting, inspired by what he referred to as the “fatal” city: 

“The appearance of Ferrara, one of Italy’s most beautiful cities, had struck me; but that which struck me most and inspired me in the metaphysical aspect I was working on at the time, were certain elements of Ferrara interiors, certain windows, certain shops, certain homes, certain neighbourhoods, like the historic ghetto, where you could get cakes and biscuits in high metaphysical and strange shapes.”¹ 

The influence of the city’s architecture and atmosphere, but also the warm and dense painting of the school of Ferrara, are already visible in the first canvases painted by de Chirico in the Emilian capital. 

Interno metafisico (con faro) (Metaphysical Interior [with Lighthouse]) (1918) is one of the last canvases de Chirico painted in Ferrara before leaving the city for Rome at the end of 1918. The work is a metaphor for the synthesis of Metaphysical painting as an artistic/cultural reference point symbolised by the lighthouse. Set within an interior with an improbable perspective and the usual set squares, a painting shows us a naturalistic view of a lighthouse whose tower recalls those already painted by de Chirico in Paris, but which stands here on top of a mediaeval fortress similar to the Castello Estense in Ferrara. Cerruti might have associated the tower in the painting to the Lanterna in Genoa, his birth town. The biscuits and the pinwheel are references to the hybrid childhood of European culture and of the author, born in the city of Volos. However, in late 1918, Metaphysical painting was indissolubly tied to Italy. After Apollinaire died on 9 November, de Chirico, who had been disappointed by the art dealer Guillaume who just a few days earlier had finally exhibited his new canvases (without however offering him the solo exhibition the painter had placed so much hope in), stopped sending his paintings to Paris. He began to prepare instead an exhibition in Rome to lay claim to his role as a founder of Metaphysical art, which was now associated with Italy like a geo-cultural lighthouse: “From the geographical viewpoint, it was fatal that an event of this kind, conscious of great Metaphysical painting, was generated in Italy.”²

The provenance of the three Cerruti interiors reflects the evolution of de Chirico’s relations with the market following the Great War and his decision to settle in Italy. In his correspondence from Ferrara with Apollinaire in summer 1916, the painter says he is working hard and that he will send Guillaume eleven new paintings from Ferrara.³ Guillaume subsequently presented eleven paintings in the impromptu exhibition he devoted to de Chirico in November 1918.⁴ The speech written by the art dealer for that occasion reveals that all the paintings belonged to the artist’s Ferrara period.⁵ 

Interno metafisico (con biscotti ferraresi) belonged to the British collector, artist and curator Roland Penrose (London, 1900 - Chiddingly, East Sussex, 1984). Documents published recently by Victoria Noel-Johnson tell us that Penrose purchased the painting during World War II, after it was fortunately recovered by a London-based dealer during the Blitz (1940-41).⁶ Our research has enabled us to identify the dealer as J. L. Dixon of Long Grove, Seer Green, Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire.⁷ The painting features in the 1955 publication by James T. Soby as the property of the gallery owner Sidney Janis, albeit with dimensions that do not pertain to it.⁸ Thanks to Noel-Johnson, we now know that the painting was still in the collection of Penrose at the time, who sold it to the American painter and collector William N. Copley in 1961.⁹ According to the account given by Annalisa Polesello Ferrari, this canvas was purchased from the gallery owner Alain Tarica after 1983. Interno metafisico (con faro) corresponds in size to a Metaphysical Interior in the list of paintings that de Chirico left with Mario Broglio in November 1921 (“38 x 50”; see cat. p. 738).¹⁰ According to the initial agreements between the painter and Broglio, which established the length of the loan of the unsold paintings at one year, the work was probably restored to the artist in late 1922.¹¹ Two labels on the back, one bearing the inscription “Metaphysics II, 1914,”, testify to its presence at the New York gallery of Julien Levy (1931-49), where de Chirico held an important exhibition in 1936, during which he enjoyed a lengthy stay in the United States.¹² One of the gallery account books (1938-78) enabled us to establish that the work - bearing de Chirico’s inventory number (“86”) in pencil on the back - was left with Levy when the artist departed from New York in 1938 and was only returned to de Chirico in 1949.¹³ The Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives - the label of the eponymous gallery can be found on the back - tell us that the painting was owned by Dr Allan Roos of San Francisco before being purchased in July 1964 by Matisse, who sold it to the New York collector Helen Acheson.¹⁴ Mrs Acheson loaned it to the de Chirico exhibitions in Milan and Hanover in 1970.¹⁵ In 1980 it was published with the reference “Turin, private collection”.¹⁶ 

Silvia Loreti

¹ De Chirico 1962, p. 87.

² De Chirico, “Noi metafisici” (1919), in de Chirico 1985, p. 85.

³ De Chirico 2008, p. 616.

⁴ Robinson K. 2008, pp. 371-382.

⁵ Ibid., p. 377.

⁶ Noel-Johnson 2017, p. 435.

⁷ I would like to thank the archivists at the University of Victoria, Canada.

⁸ Soby 1955, p. 235.

⁹ Noel-Johnson 2017, pp. 598, 603-604.

¹⁰ Fagiolo dell’Arco 1980a, p. 67.

¹¹ Contract dated 23 October 1919 between Mario Broglio and Giorgio de Chirico - Section I, nos. 1-2, in Fagiolo dell’Arco 1980a, p. 83.

¹² I would like to thank Giorgia Chierici, Fondazione Giorgio e Isa de Chirico, Rome, for having permitted me to identify one of the two labels.

¹³ Ledger 1938-78, JPL B038, Julien Levy Gallery records, 1857-1982, Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives. I would like to thank Miriam Cady, Reference Archivist, The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Museum of Art. See also Robinson K. 2010, 392.

¹⁴ Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives. MA 5020: Folder 85.42. Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum. New York, N.Y. I would like to thank María Isabel Molestina- Kurlat, Head of Reader Services, Sherman Fairchild Reading Room, The Morgan Library, New York.

¹⁵ Pierre Matisse Gallery Archives. MA 5020: Folder 7.15. Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, The Morgan Library & Museum. New York, N.Y.

¹⁶ Fagiolo dell’Arco 1980, p. 32.