The six artists of Ritratto are united by their common home in Florence, Italy which as a city has produced many of the greatest portraitists in the history of art. The artists have received thorough training in the techniques of their craft and the painters in particular are directly linked to both the Boston school of the turn of the century as well as the the great nineteenth-century Parisian ateliers of Jean-Léon Gerôme, Paul Delaroche, Antoine Jean Gros, and Jacques Louis David. The painting materials are still prepared by hand from the canvas to the varnish and all the colors are hand-ground from the best pigments available on the international market.
The sculptors on the other hand feels deeply rooted in the great figurative traditions brought to us by Greek’s, the re-birth of the nude in the Renaissance and the proud tradition of the 19th century. Although separates itself preferring to look for the unique visual qualities of his subject, rejecting the mannerisms of the past.
A portrait in sculpture begins in clay and is modeled to “ a finish” in order to capture the qualities of his sitter that makes them. Uniquely them. The work then is rendered to a permanent state with the process referred to as lost wax bronze casting. This is begun with a negative of the portrait in silicone rubber and ultimately finished in bronze with the patination or coloring being applied.
The painters and the sculptor at Ritratto do not work from photographs.
To commission a portrait is simple. The artists at Ritratto are all willing to travel (and most of them already spend half the year or more away from home while working on their commissions) or the client is invited to vacation in Tuscany, enjoying the art, food, and culture of one of the most special regions on earth while the portrait is being completed. The travel expences of either option will, however, be the responsibility of the client.
Thank you for visiting the Ritratto website,
Ingrid Lamminpää
Curator