Sunrise at the Splügen Pass

Sunrise at the Splügen Pass is a painting in oil by the Italian painter Carlo Bazzi, made in 1900. Following the 1900 Italian Triennial of Fine Arts, it became one of the most significant works of landscape painting in Lombardy.

Completed on November 8, 1900, it is a work of art that was exhibited in the exhibition IV Triennial of Milan of 1900Academia Brera.  Quarta esposizione triennale: 1900; catalogo ufficiale; Milano, (Palazzo di Brera), fourth triennial exhibition: 1900; official catalog; MilanAgostino Mario Comanducci.   Dizionario illustrato pittori e incisori italiani moderni, III ediz. Milán] Some have seen in Levata del sole allo Spluga an answer verística Milanese  to Monet's Impression, rising sun with its colors and lights characteristic.

 Critical analysis Levata del Sole allo Spluga is considered one of the most significant works by Carlo Bazzi and a key testimony to the transition of Lombard painting from the naturalist tradition of the 19th century to more autonomous forms of atmospheric and symbolic expression. The painting was exhibited at the Italian Triennial Exhibition of Fine Arts 1900 at the Brera Academy in Milan, and it stands out for its monumental depiction of the Alpine landscape, where the morning light functions as a narrative and poetic structure. The composition reveals affinities with European luminist research, but it distances itself through its realist intensity and strong connection to northern Italian topography. As such, critics have identified it as one of the most representative examples of Italian landscape painting at the beginning of the 20th century, symbolically anticipating the expressive concerns of pre-Futurism related to light and atmosphere. Its dimensions (97 × 145 cm), documented exhibition provenance, and the rarity of comparable works on the art market today make it a key reference in the historiographical reassessment of post-Romantic Italian painting.Catalogue of the IV Italian Triennial Exhibition of Fine Arts, Milan, 1900.Oxford Art Online, entry Carlo Bazzi.

The work belongs to a crucial period in the artist's career, marking the transition towards more modern pictorial languages within the Lombardy art scene of the early twentieth century.Catalogue of the Brera Triennale, Milan, 1900, Historical Archive of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. It consolidated the shift towards modern forms. Levata del Sole allo Spluga is regarded as a synthesis between naturalistic observation and Symbolist tension.Valerio Terraroli, La pittura italiana dell'Ottocento, Electa, Milan, 1991.

The work depicts an alpine landscape at dawn, in which light is not merely an atmospheric element but a structural component of the composition. In this painting, Bazzi's art surpasses nineteenth-century Lombard naturalism, moving towards an atmospheric and mental vision that anticipates the chromatic and lighting solutions characteristic of Symbolism and the Milan Secession. The compositional framing and the use of dawn light place the work in dialogue with contemporary European research, from Giovanni Segantini to Ferdinand Hodler, while maintaining an inherently Italian stylistic character.Chiara Gatti, Paesaggi simbolisti e modernità alpina, in Arte in Lombardia tra Ottocento e Novecento, Skira, Milan, 2012.

 Related pages 
 Carlo Bazzi
 Symbolism

 Bibliography 
 Brera Academy, Quarta esposizione triennale: 1900 ; catalogo ufficiale; Milan, (Palazzo di Brera) Milan, 1900
 Agostino Mario Comanducci, "Pittori italiani dell'Ottocento: dizionario critico e documentario", 1933, Milano, Ed. Casa Editrice Artisti d'Italia, pag. 42
 Agostino Mario Comanducci, "Dizionario illustrato dei pittori e incisori italiani moderni", Seconda edizione riveduta da L. Pelandi, Milano, 1945, Ed. Ovem, pag. 48
 H. Vollmer - Kunslerlex, 1953, pag. 142
 Agostino Mario Comanducci, Dizionario illustratori pittori e incisori italiani moderni, III ediz. Milan
 Heinrich, Claude Monet'', Taschen, 2004 ISBN 9-8228-6198-7

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References

Category:1900s paintings