Tiro Art Lesson 1 - FRANCESCO HAYEZ
3 Video Views·Aug 6, 2025
This is the first in a series of lessons from Tiro Art diving deeper into the life and work of famous artists. This episode follows Francesco Hayez, an Italian Artist born in Venice in 1791.
Hi everybody, welcome to tiroart.com first lesson. Today I want to introduce you to an artist with a
very strange name and I'm sure all of you have seen one of these famous paintings at least once
in your life. I'm talking about Francesco Hayez. What a weird surname. The surname comes from the
French and Hungarian father who abandoned him even before he was born. So Francesco was raised
by his mother, a young woman from the island of Murano, the famous island for the glass close
to Venice, who being very poor entrusted him to an uncle from Milan. Here in Milan he attended
the academy and became the artist who most of all embodies the ideals of Italian romanticism
at the time of the unification of Italy. That's why he best represents the spirit and the values
of the time in which Italy finally became a nation. Five themes that he deals with his artworks.
Let's see them one by one. First theme is about the historical injustice. A woman is harassed by
an Angevin soldier with the excuse of being searched. It is an historical reference to the
period in which the Angevin dynasty ruled Sicily, keeping it under their control. This happened
around 1282 but it fills the theme of injustice very strongly because Italy is still under the
control of foreign monarchies. Two, the romance. Here we have the kiss, the most famous painting
of Francesco I. It's dated 1859. Pay attention of it. It's only two years before the Italian
unification. This artwork was made two years before the unification of Italy that happened
in 1861. It is full of sentimental values as the romance values are. It is probably the sense of
the last kiss or the stolen kiss but in order to the romance it is full of patriotic values
that represents the hope of unity. The two parts of Italy, they kiss each other. The homeland is
going to be unified in two years. Third theme, the realistic representation. Woman is represented
without idealization. The signs of suffering, of patience, of melancholy are clearly evident.
The faces are sometimes suffering and the eyes express this feeling. Even the clothes
dropped to the shoulders, the flowers falling dry by the vase, everything represents a realistic
romantic feeling. And what about the freedom that leads the people? This artwork is by Eugenie
Delacroix, 1830. The same romantic feeling is happening in the neighboring France. Fourth
theme, the theatrical representation. His love for Venice, which is represented as the place
of theatrical events, he recreates the lagoon and its fog like he is originally in the reality.
Venice becomes a perfect setting where plays the drama and pain of romantic female feelings.
Fifth theme, the portrait. Realism and political feeling blend together in eyes. He represents
the historical moment that Italy was living, the unification through the portraits of the
protagonists of that time. Here we have the portrait of Alessandro Manzoni, the famous poet,
writer and one senator of the first Italian parliament after the unification.
Many other lead characters were masterly represented by Francesco Aetz as Camillo
Benso, the Duke of Cavod and the creator of the Italian state. And at least, but not at last,
the self-portrait of Francesco Aetz at the age of 72.