“The first thing Arthur noticed as they entered into the thick of the party, apart from the noise, the suffocating heat, the wild profusion of colours that protruded dimly through the atmosphere of heavy smoke, the carpets thick with ground glass, ash and avocado droppings, and the small group of pterodactyl-like creatures in lurex who descended on his cherished bottle of retsina, squawking, “A new pleasure, a new pleasure”, was Trillian being chatted up by a Thunder God.” — The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

For some of us the internet is a boundless buffet. And I, for one, fail to recognize when my plate is overfull and it’s time to push away. Looking for who knows what today, I stumbled upon a postcard reproduction of a painting by an Italian artist (presumably living in Italy, because I can find so little about him in English) named Enrico Leonne [1865-1921]. Google insists I must be searching for “Henrico Leone”, an opera in three acts composed by Agostino Steffani, which  is comparably unknown to me.

So few of Leonne’s works materialize in a google image search that this pair of portraits are curiously balanced; the second showed up in my otherwise fruitless quest. Are they the same subject? And did all this slouching have any long-term consequences for her posture?

It probably goes without saying (so I’ll say it anyway): Signore Leonne is unlikely to have been represented in the Community Collection — though I wish that weren’t true.

Do you think he might have been influenced by Gustav Klimt?

Gustav Klimt / “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer” a.k.a. “The Lady in Gold” / 1907

Enrico Leonne (1865-1921) / “I Sogni” or “Dreams” (n.d.)