The ‘Old Master’ Tradition

While Leonor Fini’s visual worlds are groundbreaking and visionary, her painting style draws on earlier centuries. Fini never attended an art academy, yet her virtuoso painting style resembles that of the ‘Old Masters’. In many European museums, she closely studied the painting techniques of famous artists, from Leonardo da Vinci to Gustav Klimt. As a result, she developed a refined and meticulous technique. She used a glazing technique, building up layers with barely visible brushstrokes and a smooth surface. This creates smooth transitions and soft shadows and gives her figures porcelain-like skin. With their elegant appearance and elongated proportions, they show an affinity with Mannerism, as does Fini’s restrained use of bold primary colours.

Agnolo Bronzino, Pygmalion and Galatea, 1529/30

The influences of Dark Romanticism and Symbolism are also evident in Fini’s work: in her fascination with transience and the hidden, with occultism and myths. Beyond reality, the boundaries between life and death, animal and human become blurred. Sphinxes, priestesses, androgynous beings, and other hybrid creatures populate her hyperrealistic visual worlds. Yet her drawings are highly precise; her figures are never incidental but deliberately staged, and they convey far more than their outward appearance, appearing enigmatic, self-assured, and multifaceted. The anatomy and proportions are exceptionally accurate, not least because of the close anatomical studies undertaken by the inquisitive artist, who visited the mortuary in Trieste from a young age.

Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli), The Nightmare, 1790/91


And although her technique is deeply rooted in the European painting tradition, the subjects of her works are modern. Fini paints with the technical precision of the ‘Old Masters’, adopts the elegance of Mannerism, and combines them with the psychologically charged dream worlds of Surrealism. The result is paintings that appear at once centuries old and surprisingly contemporary – classical painting in the service of a wholly independent, imaginary visual language.