Von Gloeden, Portrait (my personal collection)
"Via Sistina [in Rome] is the street of photographs dealers. The business of photography is important here, it answers the need to bring back home a material souvenir of what delighted our eyes. Beside reproductions of any kind of monuments and works of art (the later are already very interesting...), there are some charming photographs; these are artistic photographic of young male models, in many places, but especially in Rome, Naples and Taormina. Taormina's lads are superb, but their nudity looks a bit rough; their most beautiful eyes shed light on regular faces, but unexpressive: it is impossible to guess any thrill in their inner being. Except some young boys delicate and almost girlish in their prettiness, most of them look like strong stallions, and indeed, they will procreate children as beautiful as they are; I would almost say they are quite beautiful beasts, because it seems to me they display mainly a beautiful animality, despite the pure outline of their faces where no thought is wandering. What a difference with the boys of Naples or Rome ! What an exquisite delicacy in their eyes, in their mouth whose lower lip is receding to the chin that terminates a flawless profile; what a deep harmony of shapes and lines ! It is the energic and almost musical beauty of enlightened and velvety bodies."
Achille Essebac, Partenza... vers la beauté !, 3e éd., 1903, p. 194-195.
I cannot agree totally with Achille Essebac... For me, the "lads of Taormina" show us sometimes their souls: their faces and their gazes have an almost metaphysical beauty, inviting to have a look into their inner depths, to imagine questions and thoughts that, beyond von Gloeden's photographic plates, still impress today viewers...
This gorgeous portrait is one of my recent acquisitions. It makes me dream, through all the thoughts and the feelings expressed by this boy's eyes...
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