A storm at night on an Italian shore, cut into a woodblock: on the jetty a group of women and children watch the sea, while the boats are still out.
The print works almost entirely in black. The light comes from the streaked sky and from the crests of the waves, which the engraver cut as thin white lines against the dark. At the centre a woman raises both hands to her head; beside her another lifts a hand towards the water. Children hold on to the wooden posts and the rope of the jetty. In the foreground, lower down, a figure bends over the rocks. On the horizon, small and far apart, the sails of the boats that have not yet come back.
The title the work carries, Ansia — anxiety — names what the scene shows: the wait of the families of fishermen during a night of bad weather. It is a subject of the coastal communities that appears often in Italian printmaking between the wars.
Attilio Giuliani was a woodcut engraver active in Rome in the 1930s, and taught at the city’s municipal art school. In 1934 he worked with the engraver Umberto Franci on a series of prints of Italian cities. The example reproduced here carries the date 1935 and comes from a private archive of period material.
About this image. The work is still protected by copyright: under Italian law (L. 633/1941) rights run for 70 years from the death of the author, and that term has not expired. It is reproduced here for documentation, study and critical purposes only, under Art. 70 of L. 633/1941 and the fair-use provision of 17 U.S.C. §107. The scan was made by the collector from his own copy of the work — the period magazine printings and loose sheets he keeps in a private archive: owning the physical copy is not the same as holding the rights to the work. The image is not offered for sale, no reproduction rights are granted, and any request concerning the work should be addressed to the rights holders. Cultural Heritage Online publishes this material to document it, with no celebratory intent; see our terms and the DMCA contact published there.
