A female portrait of rare intensity. It is the painting by Rudolf Levy that the Uffizi have purchased as a tribute to the Day of Remembrance. The painting is titled “Flame” and was chosen as the cover image of the volume Jews in Fascist Italy by Michele Sarfatti: on the occasion of the anniversary, from tomorrow it will be exhibited at Palazzo Pitti. Director Schmidt: «Next year we will dedicate a retrospective to Levy».
And today it is directly dedicated to Cesare Fasola, the heroic librarian of the Uffizi, who during the Second World War saved the treasures of the museum and of the Jewish collections from Nazi raids.
Rudolf Levy was born into an Orthodox Jewish family who opposed his desire to become an artist. However in 1895 he managed to enroll at the Karlsruhe Academy of Fine Arts. and in 1897 together with Hans Purrmann he moved to the Munich Academy where he studied under the direction of Nikolaos Gysis. From 1899 he enrolled in the private school held by Heinrich Knirr having as companions Paul Klee, Eugen von Kahler and Georges Karse among others. In 1901 and 1902 he mastered painting en plein air with Heinrich von Zügel.
In May 1943, with the German occupation, together with others he secretly took refuge in the Regello campaign. December 1943 was lured by deception to Florence by SS agents who pretended to be art dealers and arrested. After a brief incarceration in Le Murate he was sent to Auschwitz. He probably died during the transport, his registration number never appears to have reached its destination.
Levy’s works in German museums were destroyed during Nazi repressive activities against so-called degenerate art. From time to time some works from the Florentine period emerge on the antiques market.