The story of a child from Frassinetto who gave us timeless works, is reminiscent of the Pinacoteca of his hometown
IVREA. Two eras, two worlds, two completely different family and social contexts.
If Giovanni Martino Spanzotti cultivated his art in the wake of a family tradition (“painter the father, painter the grandfather”), for Carlo Bonatto Minella the possibility of dedicating his very short life to painting was the result of determination and sacrifices incredible, of a real voluntarist subtraction from the unwritten laws of fate.
Born in Frassinetto in 1855, since childhood Carlo Bonatto Minella demonstrates his vocation for drawing, in a poor, peasant family and social context, in which this kind of provisions must be imposed in order to survive. In its beautiful Carlo Bonatto Minella. Painter, the historian Angelo Paviolo describes the child Carlo as frail, careless and lazy, unsuitable for grazing work: able to be enchanted by the passage of a cloud, or by the song of a peddler.
A child who thrills everyone with his first drawings and his inner mystery, but who worries his parents for their future.
It is thanks to the help of the parish priest and the teacher that, just fourteen, he can go down to Turin to attend the Accademia Albertina, which he had so desired. Here he shows enormous capacity for sacrifice, following his vocation in difficult conditions and with such intensity as to compromise his own health.
For eight years he won numerous prizes including the Triennial Painting Competition. He acquires a very refined technique, maintaining an innate sense of personal poetry even in the most academic subjects.
Among the first works, Portrait of the grandmother, an extraordinary copper engraving; then oils on canvas of rare beauty such as Donna pompeiana e Male nude, Judith, Jewish woman, The Religion of the Dead and the picture of St. James, which can be admired in the apse of the parish of Salto, a hamlet of Cuorgné.
His last work, from 1878, is The Pensive. In fact, he died in the same year of consumption: although he had not freed himself from academic subjects, in a few years of life he gained the attention and praise of the most qualified critics.
His Frassinetto has dedicated a small picture gallery to him which preserves the large one Deposition and many other works, which we invite you to discover.
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