The Customs

Painted in 1877 and held at the National Gallery in London, 'The Customs' depicts the official border inspection process — customs officers examining luggage and goods at a port, station, or frontier post. The subject was relatively unusual in Italian genre painting, drawn more to domestic interiors and street life than to the administrative machinery of the state. Mancini's choice of this subject at this date may reflect his experience of crossing frontiers as a young artist seeking patronage and exhibition opportunities beyond Naples. The customs inspection is a charged social encounter: one party has institutional authority over the other, and the goods being examined are both practical necessities and personal possessions. The National Gallery's early acquisition of this work — Mancini was only in his mid-twenties in 1877 — speaks to the rapidity with which his reputation had established itself in international markets during the 1870s.

A genre scene set in a specific institutional space required Mancini to establish the architectural or spatial context of the customs post clearly while keeping the human figures — the officers and the travellers — as the psychological centre. His 1870s technique is at its most vigorous in this period, with loaded impasto in the figure passages and broader, more gestural handling in the setting. The uniform of the customs officer, as an official figure, would be rendered with documentary accuracy consistent with his practice across all official costume subjects.