Portrait of the Painter Francesco Santoro, Rome

Sorolla's portrait of the Italian painter Francesco Santoro was made during his time in Rome as a scholarship student from Valencia, when he moved in circles of fellow artists and students at the Spanish Academy. Santoro was a Southern Italian painter known for genre scenes, and his portrait by the young Sorolla captures both an individual and the artistic community in which both men participated. Artist-to-artist portraits have a long tradition as acts of collegial affirmation, and Sorolla's treatment of a fellow painter suggests the relationships of mutual respect and artistic conversation that sustained the Rome-based international artist community.

The portrait shows Sorolla developing his technical confidence: the face is rendered with careful observation of the Italian sitter's features, the execution solid but not yet the brilliant fluency of his mature work. The compositional informality appropriate to an artist's portrait gives the work a candor absent from formal society portraiture.