The Italian Connection: Luigi Bonazza:
The Birth of the Day (Allegory of Life) (La nascita del giorno [Allegoria della vita]), 1921–1932
Oil on cardboard
33.9 x 59.3 cm
©Collection Bruno Pizzinini, Villa Bonazza (Trento)

When looking at La nascita del giorno, the visual language of the Vienna Secession immediately takes hold. Although the Italian artist Luigi Bonazza finished this work decades after his time in Vienna, the ghost of Gustav Klimt haunts the composition. Here is a look at a hidden Mediterranean masterpiece that translated the radical energy of the Austrian avant-garde.

The Shadow of Vienna in Trentino

Luigi Bonazza spent eleven years working on La nascita del giorno inside his studio in Trente. He started the canvas in 1921 and finished it in 1932. The entire painting relies on a tall column of nude figures. This setup directly references the floating bodies that Gustav Klimt designed for his university commission.

Bonazza arrived in Vienna in 1897. He spent his nights working as a night watchman to fund his art education and secure his daily survival. During the day, he studied drawing at the Kunstgewerbeschule directly under Franz von Matsch. Matsch was Klimt’s former partner in the Künstler-Compagnie. His classes exposed Bonazza to the structural drawings and baseline mechanics behind the Secession movement.

The Link to Philosophy and Medicine

The painting took its structural layout from Klimt’s works Philosophy (1900-1907) and Medicine (1900-1907). In Philosophy, Klimt painted a stack of humans drifting through a dark space to show mankind at the mercy of fate. Bonazza used that weightless look, but placed his figures against a light, glowing background.

The link to Medicine shows in the way the bodies touch. Arms, legs, and torsos twist together into a human chain. Bonazza included the specific Klimtian motif of the pregnant woman next to younger and older figures to display the lifecycle. Klimt’s original paintings carried a heavy, morbid atmosphere. Bonazza changed that mood. He pointed his column toward a bright sky to create a sense of cosmic order.

Inspired or Just Copying?

This close compositional relationship raises a significant question: did Bonazza create something genuinely new, or did he simply copy Klimt’s work?

To answer this, one must look at the way students were trained at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule. Within the Viennese educational system, borrowing directly from the works of established masters was a standard training method known as academic emulation. Bonazza did not just duplicate Klimt’s canvases. He used Klimt’s decorative layout as a baseline and transformed it.

The main difference lies in how both artists treated the human body. Klimt shifted his figures toward a flat, stylized two-dimensionality. Bonazza did the opposite. He used the anatomical drawing style he learned from Franz von Matsch. Instead of flat silhouettes, Bonazza painted solid bodies with defined muscles and clear contours. This structured drawing style brought a sense of classical order to Klimt’s loose arrangements. The result is a conscious mix that uses a Viennese layout to create a distinctly Italian form.

The Ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk

To truly understand La nascita del giorno, one must view it through the lens of the Gesamtkunstwerk—the total work of art. This Viennese ideal dictated that an artist should break down the boundaries between fine art and everyday life, controlling everything from architecture to small interior decorations. Bonazza fully absorbed this philosophy. When he built his private estate, Villa Bonazza, in the Bolghera district of Trente between 1913 and 1914, he acted as his own architect for the first and only time.

He designed every single detail of the home—including the fireplaces, custom wood paneling, and furniture—to form a harmonious aesthetic universe. La nascita del giorno was painted specifically to fit within this architectural sanctuary. The painting does not stand alone as an isolated canvas; its vertical margins and symmetrical borders mimic the physical woodwork and structural frames of the room it was destined for. The painting is a portable extension of the villa itself, executing the total art concept by transforming a flat cardboard surface into a functional component of a larger living space.

An Out-of-Time Tribute

By the time Bonazza finished the painting in 1932, the European art world had changed. The intense phase of the Vienna Secession belonged to the pre-war era, Gustav Klimt had been dead for fourteen years, and new modern movements dominated the exhibitions.

Art historians view La nascita del giorno as a deliberate engagement with a past style. Instead of following the contemporary trends of the 1930s, Bonazza chose to look back to the methods of his youth in Vienna. While working on this cardboard surface for over a decade, the flowing curves of the Jugendstil slowly hardened. His lines became sharper and geometric. By mixing Klimt’s heavy symbolism with these clean edges, Bonazza used this work to lay the foundations for his later successes in the Art Deco style.

Leaving the Villa for the Mart

For decades, this painting remained integrated within the domestic interior of Villa Bonazza, the artist’s private home and studio outside Trente. The pieces were rarely moved due to their function within the architecture of the house. The public got a comprehensive view of the collection during the exhibition Luigi Bonazza. Tra Secessione e Déco. The private owners allowed twelve major works to leave the villa temporarily for public display. The retrospective took place at the Mart in Rovereto from November 18, 2022, to March 5, 2023. This rare loan allowed art lovers and researchers alike to re-evaluate Bonazza’s role as a cross-Alpine bridge for the European avant-garde before the masterpieces returned to their permanent domestic setting.