Last month, I attended an art exhibit featuring Antonio Fontanesi in Kyoto. To be honest, I'd never heard of his name until I attended his art show. Even so, I thought he must be an Italian artist because of his name. I'm a huge fan of Italian art, so I was very excited to see his paintings.

The exhibit allowed visitors to take pictures, so I'd like to share some of them with you here.

He specialized in landscape paintings. I think he was particularly good at using earthy colors, especially brown. Because of this, his paintings give us a sense of calm. It's fascinating to see what Italy looked like back then through his paintings.

This is my favorite painting. I also like the way it's framed. It looks very unique.

One thing I'd like to point out is that he came to Japan to teach. He was a very well-known teacher among young Japanese painters, and some of his students later became famous painters. Asai Chū is one of them.

Fontanesi drew some Japanese people.

He also painted some Japanese Shinto shrines.

The pictures below show some of his students' works.

I especially love this painting in the picture below.

This holding screen was painted by Fontanesi after he returned to Italy from Japan. I guess he liked some traditional Japanese objects.

He influenced not only Japanese artists, but also Italian artists.

The exhibit gave us a postcard having a square hole that looked like a frame. It said that we could enjoy viewing real landscapes through the postcard, so I gave it a try. The view was right next to the museum, but it looked completely different through the postcard. I loved the idea.

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