The Siren (Green Abyss)

Sartorio made his first trip to London in 1893, and this picture carries the mark of it. A mermaid with long red hair and pale, translucent skin rises from the water and wraps herself around a young fisherman leaning out of his boat. The idea came from The Depths of the Sea by Edward Burne-Jones, the English Pre-Raphaelite painter, in which a mermaid pulls a drowned young man down into the water. Sartorio cut his long, low canvas with a sharp horizontal line, and behind the woman, on the sea floor, skulls show through the water, a hint of what is waiting for the boy. He signed it G.A. Sartorio Roma, and it was sold to a private collector soon after it was first exhibited. Around 1900 he painted an almost identical version, Green Abyss, which is in the Ricci Oddi gallery in Piacenza. This first one stayed in private hands until the Turin gallery bought it in 2007.