Francesco e Dante: le celebrazioni della Patria. Il concorso per la decorazione dell’abside della chiesa di san Francesco a Ravenna

The competition attracted 18 artists, and to ensure anonymity, the designs had to be marked with a motto. Guido Cadorin hose the phrase “Modicum, et non videbitis me; et iterum modicum, et vos videbitis me”, a phrase used by Beatrice in *Paradiso* when she turns away from the virtues. Cadorin was very young when he entered the competition; he had studied in Venice, where in the 1920s there was a strong connection with and influence from Austro-German art, and above all from Klimt’s Viennese Secessionist movement. What characterises his sketches are, in fact, the dense fields of colour where cobalt blue and gold prevail; compared to the other two finalists, Cadorin created simple, largely non-anecdotal compositions, revealing a renewed taste for the Italian Primitives. The artist had prepared four sketches and, in the competition, which concluded in December 1921, he came second, followed in third place by the Trieste-based artists Arduino Berlam and Carlo Wostry (1865–1943). The decorative design awarded first prize was that of Adolfo De Carolis (1874–1928).