Photographie originale dédicacée au critique d'art Vittorio Pica

Original dedicated photograph representing Emile Zola facing forward, head slightly turned to the right. Vintage silver gelatin print.
The photograph is mounted on cardboard. On verso, studio stamp of Benque & Cie.
Worming to verso of the photograph. Small stain in lower left margin of the photograph and a clear fingerprint stain in lower right margin.
Autograph inscription signed by Emile Zola to the art critic and great friend of the Goncourt brothers Vittorio Pica.
Art critic of Neapolitan origin, Vittorio Pica took an early interest in French naturalist and symbolist movements: "Curious about all avant-garde movements, he first concerned himself with the naturalists - he maintained regular contact with Maupassant, Huysmans and Zola -, then he became interested in the symbolists, particularly Mallarmé and Verlaine, to whom he devoted studies of admirable accuracy" (Petralia, Bibliographie de Rimbaud en Italie cit., p. 37). Contributor to the most prestigious national and international reviews of modernist tendency, he was one of the first founders of the Venice Biennale, of which he would be secretary general from 1920 to 1926.