1657-1747 Italian Francesco Solimena Gallery Francesco Solimena was born in Canale di Serino, near Avellino. He received early training from his father, Angelo Solimena, with whom he executed a Paradise for the cathedral of Nocera (place where he spend a big part of his life) and a Vision of St. Cyril of Alexandria for the church of San Domenico at Solofra. He settled in Naples in 1674, there he worked in the studio of Francesco di Maria and later Giacomo del Po[1]. He apparently had taken the clerical orders, but was patronized early on, and encouraged to become an artist by Cardinal Vincenzo Orsini (later Pope Benedict XIII)[2]. By the 1680s, he had independent fresco commissions, and his active studio came to dominate Neapolitan painting from the 1690s through the first four decades of the 18th century. He modeled his art??for he was a highly conventional painter??after the Roman Baroque masters, Luca Giordano and Giovanni Lanfranco, and Mattia Preti, whose technique of warm brownish shadowing Solimena emulated. Solimena painted many frescoes in Naples, altarpieces, celebrations of weddings and courtly occasions, mythological subjects, characteristically chosen for their theatrical drama, and portraits. His settings are suggested with a few details??steps, archways, balustrades, columns??concentrating attention on figures and their draperies, caught in pools and shafts of light. Art historians take pleasure in identifying the models he imitated or adapted in his compositions. His numerous preparatory drawings often mix media, combining pen-and-ink, chalk and watercolor washes. Francesco Solimena 'A study for the fresco cycle in the Sacristy of San Paolo Maggiore in Naples', Whitfield Fine Art.A typical example of the elaborately constructed allegorical "machines" of his early mature style, fully employing his mastery of chiaroscuro, is the Allegory of Rule (1690) from the Stroganoff collection, which has come to the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. He apparently hoped to see his son Orazio follow a career in the law, for which he received a doctorate (de Domenici), but also became a painter. His large, efficiently structured atelier became a virtual academy, at the heart of cultural life in Naples. Among his many pupils were Francesco de Mura (1696-1784) , Giuseppe Bonito (1707-89), Pietro Capelli, Gaspare Traversi, and most notably Corrado Giaquinto and Sebastiano Conca. The Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay spent three years in Solimena's studio. Solimena amassed a fortune, was made a baron and lived in sumptuous style founded on his success. Francesco Solimena died at Barra, near Naples, in 1747.  Related Paintings of Francesco Solimena :. | Descent from the Cross | Expxulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple | Charles VI and Count Gundaker Althann | L Assomption et le Couronnement de la Vierge | Bathseba im Bade |
Related Artists:
GRANACCI, Francesco
Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1469-1543 was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. Born at Villamagna di Volterra, he trained in Florence in the studio of Domenico Ghirlandaio, and was employed painting frescoes for San Marco on commission of Lorenzo de'Medici. He is featured in Giorgio Vasari's Vite. His early works, such as the Enthroned Madonna between Saint Michael and John the Baptist (Staatliche Museen, Berlin), Adoration of the Child (Honolulu Academy of Arts) and four histories of Saint John the Baptist, were influenced by the style of Filippino Lippi. In 1508, Granacci went to Rome, where he and other artists helped his lifelong friend Michelangelo to transfer cartoons to the Sistine chapel ceiling. Returning to Florence, Granacci painted a Madonna with Child with Saints Francesco and Jerome for the Augustinian convent of San Gallo (now in the Gallery of the Academy), a Madonna della Cintola for the Company of San Benedetto Bigi, and in 1515 he participated in creating the decorations to celebrate the visit to Florence of Pope Leo X. In 1519, he painted a Madonna with Child and Saint John. Works of the years 1520-1525 betray a direct influence of Fra Bartolomeo, including a Madonna in throne between Saints Sebastiano and Francesco for Castelfiorentino and a Sacred Conversation for Montemurlo. An altarpiece of the Assumption is influenced by Pietro Perugino.
Antonio Firmino Monteiro
painted Matches in 1884
Mancini, Antonio
Italian Academic Painter, 1852-1930 Italian painter. He entered the Istituto di Belle Arti, Naples, at the age of 12; while still an adolescent he produced accomplished works such as Head of a Young Girl (1867; Naples, Capodimonte). On his graduation in 1873, Mancini, together with Francesco Paolo Michetti and Vincenzo Gemito, was at the forefront of VERISMO in Neapolitan art. Sharing a studio with Gemito, he painted the street boys, musicians and dancers of Naples, creating an anti-academic, popular art. His patron, Albert, Count Cahen of Antwerp (1846-1903), encouraged him to visit Paris in 1875, where he met Manet and Degas. After a second visit in 1877