Cesare Laurenti (painter)

La meraviglia in attesa, 1891-1897 (Fondazione Cariplo)

Cesare Laurenti (Mesola (Ferrara), 1854 – Venice, 1936) was an Italian painter.

Biography

Laurenti moved to Padua at the age of 18 and studied engraving there with the sculptor Luigi Ceccon. He then continued his training in the academic sphere in Florence, where he arrived in 1876, and in Naples two years later. Having returned to Padua in 1881, he finally settled in Venice. After early works of genre painting, he developed a personal approach aimed at expressing the range of human feelings through intense female figures. The various awards won include the Prince Umberto Prize at the first Milan Triennale in 1891. The new century also saw a change in style, as the artist began treating Symbolist themes and further developed the study of Renaissance art commenced during his Florentine period, now under the influence of Art Nouveau. He took part in the Venice Biennale on a regular basis from 1895 to 1909, with a solo show of his work in 1907. A highly respected decorator and architect, he designed the new fish market at the Rialto, inaugurated in 1908, and produced some of the sculptural elements himself.

References

• Laura Casone, Cesare Laurenti, online catalogue Artgate by Fondazione Cariplo, 2010, CC BY-SA (source for the first revision of this article).

Other projects

Media related to Cesare Laurenti at Wikimedia Commons