- Antonio Mancini
Antonio Mancini (1852-1930) was an Italian painter.
Biography
Mancini was born in
Rome and showed precocious ability as an artist. At the age of twelve, he was admitted to the Institute of Fine Arts inNaples , where he studied underDomenico Morelli (1823–1901), a painter of historical scenes who favored dramaticchiaroscuro and vigorous brushwork, and Filippo Palizzi (1818–1899), a landscape painter. Mancini developed quickly under their guidance, and in 1872, he exhibited two paintings at the Paris Salon.Mancini worked at the forefront of "Verismo" movement, an indigenous Italian response to 19th-century Realist aesthetics. His usual subjects included children of the poor, juvenile circus performers, and musicians he observed in the streets of Naples. His portrait of a young acrobat in "Saltimbanco" (1877-78) exquisitely captures the fragility of the boy whose impoverished childhood is spent entertaining pedestrian crowds.
While in Paris in the 1870s, Mancini met Impressionists
Edgar Degas andÉdouard Manet . He became friends withJohn Singer Sargent , who famously pronounced him to be the greatest living painter. His mature works show a brightened palette with a strikingimpasto technique on canvas and a bold command ofpastels on paper.In 1881, Mancini suffered a disabling mental illness. He settled in Rome in 1883 for twenty years, then moved to
Frascati where he lived until 1918. During this period of Mancini's life, he was often destitute and relied on the help of friends and art buyers to survive. After the First World War, his living situation stabilized and he achieved a new level of serenity in his work. Mancini died in Rome in 1930 and buried in the BasilicaSanti Bonifacio e Alessio on theAventine Hill .His painting,"The Poor Schoolboy", exhibited in the Salon of 1876, is in the
Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Its realist subject matter and dark palette are typical of his early work. Paintings by Mancini also may be seen in major Italian museum collections, including Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea inRome , and Museo Civico-Galleria d'Arte Moderna inTurin . ThePhiladelphia Art Museum holds fifteen oil paintings and three pastels by Mancini that were a gift ofNew York art dealer Vance N. Jordan.The first exhibition in the U.S. devoted exclusively to Mancini's work was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
October 20 ,2007 –January 20 ,2008 .External links
* [http://www.mattiajona.com/schede/mancinipastel.html Biography: "Portrait of a young girl"]
* [http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=433 Selected works in Academic Classicism]
* [http://www.phryne.com/artists/34-12-92.HTM Short biography]
* [http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/268.html an overview of Mancini's show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art]
* [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/arts/design/04manc.html "Tumultuous Mind, Spread Across Canvas" by Roberta Smith, The New York Times, Art Review, 4 Jan 2008]References
*Broude, Norma (1987). "The Macchiaioli: Italian Painters of the Nineteenth Century". New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03547-0
*http://www.philamuseum.org
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