- Antonio Cavallucci
Antonio Cavallucci (
21 August ,1752 -18 November ,1795 ) was an Italian painter of the lateBaroque .Biography
Cavallucci was born in
Sermoneta in theLazio . His artistic talents were recognized in an early stage by FrancescoCaetani , Duke of Sermoneta in 1738-1810. In 1765, he brought the 13 year old Cavallucci to Rome, where he became a pupil ofStefano Pozzi and three years later ofGaetano Lapis . He also studied drawing at theAccademia di San Luca (c. 1769-1771).His earliest work dates from the mid-1760s. It is a
tempera frieze in the Casa Cavallucci in Sermoneta. His first portrait was of his benefactor Duke Francesco Caetani. This portrait is only preserved as anengraving in 1772 byPietro Leone Bombelli (1737-1809).His first major commission was the decoration of five audience chambers in the Caetani Palace in Rome in 1776. He painted mythological scenes and allegories appropriate for each room.
In the early 1780s he painted mostly portraits, such as those of "Francesco Caetani" and "Teresa Corsini, Duchess of Sermoneta".
The "Origin of Music" (1786) is probably the most important painting of his mid-career. It was based on the illustrations in the book "Iconologia" (1593) from
Cesare Ripa .The commissions kept coming under his new patron, Cardinal Romualdo Braschi-Onesti (1753-1817), nephew of the pope
Pius VI . He has painted the portraits of his new benefactor and of the pope in 1788.He was inducted into the
Accademia di San Luca in 1786,Academy of Arcadia in 1788, and the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon in 1788.He is said to have painted St
Benedict Joseph Labre while the saint was in ecstasy, or (as is perhaps more plausible), having seen the saint in ecstasy, to have brought him to his studio and painted his portrait there. In later years he worked for Cardinal Francesco Saverio Zelada, decorating his titular churchSan Martino ai Monti in Rome. Cavallucci died in Rome in 1795.He was influenced by
Pompeo Batoni andAnton Raphael Mengs . There is in his art some of the northern European feeling that had made its way into Rome at the end of the eighteenth century. The Portuguese painterDomingos Sequeira was one of his pupils.elected works
* "Abigail before David" (1773)
* "Departure of Hector and Andromache" (1773)
* "Crucifixion with Saints" (1773)
* "Presentation of the Virgin" (1786) in theCathedral of Spoleto
* "Venus with Ascanius", at the Palazzo Cesarini inRome
* "Investiture of St Bona"(1791),Cathedral of Pisa
* "Principe del Belvedere" (1793),Gallerie di Capodimonte , Naples
* "St. Elias and the Purgatory" (1793)S. Martino ai Monti ,Rome
* Altar piece in the Church of San Nicolò inCatania , Sicily
* "St Francis announces the Pardon to the people" in the Chapel of St Diego d’Alcalà in theBasilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi.References
*cite book|title=Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti|publisher=Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana|location=Rome|year=|page=Vol. IX, p. 557
*cite book|last=Turner|first=Jane (ed.) |title=Grove Dictionary of Art |publisher=Macmillan Publishers |year=1996 |id=ISBN 1-884446-00-0
*cite book | first= Maria|last= Farquhar| year=1855| title= Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters| editor = Ralph Nicholson Wornum | pages= page 44| publisher= Woodfall & Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London; Digitized by Googlebooks from Oxford University copy on Jun 27, 2006| id= | url= http://books.google.com/books?q=intitle:Wornum+intitle:principal+intitle:painters | authorlink=
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