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 :. | The Trinity, the Madonna and St Dominic | LAssomption et le Couronnement de la Vierge | Charles VI and Count Gundaker Althann | Judith with the Head of Holofernes | Portrait of Charles VI |
Related Artists:
CANAL, Bernardo
Italian painter, Venetian school (b. 1664, Venezia, d. 1744, Venezia)
Fritz Zuber-Buhler
was a Swiss painter integrant of the style Academic Classicism, born in 1822 at Le Locle in Switzerland and died November 23, 1896. At sixteen years old he moved to Paris, France where found his first teacher Louis Grosclaude. Later he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and then refined his technical skills with François-Édouard Picot, who followed the same lineage of contemporaneous artists such as Leon Perrault, Bouguereau, Alexandre Cabanel and many others. Afterwards he spent some time in Italy searching for inspiration and raise the quality of his art. Then, returning to Paris, he made his debut at the Salon in 1850 exhibiting alongside oil paintings, drawings, pastels and watercolors. His painting Innocence shows his romantic view of the peasant childhood and their environments, expressing nature, softness and intense details. Also his works were drawn by popular themes at that period like mythology, religion and requested portraits. Zuber-Buhler produced exhibitions in the United States, comprising at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and achieved great admiration as a classic academic painter.
Angelika Kauffmann
1741-1807,Swiss neoclassical painter and graphic artist. From her youth she was known for her artistic, musical, and linguistic abilities. She went to England, where she enjoyed success as a fashionable portrait painter and decorator. A protegee of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Kauffman was one of the original members of the Royal Academy. She often decorated houses designed by the Adam brothers. After her marriage in 1781 to the Venetian painter Antonio Zucchi, she lived in Italy, where she flourished in artistic and literary circles. Reynolds, Winckelmann, Goethe, and Garrick commissioned her to paint their portraits. Representative works include Religion (National Gall., London); Self-Portrait (Staatliche Museen, Berlin); and the etchings of L'Allegra and La Pensierosa. The British Museum has a collection of her drawings and prints.