Cavallucci - San Benedetto Giuseppe Labre

Antonio Cavallucci (21 August 1752 – 18 November 1795) was an eighteenth-century Italian painter of religious scenes and portraits.

Biography

Attributed to Antonio Cavallucci The Madonna Embracing the Christ Child

Cavallucci was born in

Sermoneta Sermoneta is a hill town and ''comune'' in the province of Latina (Lazio), central Italy. It is a walled hill town, with a 13th-century Romanesque church, the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Assunta (sometimes erroneously called a cathedral) ...

in the

Lazio Lazio ( , ; ) or Latium ( , ; from Latium, the original Latin name, ) is one of the 20 Regions of Italy, administrative regions of Italy. Situated in the Central Italy, central peninsular section of the country, it has 5,714,882 inhabitants an ...

. His artistic talents were recognized in an early stage by Francesco

Caetani The House of Caetani, or Gaetani, is the name of an Italian noble family, originally from the city of Gaeta, connected by some to the lineage of the lords of the Duchy of Gaeta, as well as to the patrician Gaetani of the Republic of Pisa. It pla ...

, Duke of Sermoneta in 1738-1810. In 1765, he brought the 13-year-old Cavallucci to Rome, where he became a pupil of

Stefano Pozzi Stefano Pozzi (9 November 1699 – 11 June 1768) was an Italian painter, designer, draughtsman, and decorator whose career was spent largely in Rome. Born in Rome, he was one of four artist sons of his father, an innkeeper: Rocco (1701–74) was ...

and three years later of

Gaetano Lapis Gaetano Lapis (1706–1773) was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque period. Biography Lapis was born on 13 August 1706 in the central Italian city of Cagli, the son of Filippo Lapis, a wool merchant, and his wife Olimpia Orlandini of Cantian ...

.Vita di Antonio Cavallucci da Sermoneta pittore
by Giovanni Gherardo De Rossi; Venice 1796, page 13. He also studied drawing at the

Accademia di San Luca The Accademia di San Luca () is an Italian academy of artists in Rome. The establishment of the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma was approved by papal brief in 1577, and in 1593 Federico Zuccari became its first ''principe'' or director; ...

(c. 1769-1771). His earliest work dates from the mid-1760s. It is a

tempera Tempera (), also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. ''Tempera'' also refers to the paintings done in ...

frieze In classical architecture, the frieze is the wide central section of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic order, Ionic or Corinthian order, Corinthian orders, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Patera (architecture), Paterae are also ...

in the Casa Cavallucci in Sermoneta. His first portrait was of his benefactor Duke Francesco Caetani. This portrait is only preserved as an

engraving Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ar ...

in 1772 by Pietro 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 As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughou ...

appropriate for each room. In the early 1780s, he painted mostly portraits, such as those of ''Francesco Caetani'' and ''Teresa Corsini, Duchess of Sermoneta''. His painting, ''The'' ''Origin of Music'' (1786), was based on illustrations in the book ''Iconologia'' (1593) from

Cesare Ripa Cesare Ripa (, Perugia – Rome) was an Italian Renaissance scholar and iconography, iconographer. Life Little is known about his life. The scant biographical information that exists derives from his one very successful work: the ''Iconologia ...

. Cavallucci also received commissions from Cardinal Romualdo Braschi-Onesti (1753–1817), nephew of the pope

Pius VI Pope Pius VI (; born Count Angelo Onofrio Melchiorre Natale Giovanni Antonio called Giovanni Angelo or Giannangelo Braschi, 25 December 171729 August 1799) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 February 1775 to hi ...

. He painted the portraits of his new benefactor and of the pope in 1788. He was inducted into the

in 1786, Academy of Arcadia in 1788, and the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon in 1788. Cavallucci is said to have painted St

Benedict Joseph Labre Benedict Joseph Labre, TOSF (, 25 March 1748 – 16 April 1783) was a French Third Order of Saint Francis, Franciscan tertiary, and Catholic Church, Catholic saint. Labre was from a well-to-do family near Arras, France. After attempting a monasti ...

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 church

San Martino ai Monti San Martino ai Monti, officially known as Santi Silvestro e Martino ai Monti ("Saints Sylvester & Martin in the Mountains"), is a minor basilica in Rome, Italy, in the Rione Monti (rione of Rome), Monti neighbourhood. It is located near the edge o ...

in Rome. Cavallucci died in Rome in 1795. He was influenced by

Pompeo Batoni Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (25 January 1708 – 4 February 1787) was an Italian painter who displayed a solid technical knowledge in his portrait work and in his numerous Allegory, allegorical and mythological pictures. The high number of foreign vis ...

and

Anton Raphael Mengs Anton Raphael Mengs (12 March 1728 – 29 June 1779) was a German Neoclassicism, Neoclassical painter. Early life Mengs was born on 12 March 1728, at Ústí nad Labem in the Kingdom of Bohemia, the son of Ismael Mengs, a Danish-born painter wh ...

. 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 painter Domingos Sequeira was one of his pupils. It is also known that in Rome he had two more pupils
Giovanni Micocca
and Tommaso Sciacca.

Selected works

* ''Abigail before David'' (1773) * ''Departure of Hector and Andromache'' (1773) * ''Crucifixion with Saints'' (1773) * ''Presentation of the Virgin'' (1786) in the Cathedral of Spoleto * ''Thomas of Cori (levitation)'' (1786), Eucharistic museum of Hieron, Paray-le-Monial, France * ''Venus with Ascanius'', at the Palazzo Cesarini in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

* ''Investiture of St Bona'' (1791),

Cathedral of Pisa Pisa Cathedral (), officially the Primatial Metropolitan Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary (), is a medieval Catholic cathedral dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, in the Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa, Italy, the oldest of the three st ...

* ''Principe del Belvedere'' (1793), Gallerie di Capodimonte, Naples * ''St. Elias and the Purgatory'' (1793) S. Martino ai Monti,

* ''Altar piece'' in the Church of San Nicolò in

Catania Catania (, , , Sicilian and ) is the second-largest municipality on Sicily, after Palermo, both by area and by population. Despite being the second city of the island, Catania is the center of the most densely populated Sicilian conurbation, wh ...

, Sicily * ''St Francis announces the Pardon to the people'' in the Chapel of St Diego d’Alcalà in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi.

References

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cavallucci, Antonio 1752 births 1795 deaths People from Sermoneta Painters from Lazio 18th-century Italian painters Italian male painters Italian Baroque painters Italian neoclassical painters 18th-century Italian male artists