Cesare pronti, madonna col bambino in gloria e santi

Cesare Pronti (November 30, 1626 – October 22, 1708) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly near

Ravenna Ravenna ( , , also ; rgn, Ravèna) is the capital city of the Province of Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. It was the capital city of the Western Roman Empire from 408 until its collapse in 476. It then served as the ca ...

Biography

He was born at

Cattolica Cattolica (; rgn, Catòlga) is a town and ''comune'' in the Province of Rimini, Italy, with 16,233 inhabitants as of 2007. History Archaeological excavations show that the area was already settled in Roman times. Cattolica rose as a resting pl ...

, near

Rimini Rimini ( , ; rgn, Rémin; la, Ariminum) is a city in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy and capital city of the Province of Rimini. It sprawls along the Adriatic Sea, on the coast between the rivers Marecchia (the ancient ''Arimin ...

, and was brought up at

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language, Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 1 ...

, training in that city under

Guercino Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (February 8, 1591 – December 22, 1666),Miller, 1964 better known as Guercino, or il Guercino , was an Italian Baroque painter and draftsman from Cento in the Emilia region, who was active in Rome and Bologna. The ...

. He then helped complete the quadrature for the Villa Albizzi in

, working with

Carlo Cignani Carlo Cignani (15 May 1628 – 8 September 1719) was an Italian painter. His innovative style referred to as his 'new manner' introduced a reflective, intimate mood of painting and presaged the later pictures of Guido Reni and Guercino, as well a ...

. He then moved to Ravenna, where Pronti helped decorate with a mix of

quadratura Illusionistic ceiling painting, which includes the techniques of perspective ''di sotto in sù'' and ''quadratura'', is the tradition in Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art in which ''trompe-l'œil'', perspective tools such as foreshortening, a ...

and allegorical figures representing four Continents in the Rasponi family's palace, Palazzo di San Giacomo, near Russi. He also helped decorate, with oculi with flying putti, the former church of San Romualdo, now a museum in Classe (in the

Biblioteca Classense The Biblioteca Classense is the public library of Ravenna, Italy. In 1803, with the Napoleonic suppression of monasteries and religious institutions, a library was created to harbor the confiscated books. They were housed in the Library of the Ca ...

),Biblioteca Classense.
/ref> and formerly a Camaldolese Abbey. In Ravenna, he was commonly called Padre Cesare da Ravenna. He became an Augustinian monk as a young man, and was afterwards principally engaged in painting altarpieces for the churches of his fraternity, of which one of the best is an altarpiece depicting ''St Thomas of Villanova'' for Sant'Agostino, Pesaro. He died at Ravenna.

References

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Bibliography

*''Cesare Pronti da Cattolica (1626-1708), Un omaggio in quattro atti'', a cura di Alessandro Giovanardi, saggi di Ivana Balducci, Annamaria Bernucci, Maurizio Castelvetro, Massimo Pulini, Pazzini Editori, Rimini, 2021, 1626 births 1708 deaths People from Rimini 17th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 18th-century Italian painters Italian Baroque painters Painters from Bologna 18th-century Italian male artists {{Italy-painter-17thC-stub