Francesco Curia

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Baptism of Christ , Naples Cathedral

Francesco Curia (after 1550 - between June and September 20, 1608 in Naples ) was an Italian mannerist painter who belonged to the Neapolitan school .

Life

He was probably born shortly after 1550 and most likely received his first training from his father Michele, who was also a painter, but no works have survived. Francesco worked with his father for a long time - evidently until the 1590s, when he himself had long been a recognized painter.

Otherwise hardly anything is known about Francesco Curia. Bernardo De Dominici (1743) reported from hearsay that he was (also) a pupil of Giovan Filippo Criscuolo and a pupil of Raphael (Dominici suspected Leonardo di Pistoia , of which there are no traces in Curia's work). After that, Francesco went to Rome to study the works of Raphael and came under the influence of Roman mannerism after the Zuccari brothers .

De Dominici already mentioned the softness of the coloring and the “noble ideas” that are reminiscent of Correggio and Parmigianino as special characteristics of Curia's style . Abbate also saw connections with the soft style (the " maniera addolcita ") of the Dutch Teodoro d'Errico , who worked in Naples , and puts Curia in a row with the "refined and refined elegance of late international mannerism", as it was described by Bartholomäus Spranger or the Mannerists of Haarlem was cultivated. Bologna (1959) pointed to affinities with Pompeo Cesura and the Spaniard Pedro Rubiales .

The oldest surviving painting in Curia is the Madonna between Jacobus Maior and Jacobus Minor in the Neapolitan church of Santa Caterina a Formiello (the altar as a whole is dated 1586). One of his main works is the allegory of the Franciscans ( Allegoria francescana ) in San Lorenzo Maggiore in Naples, which Abbate counted as one of the "greatest works of all Neapolitan painting of the Cinquecento ", u. a. because of their “free-roaming imagination and subtle mannerist elegance”. At the same time, Curia shows himself to be an excellent portraitist in this work , just like in the Madonna dell'Arco of the Cappella Trencha in San Giovanni a Carbonara from 1595 , where he provided successful portraits of the two founders Orazio Trencha and Cleria de Caprariis.
Other well-known works by Francesco Curia are the Annunciation in the Museum Capodimonte , which he originally created in 1597 for the Monteoliveto monastery , and the allegory of Mary ( Allegoria mariana ) on the coffered ceiling of Santa Maria la Nova , as well as the baptism of Christ in the cathedral of Naples .

Curia's representation of Jesus in the temple in the church of Santa Maria della Pietà a Carbonara, which Celano described in 1692 as "the most beautiful, the noblest, the most finely thought-out picture", "that can arise from a human brush", was caused by the bombings of World War II almost completely ruined.

Francesco Curia died in Naples sometime between June and September 20 in 1608.

Fabrizio Santafede is said to have been one of his students .

Works

Annunciation , 1597, Museo di Capodimonte, Naples
The Last Supper , Metropolitan Museum , New York

Francesco Curia is one of the forgotten painters in art history, like all painting in Naples and southern Italy in the 16th century. According to Camillo Tutini, in the 17th century Curia was "... so famous that you can compare him to every important painter of the past centuries". But later he was hardly noticed. It was not until 1959 that Bologna described him as “one of the most brilliant spirits of international mannerism” and Francesco Abbate considered him “the greatest painter of the second half of the Cinquecento in all of southern Italy”.

List of works according to Abbate:

A number of drawings by Curia have also survived.

literature

  • Camillo Tutini: De 'pittori, scultori… napoletani et regnicoli [18. Jhd.], Ed. v. Benedetto Croce, in: Napoli nobilissima, VII , 1898, p. 122 (also in: Ottavio Morisani: Letteratura artistica a Napoli tra il '400 ed il' 600 , Fausto Fiorentino, Naples, 1958, p. 125 f.).
  • Carlo Celano: Notes del bello dell'antico e del curioso… di Napoli [1692], Naples 1970.
  • Bernardo De Dominici: Vite de 'pittori scultori ed architetti napoletani, II , Naples 1743, pp. 205-211.
  • Ferdinando Bologna: Roviale Spagnolo e la pittura napoletana del Cinquecento , Naples 1959, pp. 58, 98.
  • Mario Rotili: L'arte del Cinquecento nel Regno di Napoli , Società editrice napoletana, Naples 1972, p. 147 f.
  • Giovanni Previtali: "Teodoro d'Errico e la questione meridionale", in: Prospettiva , 1975, No. 3, pp. 17-34.
  • Francesco Abbate: "CURIA, Francesco", in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 31 , 1985, in: "treccani" , accessed on May 2, 2019 (Italian).
  • Ippolita Di Majo: Francesco Curia - L'opera completa (from the series: I Classici ), Electa Napoli, Naples, 2002. ISBN 88-510-0063-8 .

Web links

Commons : Francesco Curia  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Francesco Abbate: "CURIA, Francesco", in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 31 , 1985, in: "treccani" , accessed on May 2, 2019 (Italian )
  2. ↑ De Dominici, 1743, p. 205; here after Francesco Abbate: "CURIA, Francesco", in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 31 , 1985, in: "treccani" , accessed on May 2, 2019 (Italian)
  3. ^ " Dolcezza de 'suoi colori " and " nobiltà de' concetti "; Francesco Abbate: "CURIA, Francesco", in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 31 , 1985, in: "treccani" , accessed on May 2, 2019 (Italian)
  4. ↑ “... quadro per lo disegno, e per lo costume, il più bello, il più vago ed il pilI considerato che possa uscire da pennello umano” (Celano 1692); here after: Francesco Abbate: "CURIA, Francesco", in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 31 , 1985, in: "treccani" , accessed on May 2, 2019 (Italian)
  5. ↑ Bernardo De Dominici: "Vita di Fabrizio Santafede Pittore, ed insigne Antiquario", in: Vite de 'pittori, scultori e architetti napolitani, vol. I & II , Ricciardi, 1745, pp. 223–236, here: pp. 235–236 online as an ebook , last accessed on May 3, 2019
  6. ↑ " ... celebre pittore dei nostri tempi, e sì famoso che equiparare si può con qualunque valente pittore de 'secoli passati ... "; here after: Francesco Abbate: "CURIA, Francesco", in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 31 , 1985, in: "treccani" , accessed on May 2, 2019 (Italian)
  7. ^ " ... uno dei più brillanti ingegni del manierismo internazionale " (Bologna, 1959); here after: Francesco Abbate: "CURIA, Francesco", in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 31 , 1985, in: "treccani" , accessed on May 2, 2019 (Italian)
  8. ↑ " ... il più grande pittore della seconda metà del Cinquecento in tutta l'Italia meridionale ". Francesco Abbate: "CURIA, Francesco", in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 31 , 1985, in: "treccani" , accessed on May 2, 2019 (Italian)
personal data
SURNAME Curia, Francesco
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian painter
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: after 1550
PLACE OF BIRTH Naples , Italy
DATE OF DEATH between June 1, 1608 and September 20, 1608
Place of death Naples , Italy