Giovanni Battista Quagliata

The Mother of God appears to St. Paulinus. Altar painting in the Santa Rita Church.

Giovanni Battista Quagliata (* 1603 in Messina , † 1673 in Messina) was an Italian painter and architect of the Baroque in Sicily .

Life

Quagliata was one of the most important baroque artists in Messina. His father was the less well-known painter Giovanni Domenico Quagliata , who worked in Rome towards the end of the 16th century and moved to the blossoming Messina shortly before 1600. There he married Francesca LeDonne, and his two sons Andrea Quagliata (* 1594 or 99; † around 1660) and Giovanni Battista were born. While Andrea was taught painting by her father and was soon self-employed, Giovanni Battista was taught literature and philosophy by his parents. With the death of his father he had to support his brother in his artistic work. Here he showed himself to be very talented, so that his hometown made it possible for him to receive a scholarship in the Roman workshop of Pietro Berettini, known as Pietro da Cortona . Soon he was working independently for church and private clients and became a member of the Accademia di San Luca . At the age of 24 he married the Roman Cinzia Conticelli.

Around 1640 he returned to Messina and received numerous commissions for frescoes and panel paintings that were in the stylistic tradition of his teacher Pietro da Cortona. After the death of his wife Cinzia, he married Flavia Alias, the sister of the Jesuit father and mathematician Vincenzo Alias . Around 1650, the viceroy of Sicily Juan José de Austria (1649–51) took art lessons with him. Probably from the friendship that developed between the viceroy and the painter, Quagliata was ennobled by him, was allowed to carry a coat of arms and was given some land in the area of Forza d'Agrò .

Most of Giovanni Battista Quagliata's works in and around Messina were badly damaged or lost by the severe earthquakes of 1783 and 1908 and by the Allied bombing raids of 1943.

Works

• Birth of the Virgin Mary . Altarpiece in the Santa Maria di Costantinopoli (Rome)
• Sacrifice of the Polissena . Art dealer Franco Semenzato , Venice March 24, 1991, whereabouts unknown
• The Virgin Mary appears to Saint Paulinus (from Nola) . Painting Chiesa di San Paolino (Messina)
• SS.Cosmas e Damiano : painting in the cathedral of ( Fiumedinisi )
• Death of St. Josef : Painting in the S. Giacomo ( Capizzi )
• Madonna dell'Idria with two monks . Painting Chiesa SM della Visitazione ( Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto )
• Tribuna frescos in the Cathedral of Messina (1639) were badly damaged in the earthquake of 1908 and completely destroyed in the bombing by the Allies in 1943. Parts of it have been reconstructed.

literature

• Jakob Philipp Hackert : Memorie De 'Pittori Messinesi e Degli Esteri che in Messina fiorirono dal secolo XII. fino al secolo XIX. Papparlando, Messina 1821.
• Enrico Mauceri : Giovan Battista Quagliata. In: Bollettino d'Arte. Series 2, Book VIII, 1922, pp. 381-385.
• Quagliata, Giovanni Battista . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 27 : Piermaria – Ramsdell . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1933, p. 490 .
• Francesco Susinno: Le Vite de 'Pittori Messinesi (= Università di Messina. Pubblicazioni dell' Istituto di storia dell 'arte medioevale e moderna. Vol. 1). Testo, introduzione e note bibliografiche a cura di Valentino Martinelli. Le Monnier, Florence 1960.
• Teresa Russo: Quagliata, Giovanni Battista. In: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani . 2016.

Web links

Commons : Giovanni Battista Quagliata  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Works by Giovanni Battista Quagliata at the Fondazione Federico Zeri, Università di Bologna
• The Quagliata Family Genealogy Project

Individual evidence

1. ↑  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )