Antonio Mancini: A collection of 58 paintings (HD)

Описание: Antonio Mancini: A collection of 58 paintings (HD)

Description: One of Italy's greatest early modern painters, Antonio Mancini (1852-1930) is best known for his daring and innovative painting methods. Born in Rome, Mancini spent his formative years in Naples, and it was there that the young artist was first recognized as a precociously gifted figure painter, noted for his poignant depictions of poor street urchins, or scugnizzi, subjects with whom he identified through his own impoverished childhood. Through his studies at the Istituto di Belle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts) and the influence of Neapolitan Baroque artists and his own most important teacher, Domenico Morelli, Mancini developed a realistic style that he held to stubbornly, even after meeting Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Jean Léon Gérôme, and other French artists during two extended trips to Paris in the 1870s.
After returning to Naples, Mancini's promising career was seriously derailed by an episode of mental illness-possibly brought on by mercury poisoning-that included delirium and even hallucinations and culminated in his hospitalization for four months in 1881-82. Although pronounced "cured," his bizarre behavior persisted to the extent that many referred to him as il pittore pazzo--the crazy painter. It was during this first period of mental instability that Mancini began to express his lifelong fixation with reflective self portraits. His paintings were at once realistic and visionary.
Mancini moved permanently to Rome in 1883. In the following decades his inability to manage his affairs limited him to a precarious existence even as he developed new techniques: the use of the gratìcola (or perspective grid), radically thick impastos, and the inclusion of glass, metal foil, and other materials on the surfaces of his paintings. Nevertheless, he garnered the support of a cadre of European and American patrons and artists, and the turn of the century brought growing critical acclaim and acceptance of his work. John Singer Sargent is said to have called Mancini the "greatest living painter." Mancini contributed paintings to the Venice Biennale and other respected exhibitions in Europe, and by the time of his death in Italy in 1930, he had assumed the status of a national hero.

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