Francesco Solimena

(Italian, 1657–1747)

Francesco Solimena was an Italian painter best known for his Baroque religious and mythological scenes. Rendered in brownish chiaroscuro, Solimena’s works exhibited qualities of flickering light in their depictions of subjects often derived from earlier painters such as Annibale Carracci and Raphael. Born on October 4, 1657 in Canale di Serino, Italy into a lineage of painters, his father Angelo Solimena was a revered fresco painter. Beginning in 1674, Solimena received instruction from Francesco di Maria and Giacomo del Po in Naples, quickly gaining recognition and eventually forming his own studio. During his life, his studio had done much to shape the Neapolitan aesthetic of the time. Before his death at age of 89, on May 3, 1747 in Barra, Italy, Solimena had become very wealthy and had influenced a new generation of painters, including Corrado Giaquinto, Sebastiano Conca, and Allan Ramsay. Today, his works are held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in London, and the Louvre Museum in Paris, among others.