Crescenzo Gamba

Bio

Little is known about Gamba’s formation or early career but his activity as a decorator mid century is recorded in archival documentation. His style ranges between de Mura’s in the 1740s and that of Bonito in the basilica of Sta. Chiara in the early 1750s and he frequently reuses figure types from both artists.

Gamba executed numerous private commissions for the Neapolitan nobility in city palaces, as well as more modest decorations for country houses and estates located around Vesuvius. He frescoed the vaults of churches and developed an elegant style of rocaille decoration which may be seen in the Prior’s quarters in the Certosa di S. Martino, Naples.

Gamba also received a number of royal commissions including An allegory of Flora and Spring and The Triumph of Truth for the Royal Palace at Portici in 1750 (now the University Agricultural Faculty) and in the Favorita at Herculaneum c. 1770. Although he also worked at Caserta (A fresco of Apollo and the Muses in late Rococo style) he was not entrusted by Luigi Vanvitelli with major undertakings and the work he was originally commissioned to carry out there was curtailed. Nevertheless his decorations adorn the Court Theatre (1768-70) and the vault of the first anti-chamber to the private apartments. In 1783 he is documented as carrying out decorations for a room in Palazzo Doria d’Angri which do not survive.