Corrado Giaquinto

Bio

Although Corrado Giaquinto is properly considered one of the major figures of the eighteenth century Roman School, his early training in Naples between 1719 and 1723 proved essential to the development of his mature style. The young painter studied there with Nicola Maria Rossi, a pupil of Francesco Solimena, whose style Giaquinto thoroughly imbued. This period in Naples also exposed Giaquinto to Luca Giordano’s fresco decorations for the Certosa di San Martino, and Giordano’s influence continued to be felt, most obviously in the facial features of Giaquinto’s figures. In 1723 he settled in Rome, where he became a pupil and assistant of Sebastiano Conca, the leading practitioner of the local version of the Rococo. In the next twenty years Giaquinto emerged as one of the city’s principal decorative painters, ornamenting a number of churches and private palaces with paintings as fine as any produced in Settecento Rome. While resident in Rome, he journeyed briefly to the royal court in Turin (1733 and 1735-9), where he collaborated with French, Venetian, and Neapolitan painters of his generation and polished his elegant rococo forms and luminous palette.