Agostino Beltrano (died 1665) was an Italian painter active in the

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

period in his native city of

Naples Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...

. He was a pupil of

Massimo Stanzione Massimo Stanzione (also called Stanzioni; 1585 – 1656) was an Italian Baroque painter, mainly active in Naples, where he and his rival Jusepe de Ribera dominated the painting scene for several decades. He was primarily a painter of altarpiece ...

, the uncle of his wife, and is known to have been active in 1646. He is said to have murdered his 36-year-old wife and painter, Aniella di Beltrano (also known as Aniella di Rosa), in a fit of jealousy. He died in Naples.

Life and Work

He was born in Naples between 1614 and 1618. The few news we have of his life derived largely from De Dominici, who says he was a student of M. Stanzione. Beltrano married a painter, also a pupil of the Stanzione, Anna (Annella, Diana, Dianella) de Rosa, nephew of

Pacecco de Rosa Pacecco De Rosa (byname of Giovanni Francesco De Rosa; 17 December 1607 - 1656) was an Italian painter, active in Naples. Biography He was a contemporary of Massimo Stanzione or, according to others, a pupil of him. De Rosa was influenced by his ...

; their sons Nicola Tomaso and Agnese Chiara were baptized in the parish of S. Maria della Carità respectively on 21 December 1638 and on 19 July 1640. According to De Dominici, Beltrano, provoked by false allegations of a servant on the love affairs between his wife and the Stanzione, would have killed his wife and abandoned

, where he would return only after the plague of 1656 had eliminated a large number of his enemies. Modern criticism, however, tends to consider this story as a romantic setting: De Dominici himself noted that

Paolo de Matteis Paolo de Matteis (also known as ''Paolo de' Matteis''; 9 February 1662 – 26 January 1728) was an Italian painter. Biography He was born in Piano Vetrale, a hamlet of Orria, in the current Province of Salerno, and died in Naples. He trained wit ...

, in his short biography of Anna, does not mention this violent death. The fact encourages, however, to advance the hypothesis that in the last years of the fifth decade or early the next he made a long journey to the north, journey that would have had great influence on his subsequent artistic development, directing it towards more classical currents. Among his first works are ''St. Martin Sharing the Mantle with a Poor'' , ''the Martyrdom of St. Alexander'' (signed and dated 1646) and ''the Supper of the Apostles'' (signed and dated 1648) in the cathedral of Pozzuoli. The old half-naked figures in the first two canvases denounced the inspiration from the Ribera: but Beltrano is awkward in the anatomy, so much that the nudes look more like a caricature of the Ribera than an imitation. To the same time belongs ''The Sacrifice of Isaac'' (Naples, Museum of Capodimonte). In

there are more mature and of higher quality works including: ''Assumption of the Virgin'' (Hospital of the Incurable, administration, signed and dated 1649); ''St. Girolamo'' and ''St. Nicola da Tolentino'' (signed) on the side altars of the first chapel on the right of St. Agostino degli Scalzi (properly S. Maria della Verità); ''The four Evangelists,'' frescoed in the pendentives of the dome of S. Maria Donna Regina (circa 1650); ''St. Gaetano'' on the altar of the third chapel on the left of the church of the Apostles (1655, signed). ''St. Biagio Among the Saint Domenico and Saint Pius V'', on the altar of the first chapel on the left of Santa Maria della Sanità, can be considered exemplary for the mature style of Beltrano. De Dominici recognized the classical aspects and emphasized "''the beautiful color of Guido''". Beltrano's gloomy characters had now become very sweetened; in the composition, the dynamic elements were suppressed by a rigid constructive symmetry that was linked to the more conservative aspects of the

Bolognese school The Bolognese School of painting, also known as the ''School of Bologna'', flourished between the 16th and 17th centuries in Bologna, which rivalled Florence and Rome as the center of painting in Italy. Its most important representatives i ...

. Among his last works were the fresco of the small dome of the chapel of the Immaculate in the church of St. Maria degli Angioli in Pizzofalcone, according to De Dominici of about 1659, and the frescoes in the chapel of the Blessed Salvatore d'Orta in St. Maria Nuova (1661) with scenes from the life of the blessed around a central panel with ''the Coronation of the Virgin.''

References

* * *Achille della Ragione - Aggiunte al catalogo di Beltrano - Napoli 2007 *Achille della Ragione - Agostino Beltrano, uno stanzionesco falconiano - Napoli 2008

External links

''Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi''
a fully digitized exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Agostino Beltrano (see index) {{DEFAULTSORT:Beltrano, Agostino 1665 deaths 17th-century Italian painters Italian male painters Painters from Naples Italian Baroque painters Year of birth unknown