Spensieratezze - Vincenzo Volpe

(Grottaminarda (AV) 1855 - Napoli 1929)
Cm 48x32 | In 18.90x12.60
Oil on canvas
Born in 1855 in Grottaminarda, in the province of Avellino, Vincenzo Volpe moved to Naples with his family in 1863. In 1871 he enrolled at the Institute of Fine Arts where in less than two years he covered the five drawing classes. His vast production is divided into three important phases. From 1874 to 1890 he devoted himself to genre painting and paintings of nuns. From 1891 to 1896 he painted sacred art while the period from 1897 to 1929 is marked by new experiences in genre painting, sacred art, and the long series of portraits. In 1873 he won the Annual Prize. His painting came to the fore in 1876 with portraits and landscapes during the opposition between the new Verista school (Palizzi and Morelli) to which Vincenzo Volpe adhered although expressing his inner world in paintings, and academic conventionalism. In 1881 some of his works exhibited in Turin and at the Nazionale in Milan received considerable acclaim. He was a pupil of Domenico Morelli-one of the most important Neapolitan artists of the 19th century who was a senator of the Kingdom of Italy in the 16th legislature-at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. In 1902 he took up his teaching post, which he held until a few days before his death. Between 1891 and 1896, when, as mentioned, he devoted himself to sacred art, he expressed his greatest production in the Montevergine frescoes commissioned by Abbot Corvaia to restore the chapel of the thirteenth-century Byzantine Madonna and still preserved. For this work he at first worked together with his brother Angiolo and then, after the latter's death, continued in solitude until 1896. In 1900 King Umberto I wanted him at the Royal Palace where he gave him a studio. The monarch himself wanted to be portrayed by Volpe. President of the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples from 1915 to 1925, member of the Superior Council of Antiquities and Environmental Heritage, he participated with his works in all the major art events in Italy and abroad. He died in Naples on February 9, 1929. Grottaminarda remembers Vincenzo Volpe with a bronze bust placed at the entrance to City Hall, and the Technical Commercial Institute in his hometown and a street in the provincial capital Avellino are named after him.