User:Diomedes1962/Palizzi Brothers

Palizzi Brothers new article content ... Four Italian brothers of whom Giuseppe Palizzi and Filippo Palizzi were especially important in the development of Realism in Italian painting in the 19th century.

Giuseppe Palizzi (born Lanciano, 19 March 1812; died Paris, 10 Jan 1888). He embarked on legal studies but left these to attend the Reale Istituto di Belle Arti in Naples from 1836 as an external student of landscape painting under Anton Sminck Pitloo. After Pitloo's death, he studied under Gabriele Smargiassi (1798-1882), whose academic and dogmatic approach he adopted in his own work, along with the fundamentally Romantic spirit informing it. Early works include the Evening Angelus (1838; Vasto, Musei di Palazzo d'Avalos & Pinacoteca) and the paintings exhibited in several of the Bourbon Esposizioni Biennali in Naples (e.g. the Maremma Marshes, 1839; untraced). Domenico Morelli especially admired this picture for its melancholic mood. This was, in fact, to be a common element in Italian historical landscape painting from the mid-1820s onwards, and it had been inspired by the landscapes of Massimo Tapparelli d'Azeglio. Palizzi was among the first to introduce it to Naples. In 1841 Palizzi exhibited several historical landscapes at the Reale Museo Borbonico, including the Dream of Cain the Fratricide (Naples, Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli on loan to Naples, Capodimonte).

Filippo Palizzi (born Vasto, 16 June 1818; died Naples, 11 Sept 1899). He studied from 1837 at the Reale Istituto di Belle Arti in Naples, where Morelli was among his fellow students. By this time Palizzi had adopted Realism both as a style and as a conviction. Less adapted to Smargiassi's academic style of teaching, he soon moved to the free school led by Giuseppe Bonolis, where plein-air painting was taught in relation to aesthetic principles (similar to those advanced by the literary historian and critic Francesco de Sanctis) and to the study of perspective. Palizzi's experiments in Realism were probably influenced less by the example of Bonolis, who still adhered to Neo-classical conventions, than by de Sanctis's principle that artistic form should depend on content. Such principles gave Palizzi's work a degree of ethical rigour.

Nicola Palizzi (born Vasto, 20 February 1820; died Naples, 25 Sept 1877). He worked as an armourer in Vasto, but c1842 he abandoned this trade and moved to Naples, where he attended the school of Smargiassi and in 1843 began exhibiting paintings regularly. In 1848 he won a Rome scholarship but was unable to take it up. He was initially influenced by artists of the Scuola di Posillipo and then by his brothers Giuseppe and Filippo. In the end he developed his own sketchy and almost impressionistic style. The paintings he exhibited were mostly studies of cliffs, trees and woodlands painted en plein air. His first important work was the Landscape with Gypsies (Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli). Also among his early works were the Landscape at Cava (1848; Naples, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte) the Landscape with Deer (Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli), using the same view of the forest of Fontainebleau as those painted by his brother Giuseppe, the Plain of Paestum (Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli) and Piazza Orsini at Benevento (Vasto, Musei di Palazzo d'Avalos & Pinacoteca). These works recall the simplicity of approach Palizzi drew from the Scuola di Posillipo but at the same time hint at a more robust style prefiguring the work of Cammarano. Palizzi’s painting Melfi after the Earthquake (1851; Vasto, Musei di Palazzo d'Avalos & Pinacoteca) inspired Cammarano’s painting of the Earthquake at Torre del Greco (Naples, Museo Nazionale di San Martino). Palizzi liked to work on a large scale, producing highly romantic landscapes with sunsets or violent storms, or scenes marked by a sense of hushed contemplation. He sought to reconcile the search for truth that characterized the work of his brothers Filippo and Giuseppe with the more compositional practices of Smargiassi’s landscapes (e.g. the Composite Landscape at Sunset with Ancient Ruins, Lake and Figure (Naples, Palazzo Reale di Napoli).

Paolo Francesco Palizzi (born Vasto, 16 April 1825; died Vasto, 16 March 1871). He moved to Naples in 1845 and devoted himself mainly to still-life painting and was among the Neapolitan artists to represent the continuation of the 17th and 18th century tradition of such Italian painters as Giuseppe Recco, Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo and Paolo Porpora, who were in fact the main sources of inspiration for the later artists. From c1859 to 1870 Palizzi lived in France, where he extended his study of still-life by close observation of the work of Jean-Simon Chardin. Among Palizzi's works, Still-life with Oysters and Basket of Game (both Naples, Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli) and the Leg of Wild Boar (Vasto, Musei di Palazzo d'Avalos & Pinacoteca) are notable. The Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) forced Paolo Francesco Palizzi to return to Vasto in 1870, and he died there the following year.