Giuseppe Cesari - Biography, Selected works, Sources

Painter, born in Arpino, SC Italy. Honoured by five popes, he is best known for the frescoes in the Capitol at Rome.

Giuseppe Cesari (c.

Biography

Cesari's father had been a native of Arpino, but Giuseppe himself was born in Rome. indeed, another of the nicknames of Cesari is "Il Marino de Pittori" (the pictorial Marino).

There was spirit in Cesari's heads of men and horses, and his frescoes in the Capitol, which occupied him at intervals during forty years, are well coloured;

Cesari ranks as the head of the Idealists of his period, as opposed to the Naturalists, of whom Caravaggio was the leading champion, the so-called idealism consisting more in reckless facility, and disregard of the common facts and common-sense of nature, than in anything to which so lofty a name could be properly accorded.

His only direct followers were his sons Muzio (1619-1676) and Bernardino (d. 1593-94, Caravaggio held a job at Cesari's studio as a painter of flowers and fruit.

Selected works

Cappella Olgiati in Santa Prassede (1592) Frescoes in Salon of the Palazzo dei Conservatori (now Capitoline Museum, 1595-56) Battle between Horatii and Curiatii Finding of the She-wolf Rape of the Sabine Women Numa Pompilius Instituting the Cult of the Vestals Cappella Paolina in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore (1609)

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Sources

Gash, J.