Luigi Coghetti Biography
Luigi Coghetti was born in Rome on October 2, 1802. In January 1819, the famous artist Antonio Canova and the powerful Cardinal Ercole Consalvi entrusted him to Tommaso Minardi for his artistic apprenticeship. Together with Giuseppe Chialli, Coghetti moved to Perugia, where Minardi was the director of the Academy of Fine Arts. During that period of apprenticeship, he learned the art of painting under the supervision of Minardi. While continuing to attend the Academy of Perugia until December 1821, when Minardi returned to Rome to teach at the Academy of S. Luca, Coghetti participated in some competitions announced by the Roman Academy.
On 20 March 1820, he passed the competition of the free school of the nude, ranking first with a drawing which is still preserved in the Academy's collections. In the same year, he was "admitted to the competition and grant" of the painting class with a painting that portrayed Samson who, after killing the Philistines, refreshes himself with water (now unavailable). On 23 March 1822, he exhibited “La continenza di Scipione” to the public (Rome, Pinacoteca dell'Accademia di S. Luca) with which Coghetti won his three-year pension.
Thanks to Minardi, he received his first important commission, the decoration of the vault and curtain for the L'Aquila theater in Fermo. Between 1839 and 1842, in Rome, Coghetti decorated some rooms of the Villa Torlonia on Nomentana. In 1860, he created the two frescoes "Vision of St. Paul in the Troad" and "St. Paul freeing the possessed woman" for the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls. In 1870, he completed the fresco with "The Virgin, the angels and the patriarchs Moses and Noah" on the front of the triumphal arch in S. Maria in Trastevere.
Luigi Coghetti died in 1884 in Rome.
