Antonio Lonza Biography
Antonio Lonza (Trieste 1846 - 1918) He began to attend the courses of M. Grigoletti and P. Molmenti at the Academy of Venice in 1867, and then moved to Florence, where he approached romantic history painting in the manner of P. Delaroche (The dying Lorenzo de' Medici is urged by Savonarola to give freedom to the Florentines, 1873 Trieste, Revoltella Museum). In 1873, with a scholarship from the municipality of Trieste, he went to Rome together with E. Scompanni, and from that stay he reported a strong attraction for the lively colorism of M. Fortuny, which pushed him towards anecdotal painting of eighteenth-century taste (Giuseppe Parini, Trieste, Revoltella Museum; Still a Kiss, exhibited in Trieste in 1890), a successful genre especially abroad (The Jugglers, awarded at the Paris Salon of 1882). He also dedicated himself to sacred art (Ecce Homo, Trieste, church of San Vincenzo de' Paoli; The Nazarene, exhibited in Turin in 1884) and to the fresco decoration of some Trieste palaces (Palazzi Artelli and Morpurgo). From the first decade of the twentieth century he was a portraitist sought after by the city's upper middle class (Giuseppe Parisi, private collection, Ernesto Becher, Trieste, Lloyd Adriatico collection). He was president of the Circolo Artistico Triestino for a long time and exhibited in Milan (1885, The Flower Girls), in Rome (1903, Procession in the Woods), in Trieste (1903, The Puppets; 1904, Last Rays) and in Koper (1910, Redemptio).
