Vincenzo Loria Biography
Vincenzo Loria (Salerno, 17 September 1849 – La Spezia, 31 October 1939) was an Italian painter, specialized in genre and landscape painting. In his hometown he began to dedicate himself to painting under the guidance of the French master Leon Richter, and then studied in Naples at the Academy of Fine Arts, where, as a pupil of Domenico Morelli, he distinguished himself for the mastery acquired in the watercolor technique. Subsequently he painted on commission for foreign amateurs and wealthy gallery owners, including Luigi Pisani, who purchased numerous works for his Florentine gallery in Borgo Ognissanti. Together with his wife, Célestine Salabelle - French originally from Fontaine Vaucluse, a town in the province of Avignon - who was often his muse and model, Loria visited Europe before finally settling in Naples. Among Loria's works, created with oil, watercolor and tempera techniques, those depicting exotic scenes with an oriental flavor or in eighteenth-century costume, the landscapes depicting Pompeian views and those reproducing the wall paintings preserved under the ash, rediscovered, became highly sought after. during archaeological excavations. The diffusion of archaeological-themed paintings was favored by the production of tables commissioned by the Pompeian archeology expert Antonio Niccolini, for whom Loria illustrated the work "The houses and monuments of Pompeii", published in Naples in 1887 and then distributed in the main libraries, museums, academies and royal houses of the time; Selected engravings taken from the volumes edited by Niccolini were also sent to America, helping to spread the fame of Loria and the other artists participating in the project overseas. On behalf of the Minister of Public Education Antonio Scialoja, the artist produced educational illustrations on Pompeian art to be distributed in Italian high schools and university art faculties. Furthermore, Loria participated in documentation campaigns of archaeological excavations also in Herculaneum, Stabia and Paestum. In 1890 Loria opened an important art gallery in Naples - initially in via Vittoria 6[1], then at number 31 of the same street and subsequently in via Partenope 2 - which soon became one of the points of reference of the Neapolitan school of the second Nineteenth century. Loria's studio was frequented by illustrious Italian and foreign personalities, not just European ones: nobles, industrialists, politicians. We remember, for example, the Krupp family of German entrepreneurs - a German dynasty originally from Essen, which became famous for the production of steel and for munitions and weapons factories - and the Americans Singer, just two of the numerous clients that Loria had during his long life and which we find recorded - together with many others - in the large notebook in which the artist wrote down the names and addresses of each client, today a precious testimony of his fame and how much his work was requested and appreciated . In addition to being an appreciated painter, Loria was a designer, lithographer, engraver, ceramic decorator and also experimented with the technique of photography. Of this activity remain, among the heirs, some negatives and albumen prints which testify to the artist's creative process: Loria always photographed the view he intended to paint, then drew a sketch from life and, using both studies as sources , painted the finished work. Loria often used the photographic medium also in the process of making copies of his own paintings, for which he received consistent requests; the artist photographed the finished work and on the photograph traced the grid necessary to reproduce the pictorial subject on a new support. After the death of his wife, in 1929, Loria moved to La Spezia in Corso Cavour 22 - the city where he lived for ten years, until his death on 31 October 1939 - in the house of his son Ettore, an esteemed magistrate at the La Spezia court. In the splendid setting of the Gulf of Poets and surrounded by the consideration of local artists, the painter from Salerno was thus able to find inspiration again after a period of inactivity. At La Spezia he was also awarded the title of dean of La Spezia artists.
