Giuseppe Santelli Biography
Giuseppe Santelli (Signa, 20 January 1880 – Signa, 9 March 1956) was an Italian painter. Born in the Castle of Signa, he was lucky enough to have a stonemason as his paternal grandfather (Adamo) and an ornamentalist as his father (Pietro) and to have had the opportunity to meet Egisto Ferroni and the sculptor Torello Santini. In the reflection of his grandfather and father and in the light of those two artists, Santelli grew up maturing those human, moral and aesthetic merits of which he would later define "the gentleman artist". The young Giuseppe had the talent and desire to draw on the sources of master art and soon, working for five lire a week in a warehouse in Florence, as well as the Santini school, he was able to take advantage of the Florentine Academy. He meets a wealthy teacher who, having become his wife, created a nest for her children while she helped him buy a house and a piece of land next to her father Pietro's home; five, all male, and to whom their artist father all gave the names of great artists or famous humanists: Arnolfo, Brunellesco, Donatello, Aldo, Titian. This is the time in which Giuseppe began to sculpt and paint on his own, thus honing himself in that art of which, in turn, he would become a master, as his teacher at the Academy Giovanni Fattori had prophesied to him. After the war period, his art of which, at times pupil or master, colleague or dean, around him, in the Signese area, formed a whole movement which could be described as a small new Risorgimento. Painters or sculptors who, in the wake of the aforementioned Ferroni, or in the wake of the exalted Fattori, who did not fail to praise him from the time of the Academy, saw, and still sees among the living, artists such as Oreste Calzolari and the Marquis of 'Asnasch, Alimondo Ciampi and Torello Santini, Mario Moschi and Renato Bertelli, Bruno Catarzi and Lido Bagni, Alvaro Cartei and Aldo Rugi, Ugo Mori, Gino Paolo Gori and Ugo Fortini.
