Cafiero Filippelli was born in Livorno in 1889. Around the age of eight he began to reveal a natural disposition for drawing and painting. He had as his first teacher the sculptor Gori, known by his mother who had posed as a model for one of the four seasons, statues placed inside the central market of Livorno. Gori directed him to the School of Arts and Crafts where Cafiero obtained the license. He then won the "Banti" scholarship and was then sent to Florence where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts and the Scuola del Nudo. In the Tuscan capital he met Giovanni Fattori and Galileo Chini. In 1914 he married Annarella Ottorina with whom he had two children, Silvano and Mirella. Called up in the same year, he remained there until the end of the war. To support the family, he agreed to work in an iron bed factory as a headboard decorator. In his free moments, however, he continued to devote himself to painting, portraying scenes of family intimacy, shot under the artificial light of his own home and, on weekends, going to Ardenza and Antignano, reproducing pine forests and seascapes. His first success was obtained in 1922 during the Fiorentina Spring where his painting "Babbo returns" was purchased by the Modern Art Gallery. The following year he exhibited at the Turin Quadriennale and at the second Rome Biennale; in 1924 and 1926 he presented himself at the Venice International Art Biennale and here he sold the painting "Anime sole". In the same year he exhibited at the Promotrice of Turin and at the Mostra di Brera. In 1931 he held a personal exhibition at the Galleria Ronco in Biella; seven years later his wife died leaving a great void in the artist's life. Before the Second World War, in 1942, he exhibited with other Livorno painters at the Ranzini Gallery in Milan and at the Broletto salon in Novara. In 1940 he married for the second time to Regina Creati who left him a widower again after 15 years. In the meantime, his painting was beginning to be appreciated even outside Tuscany: in 1951 he participated with other artists from Livorno in a collective exhibition at the Circolo Artistico in Palermo. In 1959 he married his third wife Anna Maria Gasparri who remained close to him until her death. From 1963 to 1968 he participated in numerous art exhibitions in Turin, Gallarate, Brescia, Novara etc. In these years the painter remained permanently in Livorno except during the summer and spring, when he went to his daughter in Abruzzo. He died in February 1973.