Born in Rome on 11 February 1860, died there on 3 October 1932. He was the scion of a family of artists (sculptor was his grandfather Girolamo, and sculptor-painter his father Raffaele). He learned the first rudiments of drawing from his father, but he soon wanted to free himself from any family influence so that his temperament could be strengthened, and to perfect his technique, directing his artistic training to the meticulous and severe study of frescoes, paintings and ancient sculptures, to grasp the traditional teachings of drawing, coloring and composition. He had a fervent youth of attempts and experiences in the still perplexed Rome of the decade from the eighties to the nineties. At that time he attended literary cenacles, and began an aristocratic activity as a writer with critical and narrative prose that he published in periodicals. A friend of Gabriele D'Annunzio, he designed the tables and friezes of the poem "Isaotta Guttadauro" and cooperated with him in the foundation of a large illustrated newspaper. His first style, some genre paintings and eighteenth-century environment, was inspired by the taste of Mariano Fortuny. But he soon revealed a strong personality with the painting Malaria, exhibited in Rome in 1882. In 1889 he went to Paris, together with Michetti. There he exhibited The Sons of Cain. From 1893 to 1900 he lived a luster of intense industriousness: he accepted the invitation of the Grand Duke Charles Alexander of Saxony-Weimar, and was a teacher at the Weimar Academy; he continued in his work as a painter, critic and storyteller; he painted the famous diptych The Gorgon and the Heroes and Diana of Ephesus and the slaves, exhibited at the Venice International in 1897, now at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Rome. In the decade following his return from Weimar, in addition to studies and drawings of animals and landscapes against the backdrop of the Roman countryside and Pontine marshes and many canvases that revealed his mastery in the nude, he completed two important works: allegorical friezes in chiaroscuro for the Venice Biennale and those for the new Montecitorio hall, where he represented the History of Italy from the Municipalities to the Risorgimento. After these highly demanding jobs, he felt a transformation. Research and effort - as he himself wrote - turned to grasp and reproduce men and beasts in their manifestation of vital animality. The landscapes of the Roman countryside, which he painted in tempera on a very fine canvas, marked the pinnacle of his fame and fortune. Eighty of these tempera figures appeared, in 1914, at the Venice International, where he was a regular exhibitor. In 1933 in the Galleria Borghese in Rome a posthumous exhibition was inaugurated by Guglielmo Marconi where there were one hundred and eighty-four works. He was also a valiant war volunteer. Wounded, taken prisoner in Lucinico (to whose church the widow donated the large painting Christ blessing humanity in 1933), he was released in 1917. In 1929 he was appointed Academic of Italy and then elected vice president of the Institute based in that Farnesina that he had helped to save from decay and squalor, directing the restoration and restoration works. Other works by him: The Birth of Rome; Autunnalia (1890) at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Milan, where there are also twenty-seven subjects from the 1915-1918 war; Green abyss in the Ricci Oddi Gallery in Piacenza; On the Sacred Island and Vittoria d'Ostia at the Revoltella Museum in Trieste; Alba sul Tevere in Fiumicino (1903) and La luce in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Venice. He was an acclaimed etcher.

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