Vincenzo Camuccini

Francesco I and Titian in the Painter's Studio - Drawing 1824

1824

Vincenzo Camuccini, sometimes also referred to as Camucini, was one of the most important Italian Neoclassicists and history painters, despite having lived in a period in which romantic culture had taken hold within the European artistic-literary landscape. It was Pietro, Camuccini's brother, who became famous for cleaning up Michelangelo's Last Judgment in 1824-25, and who carried out various restorations for the Borghese, to push Vincenzo towards art. Every day, Camuccini visited Raphael's Rooms and trained himself to copy the style of that period. In adolescence, he first went to the school of Domenico Corvi and later to the most famous of David. In addition to studying the masterpieces of classical sculpture and Renaissance painting, Camuccini was very fond of representing everyday reality, portraying both nature and the people of the street to study their expressions and give their paintings as realistic a note as possible. Probably in this, the painter was influenced by Romanticism, very attentive to the beauty and grandeur of nature, in all its details. His interest in the realistic rendering of the subjects led him to attend hospital environments to perform studies on corpses. After spending years copying the greatest of art history, Camuccini began to create works of his own invention. His fame grew over the years, leading him to receive increasingly important commissions, up to the appointment by Pope Pius VII as director general of the Fabbrica di San Pietro and to the superintendency of the Vatican Museums, which over the years had been illustrious by artists such as Michelangelo, Maderno and Bernini. For the pontiff, he created The Incredulity of St. Thomas and a St. Simon and Judas, two large canvases for St. Peter's Basilica. At the same time, Vincenzo Camuccini opened an important atelier in Rome, frequented by many Italian and foreign artists.