Antonio Amorosi

Antonio Amorosi (1660 – 5 October 1738) was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque, active in Ascoli Piceno and Rome. Amorosi was famous for his lively genre scenes depicting everyday Roman popular life, heavily inspired by the tradition of the Bamboccianti.

Biography

He was born in Comunanza in 1660 and moved to Rome in 1668 with the intention to become a priest, his interest in art and, in 1676, acquaintance with Giuseppe Ghezzi, made him change his mind and enter Giuseppe Ghezzi's workshop to remain there for 11 years. Around 1690 he became an independent painter. His first work, signed and dated 1690, was the Portrait of the child Filippo Ricci, now kept in the Weitzner private collection in New York.

In 1699 he frescoed the Palazzo comunale of Civitavecchia with Pope Innocent III receiving the Magistrates of the city and with the Madonna and San Fermo, destroyed in 1944; in 1702 he painted, in the church of Santa Maria della Morte in Civitavecchia, the altarpiece Saint Gregorio and the souls of Purgatory.

In the mid-seventeenth century appeared the first bambocciate, that is pictorial representations of scenes of popular life that took their roots in the pictorial culture of northern Europe genre scenes. In Italy they were marked by grotesque elements and caricatures as it was the representation of life of the "popolino" shown to the aristocratic clientele. Rather than viewing the lower classes purely through a grotesque or purely comedic lens, Amorosi often treated his humble subjects – especially children – with a sense of inherent dignity, moral seriousness, and grace.

It is said that Amorosi's interest in genre scenes was fostered by artistic preferences of circle of the Spanish ambassador in Rome, the duke of Uceda, who was himself an important commissioner of Amorosi.