Painter and Art Advocate Filippo Palizzi

Filippo Palizzi was born in the small city of Vasto (population 41,409 in the 2017 Census) on the Adriatic coast in the province of Chieti in the region of Abruzzo, on June 16, 1818. When he was 19, he moved to Naples and enrolled in the Royal Institute of Fine Arts.

However, he withdrew after a few months in 1838 to attend a private school run in Naples by the renowned painter, Giuseppe Bonolis (1800-1851), who was a native of the city of Teramo in Abruzzo. Bonolis introduced Filippo to the Posillipo School which had been founded by a group of Neapolitan artists who practiced Italian Verismo (very true) painting.

In 1844, Filippo traveled to Paris to visit his older brother, Giuseppe (1812-1888), who had just moved there and who introduced Filippo to the style of painting practiced by the Barbizon School. (Click HERE to see a profile of Giuseppe Palizzi from the March/April 2023 Notiziario.) Filippo then moved back home to Vasto where he concentrated on nature studies from life. He was inspired by the landscapes and panoramas of the countryside outside Vasto. He looked for small, unknown places and fell in love with them. When he was able to find anything of interest, e.g. high hills, tall trees, water scenes, different types of working men and women with natural expressions, he would quickly sketch them on the spot, then return to his home studio to paint them. He did not plan on great pictorial effects. The simplicity of his paintings contained a beautiful world of color and light, so true and real that it was palpable.

Filippo visited his brother again in 1855 and together they saw the Universal Exhibition in Paris. Filippo then decided to move to the Netherlands to join a colony of Italian artists. While he was living there, he painted his self-portrait in 1860 when he was 42. In 1861, he moved back to Naples where he co-founded the Naples Society for the Promotion of Beautiful Arts which advocated for the need to bring academic teaching up to date. In 1863, he returned to Paris and stayed there until 1867 to take part in the Universal Exhibition which awarded him a gold medal.

Filippo moved back to Naples in 1868 at the age of 60 for the third and last time to settle for the rest of his life. There he opened a studio in the Vico Cupa section of the city. During the next decade, he worked on the handling of light, both in landscapes painted outdoors and in the painting of interiors of rooms with windows. He also painted genre scenes of children with animals. In 1878, he co-founded the Industrial Artistic Museum in Naples. Two years later, he was appointed director of the museum. For Filippo’s work on behalf of the museum, King Umberto I of Italy named him a Commendatore of the Order of the Crown of Italy. Filippo died in Naples on September 11, 1899, at the age of 81.

Sources. All accessed June 6, 2021:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filippo_Palizzi
https://www.italianways.com/filippo-palizzi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Bonolis