Project Description
Francesco Raffaele Santoro ( Cosenza 1844 – Rome 1927 ), The old bridge in Florence
Oil on canvas cm 39 x 62, signed ( FR Santoro ) lower left. On the back, pencil inscription with information about the painter’s Florentine domicile ( Via de’ Cerretani 8 ).
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Oil on canvas cm 39 x 62, signed ( FR Santoro ) lower left. On the back, pencil inscription with information about the painter’s Florentine domicile ( Via de’ Cerretani 8 ).
In the Italy of the Nineteenth century were several families of artists distributed throughout the country, actual studios where was handed the craft down from father to son, giving continuity to talents and experience developed over the years, from generation to generation. In this context are the Santoro, first in Fuscaldo and then in Mongrassano in the province of Cosenza, a family that had collected some success in the South Italy, both in Calabria and Naples. The Santoro were originally four brothers: Giovan Battista, sculptor and decorator, Filinto, literate, Baldassarre, engraver, Carlo, wood sculptor, Consalvo, a pioneer of photography. In this family environment rich of artistic and cultural influences they were also trained grandchildren: Francesco Raffaele and Rubens, respectively sons of Giovan Battista and Carlo.
Unlike the younger cousin, older of fifteen years, the author of this beautiful Florentine glimpse ties his name, in the period of his training, to the Roman countryside and the Ciociaria, which portrays in all its aspects and soon became a sought view paintings painter of those picturesque corners.
Francesco Raffaele shows immediately to be able to capture aspects of the realist views that reports on canvas with executive fastness and expressive effect: it is clear, looking at this “Old Bridge in Florence”, came from Mark Murray Fine Art collection, superb proof in which the talented Calabrian artist manages to give the landscape a nuanced plasticity that allows the distributed light gently on buildings and natural elements, without creating sharp contrasts, the direct observation of reality that Santoro makes, gripped by real en plein air, or through the use of raw photographic reproductions. A study in the open air that had totally absorbed our painter in the capital where, since 1885, after a stay in England, last stage in his training program, he was established, opening a studio in via San Basilio 13 and then in via Sistina 123.
In Rome Francesco Raffaele keeps busy as author of watercolors, a genre highly appreciated by foreign travelers and collectors: thus he becomes part of the Society of Watercolourists, created in 1875, among others, by Ettore Roesler Franz, Nazareno Cipriani, Cesare Maccari, Vincenzo Cabianca, Pio Joris, on the English model of Old Water Colour Society. It is also the first councilor, then treasurer until he became secretary and vice-president. The presence in the Capitoline exhibitions is regularly attested; he exposes at the Exhibitions of Amateurs and Connoisseurs of Fine Arts, virtually without interruption from 1876 to 1926, and those of Watercolourists in the halls of the palace Colonna in the Holy Apostles square (1900 and 1902).
