CONCA, SEBASTIANO. - Painter, b. at Gaeta on 8 Jan. 1679 (or according to others 1676 or 1680) and d. at Naples in 1764. A pupil at Naples of Solimena, he in turn kept a school in Rome, where from 1706 he carried on most of his activity and brought the manner of his master. Here, however, especially through contact with the art of Maratta, his painting often grew cold in the pursuit of an academic perfection, toward which he was also driven by the criticisms made of him for the incorrectness of his drawing.

In Rome he worked a great deal, receiving commissions even from Philip V of Spain, from the sovereigns of Poland, of Portugal, of Sardinia and from the archbishop of Cologne, as well as from Pope Clement XI. Received in 1719 into the Academy of St. Luke (of which he was president in 1729-32 and in 1739-41), in 1725 he won admiration for the decoration of the ceiling of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, but his greatest glory came from the other ceiling that he frescoed after his return to Naples (1751) in the church of S. Chiara, for which he was acclaimed as one of the greatest Neapolitan decorators of the eighteenth century. His works are scattered in many churches and collections of Rome, Naples, Gaeta, Urbino, Cagli, Pisa, Loreto, Turin, Palermo, as well as in many foreign galleries and collections.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: F. Noack, s. v. in Thieme-Becker, VII (1912), pp. 287-88 (with bibl.); H. Voss, Die Malerei des Barock in Rom, Berlin 1924, pp. 381 ff., 619 ff.

Gilberto Ronci

@incollection{ec4_conca_sebastiano, author = {Ronci, Gilberto}, title = {Conca, sebastiano}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IV}, pages = {158--159}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1950}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/conca-sebastiano} }

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Conca, Sebastiano

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