GANDOLFI, FAMILY. - Bolognese painters. During the second half of the eighteenth century and beyond, the brothers Ubaldo and Gaetano G., and then Mauro, son of Gaetano, carried on in their homeland a singular artistic activity, in which, grafted onto the remnants of the local Baroque tradition, Venetian motifs and accents, especially those of Tiepolo, are pleasingly joined, and, lastly, suggestions of international Neoclassicism.
UBALDO, b. at S. Matteo della Decima, near Bologna, on 28 Apr. 1728, and d. at Ravenna, on 21 July 1781, to a practice as a fluent painter of warm tonalities, especially in easel works, joined a very varied and abundant activity as a draughtsman; he also modelled in plaster the two prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah for the Bolognese church of S. Giuliano. Particularly noteworthy are the canvas Diana and Endymion, in the Palazzo comunale of Bologna, and some female and infant heads in private collections.
GAETANO, b. at S. Matteo della Decima on 31 Aug. 1734, and d. at Bologna on 21 June 1802, was initiated into art by his elder brother. His manner is sometimes confused with that of Ubaldo, to whom he proves somewhat inferior in the quality of touch and colouring, if not of narrative verve. He left, besides numerous frescoes and paintings on canvas, noteworthy drawings and some twenty engravings in burin. Among his paintings are remembered, besides six frescoes in the dome of S. Maria della Vita in Bologna, a Portrait of his wife, in the Pinacoteca of Bologna, the Rape of Deianira, in the Bolognese Palazzo Calzoni, and the picture depicting The Foundation of the Ospedale dei Trocatelli, in the Museo civico of Pisa.
MAURO, b. at Bologna on 18 Sept. 1764 and d. there on 4 Jan. 1833, is appreciated as a painter in the Self-portrait of the Pinacoteca of Bologna, but he was above all an engraver in burin, adopting the French technique au pointillé and achieving success in France and the United States, as well as in the most important Italian cities.
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Alberto Nappi