GUALA, PIETRO FRANCESCO. - Painter, b. at Casale Monferrato on 21 Sept. 1698, d. at Milano on 7 Feb. 1757. Very few biographical details have come down to us concerning this painter, whom his contemporaries hailed as “famous and celebrated.”
His works, exhibited at the exhibitions of eighteenth-century Italian art held in Firenze in 1921, and especially of Piedmontese Baroque art held in
Torino in 1935 and 1938, have rightly emphasized the importance of his personality, while recent studies have made known his extensive output, scattered among churches, palaces, and museums, chiefly in Piemonte. His painting vibrates with light, is lively in touch, and rich in colour. Besides being a painter of sacred and mythological subjects, G. was a skilled decorator and an animated portraitist. Nothing, indeed, is more spirited and lively than the portraits of the
Canonici di Lu and of Count Filippo Sanazzaro. According to statements by his first biographers, G., in old age, entered the Order of Minims and died at Milano, leaving incomplete the grand fresco of the Assunta on the vault of the sacristy of the beautiful church of S. Francesco di Paola in that city.