GUALA, PIETRO FRANCESCO. — Painter, b. at Casale Monferrato on 21 Sept. 1698, d. at Milan on 7 Feb. 1757. Very few biographical details have come down to us about this painter, whom his contemporaries proclaimed “famous and celebrated.”
His works, displayed at the Italian 18th-century exhibitions in Florence in 1921 and particularly at the exhibitions of Piedmontese Baroque art in Turin in 1935 and 1938, have rightly highlighted his personality, while recent studies have revealed his extensive output scattered in churches, palaces, and museums, mainly in Piedmont. His painting is vibrant with light, lively in touch, rich in colour. Besides being a painter of sacred and mythological subjects, G. was a skilled decorator and a lively portraitist. Indeed, nothing is more witty and vivid than the portraits of the Canons of Lu and Count Filippo Sanazzaro. According to the early biographers of G., in his advanced age he entered the Order of Minims and died in Milan, leaving unfinished the grand fresco of the Assumption on the vault of the sacristy of the beautiful church of S. Francesco di Paola in that city.