HAYEZ, FRANCESCO. - Painter, b. in Venice on 11 Feb. 1791, d. in Milan on 11 Feb. 1882. A pupil of Lattanzio Quarena and, at the Academy, of Teodoro Matteini, in 1809 he won the competition for the pensionato in Rome, where he met Canova, who greatly encouraged and protected him; having won in 1812 the grand prize of the Brera Academy with his neoclassical Laocoonte, H. remained in Rome for more than five years, training himself not only on the ancient works but also on the paintings of Ingres and Camuccini.
Having returned to Venice in 1821, he went to Milan, drawn by its extraordinarily lively artistic milieu. In Milan he first painted some historical pictures in the Palazzo Reale, but he was soon called to teach at the Brera Academy. Having oriented himself in the Roman milieu first toward neoclassicism, which benefited him above all as technical discipline, he later devoted himself to pictures with historical subjects, painted with romantic intentions and sensibility (Vespri siciliani, Galleria d'arte moderna in Rome; Ultima addio di Giulietta a Romeo, Galleria d'arte moderna in Milan), and above all to portraits, a field in which he truly excelled through his most acute sensibility as an interpreter, his technical mastery and his exquisite color. The portrait of Rossini, that of Alessandro Manzoni and that of Signora Iuva, all in Milan, distributed between the Galleries of Brera and the Galleria d'arte moderna, like the other one of the princess of S. Antimo in the Museo di S. Martino in Naples, are undoubtedly among the most beautiful paintings of the nineteenth century.
Bibliography2 works
Emilio Lavagnino