MARIANI, CESARE. – Painter, born in Rome on 13 January 1826, died there on 21 February 1901. A pupil of Tommaso Minardi, he immediately distinguished himself among those of his pupils who followed the rigorous «purist» principles most closely, through a greater freedom in draughtsmanship and a distinctive pictorial taste, which subsequently developed into an admiration for the great Italian decorators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was a vigorous and original composer of large spaces and, while still young, devoted himself to fresco painting, in which he also excelled for his technical conscientiousness, whence derives the perfect preservation of his mural paintings.
A fervent and passionate draughtsman, he surpassed the academic «manner» of the Roman milieu of the time, standing alongside Fracassini in affinity of imagination and richness of colour. Extremely industrious into his later years, he used to prepare his large religious fresco compositions with lively studies from life, in oils and pastels, through which the mural painting acquired prominence and originality. From the vast body of his pictorial works, almost all in the great churches that were being restored or constructed ex-novo, the following may be cited, in which his rich imagination and independence from the customary conventions of painting in the second half of the nineteenth century become increasingly apparent over time. In Rome, the frescoes in S. Lucia del Gonfalone (1865), in S. Salvatore in Onda, those following the compositions of C. Fracassini in S. Lorenzo (1869; unfortunately completely destroyed by the war), and others in S. Maria in Aquiro (1871), S. Giuseppe de' Falegnami, and S. Maria di Loreto al Foro Traiano (1873). In 1879 he frescoed the great ceiling of the Ministry of Finance, with a luminous and daring allegory that vividly recalls the Tiepolesque tradition. Typical for the strength of their colouring and the vividness of their compositions are the two frescoes in S. Rocco, Rome (1883). He executed more extensive decorations, encompassing the church interior, in 1890 in S. Emidio at Ascoli and in 1899 in S. Maria delle Grazie at Teramo.