MICHETTI, FRANCESCO PAOLO. - Painter b. at Tocco Casauria on 2 Oct. 1851, d. at Francavilla a Mare on 5 March 1929. In 1868, having obtained a scholarship from the provincial administration of Chieti, he went to Naples, where he struck up a friendship with Dalbono while at the Academy he studied with Filippo Palizzi and Domenico Morelli.
Already established from 1870 with small paintings of children and animals, today in the Museo di S. Martino in Naples, in 1872 and 1875 he exhibited at the Paris Salon. But he became famous in 1877 when he exhibited in Naples the Corpus Domini (Rome, Crispini collection), a lively, picturesque depiction of a religious festival in Abruzzo. From then on, for over 20 years, F. P. M. produced an infinite number of paintings (in 1899 he exhibited 200 of them at the same time at the Venice Biennale and 100 in Berlin), almost always with subjects consisting of scenes or characteristic figures of Abruzzo, passing gradually from the initial stylistic manners that he had formed in the Palizzi-Morelli-Dalbono circle, but also sensitive to the picturesque polychromy of Fortuny (in Naples in 1874), to a livelier and more abundant painting (Il Voto, Rome, Galleria d'arte moderna, 1880-83) and then to a more solid and composed manner (La Figlia di Jorio, Pescara, Municipio). An instinctive artist of great potential and immediacy of expression, he was extremely active until the year 1900, when he sent to the Paris Exposition two of his large canvases: Gli storpi and Le serpi, now in Francavilla in the Municipio, in which it is possible to recognize a return to the initial manners of his style. Afterwards he lived inactive as a painter, interesting himself above all in various problems of technique.
Bibliography3 works
Emilio Lavagnino