Minardi, Tommaso

MINARDI, TOMMASO. - Painter, b. in Faenza on 4 Dec. 1787, d. in Rome on 13 Jan. 1871. A pupil of Giuseppe Zauli, having obtained a pension from the Istituto S. Gregorio of Faenza, he moved to Rome to study at S. Luca. Having established himself as one of the best artists of his time, from 1818 to 1821 he was in Perugia as director of that Academy and then returned to Rome as a teacher at S. Luca, an activity he carried on for about forty years. In 1843 he signed, together with Overbeck and Tenerani, the "Purist" manifesto (v. PURISMO) of Antonio Bianchini. Initially oriented in a neoclassical direction, as various of his paintings and drawings on historical and mythological subjects and the Napoleon in ancient-Roman dress of the Pinacoteca of Faenza suggest, he soon inclined toward more decidedly Romantic tastes, of which the self-portrait in the Galleria d'arte moderna of Florence is precise testimony. But subsequently he adopted "Purist" attitudes, becoming the most authoritative representative of that tendency, which proclaimed that it must take as its models the great artists of the past, from the trecentisti to the early Raphael, in order to arrive at the "severe, simple, evident demonstration of the things represented." A meticulous, exceedingly acute draftsman, he spent seven years (others say twelve) of work copying in drawing, on behalf of the engraver Longhi of Milan, Michelangelo's Last Judgment, today in the Vatican Library. His works in Rome: some cartoons in the Accademia di S. Luca; The Madonna with Child, St. Lawrence and the Souls of Purgatory in the church of Campo Verano; the Virgin, St. Agnes and other saints appearing to St. Stanislaus Kostka in the room where that saint died near S. Andrea al Quirinale; The Propagation of Christianity in the Palazzo del Quirinale, The Coronation of the Virgin in the chapel of Palazzo Doria, a Madonna with Child in the Galleria d'arte moderna. In Spoleto, in the Cathedral, a Sacred Heart of Jesus is his, while in the Pinacoteca of Faenza there is also his Socrates Teaching Alcibiades and The Supper at Emmaus.

Emilio Lavagnino