MORELLI, DOMENICO. — Painter, born in Naples on 8 July 1823, died there on 13 August 1901. A pupil at the Naples Academy under Costanzo Angelini and Camillo Guerra, he was guided by them toward the principles of Neoclassicism and Purism, which he soon abandoned in favor of assiduous veristic research.
His earliest paintings reflect the manner typical of Romantic painting, but after obtaining a pension in Rome (1848) and making numerous journeys in Italy, especially to Venice and Florence, and after also residing in Paris—where, though without fully comprehending it, he grasped the value of the new Impressionist painting—he launched an intense campaign to spread the taste for naturalism, even in Naples, where it had already been followed for some time by artists older than himself, such as G. Gigante, F. and G. Palizzi. This was especially the case between 1860 and 1880, a period during which Naples played a truly preeminent role in the field of Italian artistic culture. Considered in his own time as the leading painter of the peninsula, later opposed by critics, Morelli is today gradually being recognized for the truly notable place he occupied in the field of 19th-century Italian art. At the head of the anti-academic revolt, he intensely practiced “the study of the real,” which often resulted in his pursuit of realistic verisimilitude, even in his sacred painting.
Indeed, many of his works are inspired by sacred subjects: from the early period of his activity is a Madonna and Child in her arms; from the time of his Roman sojourn around 1848–50: Christian Martyrs before the Pyre and Martyrs Carried to Heaven. From the period of his greatest activity is the Assumption fresco in the chapel of the Royal Palace of Naples. In the final years of his life, when his painting, now free from any traditional or imitative ties, tended only toward a rapid realistic rendering of life, there also belong numerous compositions of biblical subjects, some only sketched, others completed in large paintings, such as Christ in the Desert in the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome or the Embalmed Christ in the same collection.