Sartorio, Giulio Aristide

SARTORIO, GIULIO ARISTIDE. - Painter, b. in Rome on 11 Feb. 1860, d. there 3 Oct. 1932.

A pupil of his father Raffaele, S. gained wide experience in the museums and galleries of Rome, although he grew up and established himself between 1880 and 1890 in that fervid Roman intellectual milieu where D'Annunzio's literary poses and veristic investigations were strangely coupled. The subjects of his first paintings, which followed a fleeting experience in the manner of Fortuny — such as Malaria of 1882 exhibited in Rome, the Sons of Cain exhibited in Paris in 1889, and then the Gorgon and the Heroes and the Diana of Ephesus, exhibited at the Venice International of 1897 and now in the Rome Gallery of Modern Art — show the fruit of those tendencies of taste. But S., who left the best of himself in certain landscapes of the Roman countryside, also attempted grand composition, and not only in the frieze of the Chamber of Deputies with the History of Italy from the Communes to the Risorgimento, but in paintings of a sacred character, such as Christ Blessing Humanity in the church of Lucinico and the cartoons for the mosaics of the cathedral of Messina, the latter a work interrupted by the painter's death.

Emilio Lavagnino