TITO, ETTORE. - Painter, born at Castellammare di Stabia on 15 Dec. 1859, died at Venice on 26 June 1941.
A pupil for a short time in Naples of the Dutchman Van Haanen, T. was still a boy when in Venice he became a student of Pompeo Marino Molmenti. In Venice he achieved his first great success at the Biennale of 1887 by exhibiting Pescheria Vecchia, now in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Rome, which also possesses La gomena. Other works by him, almost always Venetian in setting, drawn from life or inspired by his inventive imagination, are found in the principal collections of modern art throughout the world. Indeed, E. T. was considered among the greatest painters of his age for his spontaneous breadth of composition, his easy mastery in rendering foreshortenings and perspectives, and the orderliness of certain brilliant harmonies of colour; thus, with regard to his painting, one may even recognize, if not an actual derivation, a certain Tiepolesque aspiration. These characteristics, in fact, T. displays in the painting of the vault of the church of the Scalzi in Venice (previously frescoed by Tiepolo and destroyed by an Austrian bomb in 1917), which he composed in tones clearly recalling Venetian painting of the eighteenth century.
One of his famous altarpieces, depicting the Deposizione dalla Croce, after being one of the greatest successes at the Rome exhibition of 1911, was acquired by the Museo di Buenos-Aires.