TITO, ETTORE. - Painter b. at Castellammare di Stabia on 15 Dec. 1859, d. at Venice on 26 June 1941.
A pupil for a short time at Naples under the Dutchman Van Haanen, T. was still a boy when in Venice he became a pupil of Pompeo Marino Molmenti. And in Venice he had a first great success at the Biennale of 1887 exhibiting Pescheria Vecchia, today in the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Rome, where La gomena also is. Other works of his, almost always with a Venetian setting, taken from life or inspired by whimsical fantasy, are in the principal collections of modern art throughout the world. Indeed E. T. was considered among the greatest painters of his age for the spontaneous breadth of his composition, for the easy bravura with which he marked foreshortenings and perspectives, for the order of certain ringing harmonies of colour, so that with regard to his painting one can even recognize, if not exactly a derivation, a certain Tiepolesque aspiration. Such characteristics indeed T. shows in the painting of the vault of the church of the Scalzi in Venice (formerly frescoed by Tiepolo and destroyed by an Austrian bomb in 1917), which he composed with accents that have evident echoes of Venetian painting of the 18th century.
A famous altarpiece of his with the Deposition from the Cross, after having had one of the greatest successes at the Rome exhibition of 1911, was acquired by the Museum of Buenos Aires.
Bibliography4 works
Emilio Lavagnino