Claudio Francesco Beaumont
Italian, 1694 - 1766
Italian painter of French descent. After a visit to Bologna in 1716, he was sent by Victor-Amadeus II of Savoy, King of Sicily, to study in Rome (1716–19), where he trained with Francesco Trevisani. Between 1719 and 1723 Beaumont was given various important commissions in Turin, including that for the ceiling painting of Aurora’s Chariot (1720) on the second floor of the Palazzo Reale. Around this time he was elected prior of the Confraternità di S Luca, and between 1723 and 1731 he was again in Rome. Victor-Amadeus II recommended him to Nicolas Vleughels, the director of the Académie de France in Rome, and Beaumont was much influenced by the Roman–French style of Trevisani, Carle Vanloo and Charles-Joseph Natoire.
On his return to Turin in 1731, Beaumont was appointed court painter to Victor-Amadeus III, and over the following years he decorated a series of chambers in the Palazzo Reale in Turin with frescoes and encaustic paintings, including the vault decorations for the queen’s Camera di Lavoro (1731–3) and Gabinetto della Toeletta (1733). In 1737 Beaumont painted a Judgement of Paris for the ceiling of the Gabinetto Cinese, designed and decorated by Filippo Juvarra. In 1738 he received the first payments for his painting of the Deeds of Aeneas (completed 1743, reworked 1760) on the long ceiling (60 m) of the Galleria della Regina (now Galleria delle Armi). In 1738 he was appointed director of the newly founded Scuola di Disegno in Turin. In 1748, again in the Palazzo Reale, he produced a ceiling fresco depicting the Triumph of Peace and the Revival of the Liberal Arts for the Galleria delle Battaglie.
From c. 1734 Beaumont supplied the Turin tapestry factory with paintings to be enlarged into cartoons for tapestries. As court painter, he was well placed to achieve a unity of style between the pictorial and textile decorations of the Palazzo Reale. He planned five series, including the Story of Alexander (1742; Turin, Pal. Reale; Rome, Pal. Quirinale) and the Story of Pyrrhus (n.d.; Turin, Mus. Civ. A. Ant.). He emphasized decorative effects, enclosing each painting with an imitation frame (a characteristic feature of Italian tapestries in the 18th century), and favoured courtly and historical themes, in contrast with the other, more bucolic scenes that were woven by the factory. The Story of Pyrrhus (woven by Francesco Demignot, 1749–54; Rome, Pal. Quirinale) is less heroic than the earlier Alexander series, being designed to give a more intimate atmosphere. Three of Beaumont’s models for the Alexander series were rewoven in 1782, evidence of his lasting influence on tapestry production in Turin. In 1755 Beaumont became prior of the Confraternità della Misericordia in Turin and donated to the community the painting of St John Nepomuk before our Lady of Sorrows (Turin, Misericordia). He also received commissions for paintings for churches in and around Turin (e.g. Blessed Amadeus, 1755; Turin, Chiesa del Carmine; St Laurence, 1766; Alba Cathedral).
Nina Lübbren. "Beaumont, Claudio Francesco." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T007151 (accessed March 22, 2012).
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