Francesco de Mura
Born Naples, 1696; died Naples, 1782.
Italian painter. He was educated initially in the workshop of Domenico Viola at Naples, but in 1708 he entered the school of Francesco Solimena, whose favourite pupil and most trusted collaborator he became. At first he followed closely Solimena’s monumental Baroque manner, as in the frescoes (1715) in S Nicola alla Carità in Naples, but later developed a more controlled and refined style of rhythmical lines, light and airy colours and delicate psychological overtones. He employed this new style in his ten canvases of the Virtues and his vast Adoration of the Magi (all 1728; Naples, S Maria Donnaromita) and, above all, in his frescoes of the Adoration of the Magi in the apsidal dome of the church of the Nunziatella, Naples (1732; in situ). De Mura was also active as a portrait painter; his Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (c. 1730; Naples, Pio Monte della Misericordia) and Self-portrait (c. 1730; Florence, Uffizi) are both very much in Solimena’s manner.
In 1737–8 de Mura executed two allegorical ceiling paintings in the Palazzo Reale, Naples, where the vast Allegory of the Monarchy remains, and in 1738 he began the fresco decoration of the church of SS Severino e Sossio, Naples, with scenes from the Life of St Benedict. From 1741 to 1743 he worked in Turin, where he decorated a series of rooms at the Palazzo Reale with scenes from Greek history and mythology; among the most beautiful, and in the finest state of preservation, is the decoration of the Sala delle Macchine with Stories of Theseus. On his return to Naples, he completed the vast decorative scheme of SS Severino e Sossio with a series of canvases. All this vast quantity of work shows his constant preference for a subtle and intimate manner, both worldly and elegant, which eschews heroics and subtly conveys the most delicate emotion. However, his work in Turin, with its pale, radiant colours and arcadian landscapes, also marked a clear moderation of the late Baroque classicism of Solimena towards the most recent European Rococo, similar to that in the contemporary work of Corrado Giaquinto.
In 1751 de Mura resumed work on the church of the Nunziatella, frescoing the ceiling with a grandiose Assumption of the Virgin . He continued to paint portraits, and his depiction of Cardinal Antonio Sersale (1756; USA, priv. col., see 1979–80 exh. cat., p. 194) and the Blessed Francesco de Gerolamo (1758; Naples, Pio Monte della Misericordia) are mature examples of intense psychological interpretation, made vivid by delicate chromatic harmonies. In other surviving works of this period, such as the bozzetti for the destroyed frescoes in the Sedile di Porto, the overdoor paintings of Allegories of the Virtues for the Palazzo Reale, Turin (in situ), which were sent from Naples in 1758, and the designs for tapestries manufactured in both Naples and Turin, for example the Allegory of Modesty (1764; Caserta, Pal. Reale), a notably academic approach is evident, which some critics have seen as a progressive decline in ideas. In fact de Mura demonstrated, through this more systematic classicism, his adherence to the enlightened rationalism prevalent in later 18th-century European culture; indeed, sometimes he even anticipated aspects of Neo-classicism. This is especially evident in mythological and allegorical paintings, such as the Bacchus and Ceres (early 1760s; U. Notre Dame, IN, Snite Mus. A.) and the Princes Ascending to the Temple of Immortality, painted in 1767–8 (Naples, Pio Monte della Misericordia).
Towards the end of his long and prestigious career, de Mura’s expressive and formal standards declined irreversibly, and he produced weak and frigidly academic works. As the head of a large workshop, he influenced a number of the Neapolitan artists active in the second half of the 18th century, among them Pietro Bardellino, Fedele Fischetti and Giacinto Diana.
Roberto Middione. "Mura, Francesco de." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T060420 (accessed April 11, 2012).
