Pelagio Palagi was an Italian painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

, sculptor and interior decorator.

Early life

Starting at a very young age the study of perspective, architecture, figurative and portrait painting

Portrait painting

Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait...

, and collecting

Collecting

The hobby of collecting includes seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever items are of interest to the individual collector. Some collectors are generalists, accumulating merchandise, or stamps from all countries of the world...

 by Carlo Filippo Aldrovandi, he continued his studies at the school of nudes

Model (art)

Art models are models who pose for photographers, painters, sculptors, and other artists as part of their work of art. Art models who pose in the nude for life drawing are usually called life models...

 of the Accademia Clementina of Bologna. His formation and first works overlapped with the arrival of the Napoleonic troops in the city; thanks to the request of his mentor, who was a member of the Senate and representative of the Bolognese provisional government, Palagi desgigned uniforms, medals, and emblems with the symbols of Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Liberté, égalité, fraternité, French for "Liberty, equality, fraternity ", is the national motto of France, and is a typical example of a tripartite motto. Although it finds its origins in the French Revolution, it was then only one motto among others and was not institutionalized until the Third...

to be used in letters and cards for the Directory

French Directory

The Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...

. Later, the new emerging bourgeoisie entrusted him with the creation of the monumental sepulchres of Edoardo Pepoli (1801), Girolamo Bolognini Amorini (1803), and Luigi Sampieri (1804) at the Certosa di Bologna

Certosa di Bologna

The Certosa di Bologna is a former Carthusian monastery in Bologna, central Italy, which was founded in 1334 and suppressed in 1797. In 1801 it became the city’s Monumental Cemetery which would be much praised by Byron and others...

. He also decorated the residence interiors of the Cospi, Aldini, and Gozzadini families in 1805.

Rome

He moved to Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 in 1806 to complete his studies at the Accademia di San Luca

Accademia di San Luca

The Accademia di San Luca, was founded in 1577 as an association of artists in Rome, under the directorship of Federico Zuccari, with the purpose of elevating the work of "artists", which included painters, sculptors and architects, above that of mere craftsmen. Other founders included Girolamo...

, where he may have been Vincenzo Camuccini

Vincenzo Camuccini

Vincenzo Camuccini was an Italian painter of Neoclassic histories and religious paintings. He was considered the premier academic painter of his time in Rome.-Biography:...

's student. This is not confirmed by all the writings of the time, but the Roman painter's storicism had undoubtedly an influence on Palagi's style. This influence is present in the Bolognese painter's portraits, in which he demonstrates a careful analysis of the models' features, as well as in his historical paintings and landscapes

Landscape art

Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...

, which lead Palagi to conduct accurate research on ancient history and the study of nature. Examples of this elaboration and research are Ritratto di Giuseppe Guizzardi in veste d’antico (1807), Matrimonio di Amore e Psiche (1808), Mario a Minturno (1809-1810), Ila e le ninfe (1810-1811), and most importantly the major works at the Gabinetto Topografico in the Palazzo del Quirinale (1811-1813) and the Galleria di Teseo in the Palazzo Torlonia

Palazzo Torlonia

Palazzo Torlonia is a 16th century Early Renaissance town house in Via della Conciliazione, Rome, central Italy...

 (1813-1815).
From 1813 Palagi was inspector of the Accademia Italiana and was in charge of following the activities of the young artists who were pensionists of the Accademia del Regno d'Italia in Rome. Together with Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova was an Italian sculptor from the Republic of Venice who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh...

, president of the Accademia, the artist was able to gather the most reppresentative young artists of the Italian Neoclassicism, from Felice Giani

Felice Giani

Felice Giani was an Italian painter of the Neoclassic style. His grand manner subjects often included Greco-Roman allusions or themes....

 to Gaspare Landi

Gaspare Landi

Gaspare Landi was an Italian painter of the Neoclassic period, active in Rome and his native city of Piacenza....

, besides the abovementioned Camuccini.
The experience in Rome helped Palagi to deepen his interest in archaeology and collecting, already developed during his youth in Bologna.

Milan

In 1815, after a brief stay in Bologna, the artist moved to Milan, where he opened a private school in open competition with the Accademia di Brera, which never granted him a teaching position. In the Lombard capital the private clientele, wider and more stimulating than the one in Rome, lead with to dedicate himself to portrait painting, especially of Giuseppe Bossi

Giuseppe Bossi

Giuseppe Bossi was an Italian painter, arts administrator and writer on art. He ranks among the foremost figures of Neoclassical culture in Lombardy, along with Ugo Foscolo, Giuseppe Parini, Andrea Appiani or Manzoni....

 and Andrea Appiani

Andrea Appiani

Andrea Appiani was an Italian neoclassical painter.-Biography:He was born in Milan. He had been intended to follow his father's career in medicine but instead entered the private academy of the painter Carlo Maria Giudici . He received instruction in drawing, copying mainly from sculpture and prints...

; the public commissions asserted him as the portrayer of the protagonists of the Restoration

Bourbon Restoration

The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon  – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...

. Some works that straddle between the 1810s and 1820s are Ritratto del conte colonnello Francesco Arese Lucini nello studio, Ritratto del conte Luigi Archinto, Ritratto di Francesco I d’Austria (all of them made in 1817), Ritratto del maggiore Pietro Lattuada (1822), Ritratto di Cristina Archinto Trivulzio (1824) and Ritratto della ballerina Carlotta Chabert come Diana (1828-1830).

The encounter with Francesco Hayez

Francesco Hayez

Francesco Hayez was an Italian painter, the leading artist of Romanticism in mid-19th-century Milan, renowned for his grand historical paintings, political allegories and exceptionally fine portraits.-Biography:...

, the leading artitist of Lombard Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

, induced in Palagi a search for a compromise between historical-romantic painting and classicist formation. Product of this pursuit are Gian Galeazzo Sforza visitato in Pavia da Carlo VIII, Gustavo Adolfo Re di Svezia che fa giurare fedeltà alla figlia Cristina dagli Stati Generali, Sisto V non riconosce la famiglia and La difesa di Matteo Visconti, all of them exhibited at Bera between 1821 and 1830, and Ratto delle Sabine (1823-1825).

By the end of the decade Palagi obtained the commission for the architectural and decorative intervention, and sculture design of the Palazzo Arese Lucini and the Villa Tittoni Traversi.

Later career and legacy

His fame as an architect, interior decorator, sculptor and furniture designer, as well as painter, reached the court of the Savoys

House of Savoy

The House of Savoy was formed in the early 11th century in the historical Savoy region. Through gradual expansion, it grew from ruling a small county in that region to eventually rule the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 until the end of World War II, king of Croatia and King of Armenia...

, and in 1832 the king Carlo Alberto

Charles Albert of Sardinia

Charles Albert was the King of Piedmont-Sardinia from 1831 to 1849. He succeeded his distant cousin Charles Felix, and his name is bound with the first Italian statute and the First War of Independence...

 designated him head of the enlargement project of the Castle of Racconigi

Castle of Racconigi

The Royal Castle of Racconigi is a palace and landscape park in Racconigi, province of Cuneo, Italy. It was the official residence of the Carignano line of the House of Savoy, and is one of the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy included by UNESCO in the World Heritage Sites list.-History:The...

. Palagi moved to Turin

Turin

Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

 after obtaining in 1834 the head position of the pictorial and decorative restoration project of the Castello di Pollenzo and the modernization project of the Royal Palace of Turin

Royal Palace of Turin

Royal Palace of Turin or Palazzo Reale, is a palace in Turin, northern Italy. It was the royal palace of the House of Savoy. It was modernised greatly by the French born Madama Reale Christine Marie of France in the seventeenth century. The palace was worked on by Filippo Juvarra...

. In the same year he was given the Chair of Decoration (Cattedra di Ornato) of the Accademia Albertina.

A few days before his passing, Palagi wrote a will in which the Comune di Bologna was named heir of all his antiques and objets d'art, medals, library, archive and drawings. The library, archive and drawings are preserved at the Biblioteca comunale dell’Archiginnasio, the objects of his collections are found at the Museo Civico Archeologico and the Museo Civico Medievale of the city.