Tommaso Laureti

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Triumph of The Cross fresco, 1585, Sala di Costantino, Vatican Palace

Tommaso Laureti, often called Tommaso Laureti Siciliano (Palermo ca 1530 — 1602), was a Sicilian painter who trained in the atelier of the aged Sebastiano del Piombo and worked in Bologna and, from 1582, for papal patrons in Rome in a Michelangelo-inspired style with special skill in illusionistic perspecive that in his Roman work avoided all but traces of Mannerism (Freedberg 1993:654).

After his master's death in 1547, he settled in Bologna. He painted a Transportation of the body of Saint Augustine for San Giacomo Maggiore. The Mannerist structural elements of the marble and bronze Fountain of Neptune in Bologna, which is surmounted by Giambologna's Neptune, completed in 1566, were based on a 1563 drawing by Laureti. This commision from Pope Pius IV is undoubtedly Laureti's most familiar public work (illustration, left below).

In the Church of Santa Susanna, Rome, Laureti's painting of the Death of Saint Susanna is above the high altar. His frescoes in the Sala dei Capitani in Michelangelo's Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Campidoglio painted in 1587-94 depicted inspiring episodes from Roman history: The Justice of Brutus, Horatius Cocles defending the Pons Sublicius, Victory at Lake Regillus, Mucius Scaevola before Lars Porsena.

Laureti designed the base with its figures for Giambologna's Neptune Fountain, Bologna

In the Vatican he was commissioned by Gregory XIII to executed a series of frescoes on a post-Council of Trent triumphalist theme, The Triumph of the Christian religion on the new vaulted ceiling of the Sala di Costantino ("Hall of Constantine"), where the walls had been frescoed by the school of Raphael early the the century. The ceiling was completed under the pontificate of Sixtus V, whose armorial bearings were introduced into the frieze. The rigorous illusionistic perspectives represent a lifetime fascination with the art of perspective: Laureti's "instrument" demonstrating the basic principles of linear perspective

Laureti perspective engraved for Vignola's Due regole..., 1583

Laureti's illusionistic sotto in su perspective design for a portion of an illusionistic ceiling was engraved for Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola's, Le due regole della prospettiva pratica., 1583 (illustration, right).^[1]

In the Basilica di San Prospero, Reggio Emilia, his altarpiece of the Assumption was completed by Ludovico Carracci in 1602.