Belisario Corenzio

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Belisario Corenzio (c. 1558 - 1643) was an Italian Mannerist painter, a Greek by birth. He is reputed, with little documentation, to have studied under Tintoretto, in part because his drawings often resemble those of the Venetian painter. He moved to Naples in 1590, where he was prodigiously active.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911, his style was "careless; soul, unscrupulous". They also claim that when Guido Reni came in 1621 to Naples to paint in the chapel of the cathedral of San Gennaro, Corenzio suborned an assassin to take his life. The hired bravo killed Guido's assistant, and effectually frightened Reni, who prudently withdrew ultimately to Bologna.

Corenzio, however, only suffered temporary imprisonment, and lived long enough to supplant Ribera in the good graces of the viceroy of Naples, who made him his court painter. Corenzio vainly endeavoured to fill Guido's place in the frescoes for the chapel. His work was adjudged to have been under the mark, and yet the numerous frescoes which he left in Neapolitan churches and palaces, and the large wall paintings which covered the cupola of the church of Monte Cassino (destroyed in 1944) are evidence of uncommon facility, and show that Corenzio was not greatly inferior to the fa prestos of his time. His florid style, indeed, seems well in keeping with the overladen architecture and full-blown decorative ornament peculiar to the Jesuit builders of the 17th century. Corenzio died, it is said, at the age of eighty-five by a fall from a scaffolding. Other sources say he poisoned himself (Wornum p. 49).

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

• Farquhar, Maria (1855). [Original Oxford Univ.; Googlebooks Digitized Jun 27, 2006 Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters, by a lady editor= R.N. Wornum]. Woodfall & Kinder, Angel Court, Skinner Street, London, p49.