Tommaso Conca
Tommaso Maria Conca (1734–1822), was an Italian painter and draftsman, active mostly in Rome.
Biography[edit]
Tommaso Conca was born in Gaeta, one of the youngest of some eleven siblings, to Giovanni Conca and Anna Laura Scarsella di Castro. His father was a painter and cousin to the more famous painter Sebastiano Conca;[1] the two were Tommaso's first teachers in Baroque painting.[2] In 1770, Tommaso was made member of Accademia di San Luca, Rome's guild of painters.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Conca%2C_Tommaso_-_Sacrificio_a_Sileno_%28detail%29_-_1775-1778.jpg/180px-Conca%2C_Tommaso_-_Sacrificio_a_Sileno_%28detail%29_-_1775-1778.jpg)
From 1775 to 1782 he worked for Marcantonio Borghese, painting the ceilings of two rooms in the renovated Galleria Borghese, in collaboration with Giovanni Battista Marchetti.[1] In Sala del Sileno, above a Roman statue of Silenus he set scenes from that character, along with Bacchus and his followers.[3][4][5] In the Sala Egizia, dedicated to Egyptian sculpture, he represented the Nile, Cybele and astronomical bodies,[6] adorning the space between them with mock Egyptian idols;[7] on the walls he added eight scenes of Egyptian religion and the lives of Marcus Antonius and Cleopatra.[8]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Vatican_Museums_2011_21.jpg/270px-Vatican_Museums_2011_21.jpg)
Between 1782 and 1787 Conca painted Apollo and the Muses, a fresco decorating Sala delle Muse,[9] a room in the papal Museo Pio-Clementino.[10] At the end of his life, he completed another fresco in the Vatican's Museo Chiaramonti, which celebrates the restitution of paintings that had been taken to Musée Napoléon.[11]
Following Anton Raphael Mengs he shifted to a Neoclassical style.[12] One of his pupils was Camillo Guerra.
External links[edit]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Tommaso Conca on Personaggi di Roma database
References[edit]
- ^ a b "CONCA, Giovanni". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Vol. 27. 1982.
- ^ "Tomasso Maria Conca (Rome 1735 - Rome 1822)". Sphinx Fine Art. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
- ^ "Sala 8 - Sala del Sileno" (in Italian). Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo. Retrieved 26 November 2013.
- ^ Moreno, Paolo; Stefani, Chiara (2000). The Borghese Gallery. Touring Club Italiano. ISBN 9788836519460., pg. 184
- ^ Paul, Carole (2000). Making a prince's museum: drawings for the late-eighteenth-century redecoration of the Villa Borghese. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute. ISBN 9780892365395., pg.75
- ^ "Sala 7 - Sala Egizia" (in Italian). Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo. Retrieved 25 November 2013.
- ^ The design referenced Raphael Anton Meng's work on the Sala dei Papiri in the Vatican library, which can be viewed on "Salle des Papyrus". Insecula. Retrieved 2013-12-07.
- ^ Moreno and Stefani (2000), pg. 170
- ^ "Hall of the Muses". Vatican Museums. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
- ^ "Biography". Philadelphia Museum of Art. Retrieved 23 November 2013.
- ^ "Figure 35". The Vatican Collections: The Papacy and Art. Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1982-01-01. p. 132. ISBN 9780870993213.
- ^ "The Finding of Moses". Philadelphia Museum of Art. Retrieved 23 November 2013.