Lot 126: Marco De Gregorio (Italian/Naples 1829-1876), "A

Marco De Gregorio (Italian/Naples 1829-1876), "A Teacher and Students in the Corner of a Mosque", c. 1861, oil on canvas, signed lower left, 19 3/4 in. x 14 1/2 in., in a very elaborate carved giltwood frame. Note: Immediately following the unification of Italy in 1861 (during which campaign he served in the army), Marco De Gregorio founded the Scuola di Resina in the former Royal Palace at Portici, on the Bay of Naples. The most important influence on his younger years was Filippo Palizzi (1818-1899), who in 1861 opened his Neapolitan studio to young painters interested in the nude, and in the rendering of light. Palizzi's influence is particularly seen in this superb, meticulous picture, a prime demonstration of both painters' interest in interior lighting, painstaking finish, and minute brushstrokes. Soon after setting up at Portici, De Gregorio - the dominant personality in the group, then aged 32 - was joined by other artists who with him formed the core of the Scuola di Resina: in the e rly 1860s by Federico Rossano (1835-1912) of Naples, in 1863 by Adriano Cecioni (1836-1886), a "macchiaiolo" painter from Florence, and above all in 1864 by Giuseppe De Nittis (1846-1884) from Barletta. The latter two painters stayed active in the group until both moved to Florence in 1867 (De Nittis continued on to Paris, where he was joined a year or two later by Rossano), so that by 1867 De Gregorio essentially carried the group by himself. This very beautiful and precise picture must be a relatively early work of De Gregorio's, painted under the strong influence of his sojourn with Filippo Palizzi (1861). Its imagined structure, so closely based on the Great Mosque at Córdoba in Spain (perhaps, like other Portici pictures, based on an early photograph?), clearly bears out Palizzi's conviction that setting counted for more than action. The wonderful modulation of local colors, forming the dynamic variations between dark and light that were so essential to the painters of the Scuola di Resina, have here a kind of inspired prefiguration.