Antonio Amorosi

Variant namesprimary name: Antonio Amorosi

DatesBiographical dates: 1660 - 1736 Dead: dead 1736 Born: born 1660

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BiographyBiography: Antonio Mercurio Amorosi was long confused with the Danish artist Eberhard Keil, active in Rome in the mid 17th century with the pseudonymous Monsù Bernardo. In the 1930s Roberto Longhi identified their distinct artistic personalities. According to the biographer Lione Pascoli, Amorosi was born in Communanza in the Marches in 1660. He later moved to Rome, where in 1676 he became an apprentice of his countryman Giuseppe Ghezzi. The only known work from this first period is the Virgin of Loreto in the church of Santa Caterina in Communanza, which Amorosi painted together with Ghezzi’s son Pier Leone. Amorosi’s first known independent work is the Portrait of Filippo Ricci (Weitzner Collection, New York), signed and dated 1690. The painting shows great similarities to his master’s work. Amorosi received public commissions, like the frescoes in the Palazzo Comunale in Civitavecchia (now lost), and ecclesiastical work, including the altarpiece for the church of Santa Maria della Morte in the same city, but is most famous for his genre scenes, bambocciate, and for his paintings of youth and children. These works brought Amorosi considerable renown, as the commission for twelve bambocciate from the Duke of Uceda, in the early years of the 18th century, indicates. Amorosi was attracted to a circle of non-academic genre, battle-scene and landscape painters in Rome and in 1715 this group received the important commission to paint genre scenes in the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome (now lost). According to Pascoli, Amorosi was also a skilful copyist and restorer.

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