PESCE, Girolamo
(1679, Rome - 1759, Rome)



Pesce was a pupil of Carlo Maratta, then of Francesco Trevisani in Rome, and a member of the painters! brotherhood Compagna dei Virtuosi al Pantheon. He painted ceiling frescoes and altarpieces for churches in Rome and its environs. As his biographer Nicola Pio mentions, he made very many beautiful pictures per signori e forestieri e particolarmente per inglesi (also for foreign gentlemen, and particularly for Englishmen). It seems that among the foreign gentlemen who showed interest in his pictures there were some Hungarians, as is attested by his several works in Hungarian churches and collections. The bulk of these paintings can be attributed and dated on the basis of their signatures.

In the sacristy of Vác Cathedral have survived St. Bernard before Mary and The Martydrom of St. Januarius from 1725, in Vácrátót church (Vác Diocese) a painting of the Madonna (1727), in Aranyosmarót (Zlaté Moravec) parish church an altarpiece showing St. Michael (1725) and in the Museum of Fine Arts there is a large Christ on the Cross, probably a former altarpiece, from 1729. The origin of the paintings and their commission are unknown, on the basis of their place of keeping and dating, however, we may assume that they were connected with one major commission. Their place of destination could have been Vác (the former Cathedral?) for their initiator the them Bishop of Vác, Count Michael Friedrich Althan. Several later paintings of Girolamo Pesce also went to Moravia. These are primarily small panel paintings with a biblical theme (Brno, Moravská galeria, 1732; Vizovice Zámecká obrazárna, 1744).



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