Sebastiano Conca

When Sebastiano Conca settled in Rome in 1706, already a trained painter, he spent several years drawing only in chalk, to bring his draughtsmanship up to the standard of the Roman studios. His brother Giovanni came with him as his assistant.

Pope Clement XI became a steady patron, and when the pope commissioned a series of oval paintings of prophets for the nave of St John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, Conca painted the Jeremiah. In 1718 he joined the Accademia di San Luca, the painters' academy, and later served twice as its principe, its elected head. His studio worked as a school, and the young painters who passed through it included Corrado Giaquinto, from Apulia, and Pompeo Batoni, later famous for his portraits of British travellers.

Conca had been born in Gaeta, a fortified port between Rome and Naples, and trained in Naples with Francesco Solimena, the leading painter there. In 1752 he went home to Naples under the patronage of the Bourbon court and worked with other painters on the frescoes of the vault of Santa Chiara, the city's great Gothic church. Most of that decoration was lost when Allied bombs set the church on fire on 4 August 1943.