Vincenzo Petrocelli
1823–1896 · Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Kingdom of Italy · Romanticism, Settecentismo
The story
Vincenzo Petrocelli was a painter of the Naples school, born in 1823 in Cervaro, a hill town north of the city, and working from around 1850. He belonged to the generation of Neapolitan Romantics who painted large historical and religious scenes for a newly unified Italy.
Most of his life stayed close to Naples. He turned out history paintings, portraits and genre pieces, and left a set of frescoes in the church of San Francesco at Gaeta, a fortress town on the coast. In 1868 the young Kingdom of Italy made him a Knight of the Order of the Crown, and both his sons, Achille and Arturo, followed him into painting.
