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- Pompeo dell' Aquila
- Also known as
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Pompeo dell' Aquila
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primary name: Aquila, Pompeo Cesura dell'
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other name: Cesura, Pompeo
- Details
- individual; painter/draughtsman; carver; sculptor/medallist; Italian; Male
- Life dates
- -1571
- Other dates
- 1540- (fl.)
- Biography
- Painter and wood-carver [sculptor in wood according to Gere & Pouncey 1983] from Aquila in the Abruzzi. Also worked in Rome. Pompeo Cesura, called Pompeo dell'Aquila, b. Aquila, d. Rome 1571 'vecchissimo' (Bindi, pp. 90ff.), who quotes his epitaph, giving date of death, in S. Massimo (Aquila). If P. died at a very advanced age, he could have been born in time to have been a pupil of Raphael in Rome, as Bindi claims, but there is no other evidence for this.
P. seems to have spent a large part of his career in Aquila. Bindi gives a list of works there, two datable 1565 (see also F. Bologna, 'Roviale Spagnuolo e la pittura napoletana del '500', Naples, 1959, pp. 97f., pls. 112-4). He was also responsible for temporary decorations for the ceremonial entries of Marcantonio Colonna (1567) and Margaret of Austria (1569), both described by Bindi. P. is said to have had many pupils in Aquila, including Giuseppe Valeriano (17th-century annotation on p. 83 of Baglione).
De Angelis ('L'Urbe', xxvi, (1963), pp. 33ff.) refers to a contract dated 11 Feb. 1571 by which P. undertook to decorate the 2nd chapel on l. in S. Spirito in Sassia in Rome within a period of 18 months. This confirms Bindi's statement that he died while working in S. Spirito. Both Baglione and Celio attribute to P. the (lost) altarpiece of the 'Descent from the Cross' formerly in this chapel. Celio (1638) adds that it was so badly damaged that only the general appearance of the composition could be made out. De Angelis gives no account of the history and no evidence to support the identification of the 'Lamentation' which he puts forward as the lost altarpiece. Fourteen engravings by Orazio de Sanctis, also a native of Aquila, each inscribed with P.'s name as designer of the composition, are listed by Bartsch (xvii, pp. 51F.). These include two of the 'Descent from the Cross' dated 1572 (not 1542 as appears on the impression repr. in Celio-Zocca, pl. 15) and 1574.
- Bibliography
- Gere & Pouncey 1983
V. Bindi, Artisti Abruzzesi, Naples, 1883, pp. 90ff.; Thieme-Becker (1912) with previous bibliography.
