Oil on canvas 49 x 38 in. Domenico Morelli (4 August 1826, Naples, Italy - 13 August 1901, Naples) was an Italian painter, who mainly produced historical and religious works.He was born to a poor family. His talent was noted, and he was enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Naples in 1836-1846, where he befriended Francesco Saverio Altamura. His early works contain imagery drawn from the Medieval* stories and Romantic* poets such as Byron. In 1848 he won a fellowship to study in Rome. But he had just returned to Naples, when the insurrections of 1848 erupted in Naples. He joined the protesters in the barricades on via Toledo, and was wounded and briefly imprisoned. In a retrospective published after his death, Isabella Anderton would label Domenico as one of the warrior artists of Italy, a group which also included Filippo Palizzi, Telemaco Signorini, Stefano Ussi, and Francesco Saverio Altamura.Released, Morelli returned to Rome and visited Florence in the 1850s where he received his first public recognition for The Iconoclasts. He participated in the Universal Exposition* in Paris in 1855 and, later, in Florence was an active participant in the Macchiaioli discussions on Realism*. Morelli claimed that it was these discussions that made his own work less academic and helped him to develop a freer style and to experiment with color. In this period, he is grouped into the school of Realism.By 1857, he had returned to Naples. He was a member of an independent society, led by his friend Filippo Palizzi, to promote the liberal arts, called the Societa Promotrice in 1862. He was appointed consultant for new acquisitions of the Capodimonte art museum in Naples and, thus, had significant impact on the subsequent direction of the collections. In 1868, Morelli became a professor of painting at his old school, now the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Naples. From that period onward, his interest turned to religious and mystical themes, drawn from mostly Christian, but also Jewish and Muslim traditions. Perhaps best-known from this period is the Assumption on the ceiling of the Royal Palace in Naples. Morelli was also one of the collaborators for the illustrations of the Amsterdam Bible in 1895. From 1899 until his death, he was president of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Naples. In 1886, he was knighted a senator by the King. Among his pupils was Francesco Paolo Michetti. Morelli designed the frescoes* painted for the tomb of Giacomo Leopardi, located in the church of San Vitale, but they were completed posthumously by his son-in-law, Paolo Vetri. Source: askart.com

Needs to be relined and some patch work. The majority of the painting is in good condition.