PALIZZI, Giuseppe - b. 1812 Lanciano, d. 1888 Paris

Italian painter, part of the Palizzi family of painters. He embarked on legal studies but left these to attend the Reale Istituto di Belle Arti in Naples from 1836 as an external student of landscape painting under Anton Sminck Pitloo (1791-1837. After Pitloo’s death, he studied under Gabriele Smargiassi (1798-1882), whose academic and dogmatic approach he adopted in his own work, along with the fundamentally Romantic spirit informing it. Early works include the Evening Angelus (1838; Pinacoteca Civica, Vasto) and the paintings exhibited in several of the Bourbon Esposizioni Biennali in Naples. Their melancholic mood was a common element in Italian historical landscape painting from the mid-1820s onwards, and it had been inspired by the landscapes of Massimo Tapparelli d’Azeglio. Palizzi was among the first to introduce it to Naples.

In 1841 Palizzi exhibited several historical landscapes at the Reale Museo Borbonico, including the Dream of Cain the Fratricide (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples). In 1844, he settled in Paris where he was influenced by Corot and Courbet. From 1845 he exhibited regularly at the Salon of the French Artists until 1888. He visited regularly Fontainebleau where Marlotte and Grez-sur-Loing became privileged sites of the Italian presence. After his stay in Barbizon, he settled down at first in Marlotte and lived there until the middle of the 1860s while keeping a studio in Paris. In 1868, he settled down in Grez-sur-Loing,

Giuseppe Palizzi was recognized in France essentially as an animal painter. He made studies of animals in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. However, in the 1870s he started again painting landscapes. He had a considerable influence on the Neapolitan landscape painters. His followers were Domenico Morelli (1826-1901), Bernardo Celentano (1835-1863) and Francesco Altamura (1822-1896) who became the masters of this school.