Antonino Gandolfo

Antonino Gandolfo
Self portrait, 1890
Born	Antonino Gandolfo 28 October 1841 Catania, Italy
Died	21 March 1910(1910-03-21) (aged 68) Catania, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Painting
Movement	Realism

Antonino Gandolfo (28 October 1841– 21 March 1910) was an Italian painter.

Antonino Gandolfo was born in Catania on 28 October 1841. He was Giovanni Verga’s cousin and would become a friend of Mario Rapisardi, Luigi Capuana and Federico De Roberto. Together with the engraver Francesco Di Bartolo and the painters Natale Attanasio, Calcedonio Reina and Giuseppe Sciuti, he would contribute to the development of art in Catania in the second half of 19th century. The young Antonino came from a family that already had some prominent personalities. His uncle Giuseppe Gandolfo, in the first half of the century, was the most important portrait painter of Eastern Sicily and served to inspire new artists. Another uncle, Francesco, had studied medicine in Florence and Paris and was a friend of the historian Carlo Giuseppe Guglielmo Botta and the dramatist Giovanni Battista Niccolini. His cousin Antonino Gandolfo Brancaleone was a well known and esteemed composer in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and was the author of several successful music dramas. Antonino spent his childhood among the olive trees and prickly pears of his father’s countryside and the paintbrushes of his uncle Giuseppe who influenced his artistic nature and who was his first teacher.

In 1855, when Antonino was only 14 years old, his uncle died, but that early artistic relationship had made him fall so much in love with painting that Antonino decided to continue his studies in Florence, which was overflowing with ancient and modern arts and was also where his uncle had educated himself. He went there in 1860, at the age of 19. In Florence, there was not only painting but also literature and here Antonino got to know and struck up a friendship with Giosuè Carducci. In Florence, he attended mainly the studio of Stefano Ussi, creator of the famous painting The Expulsion of the Duke of Athens, whose paintings were still connected to the academism of that period and had not been by the new artistic movement of that time: the Macchiaioli. However, in 1861, the young Antonino participated in an exhibition where "The Thirteen" protested against the strictures of the academic rules.