Ettore Simonetti

Ettore Simonetti (1857-1909)

Ettore Simonetti ( Rome , 1857 - Rome , 1909 ) was a painter and watercolorist Italian .

Ettore Simonetti was the son of Francesco, a goldsmith, chiseller and silversmith and of Carolina Raffaelli who descended from a family of mosaicists who had had their workshop in Rome. One of his ancestors, Giacomo Raffaelli , with the help of Caesar Aguatti, around 1775 had created the mosaic in microtessere.

Ettore was part of a group of artists who enjoyed painting with watercolors: among them Enrico Tarenghi (1848-1938), Giuseppe Aureli (1858-1929) father of the painter Raniero and Giulio Rosati (1858-1917). They had never been to the East and painted on the basis of photographs and illustrations, on travelers' descriptions. In 1869 Ettore attended geometry courses at the Accademia di San Luca and won a prize for perspective.

He was influenced by his older brother Attilio who in 1875 had been among the founders of the Roman Watercolor Association . A great organizer of Roman carnivals in original ancient costumes, Attilio, following Mariano Fortuny , collected in large quantities carpets, clothes, damask fabrics, silks, slippers, brass, ceramic and copper objects, all original and coming from the Near East . Hector with these authentic accessories reconstructed the scene for his Oriental paintings and then painted the colorful bazaars, the seductive and rosy penumbras of the harem, the carpet merchants. His odalisques were very sweet, alluring, seductive, never affected.

He also developed a passion for 18th - century fashion and for watercolor he reconstructed rich interiors with characters dressed in period costumes: they were musketeers, marquises and counts, cardinals in their opulent purples. His reference artist was Pietro Longhi .

In 1882 Ettore Simonetti exhibited at the International Artistic Association, at the Society of Amateurs and Cultors of Fine Arts in 1899 and at the Society of Watercolor Artists in 1900. His nephew Amedeo Simonetti (1874-1922), son of Michelangelo, learned from him the first elements of the art of drawing and also the taste for orientalism. Ettore Simonetti taught at the Free School of the Nude of the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome .