Michela de Vito Italian Neapolitan School Watercolour Portrait

Artist: Michela de Vitor (fl.1820-1840)
Title: ‘Marinajo’ (Mariner)
Medium: Watercolour (and pencil) on Paper
Date: c1820

Little is known of the Neapolitan painter Michela de Vito, though she was a native of Abruzzi and worked in Naples during the first half of the 19th century (fl.1820-1840). She was either the daughter or sister of Camilo de Vito, a notable gouache painter of volcanic eruptions and genre scenes.

Her clever and well observed paintings have often wrongly been given to a Michele de Vito. It is doubtful that he even existed, and if he did there is no evidence to suggest that he painted. And though it might have seemed more plausible at one time, for a male to have authored these robust studies, Michela is finally being credited for her paintings. Much of this is thanks to the work of the art historians Giancarlo De Rosa and Pier Andrea Trastulli, whose Neapolitan Gouaches of the 18th and 19th centuries describe her as a refined painter, very skilled when it came to drawings, she had the characteristic to make her subject more gentle, compared to her male colleagues.”

The study shows a “Marinajo” (mariner), wearing a hooded cloak and smoking a long pipe. The faint outline of the bay of Naples can be seen in the background, including the mountains behind the city.

Dimensions: 22.9 x 15.8cm
Inscriptions: ‘M. de Vito”