Filippo Balbi

Filippo Balbi, the son of a sculptor, was born in Naples in 1806 and did his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in the Neapolitan city. His teacher was the neoclassical painter Costanzo Angelini, who in 1840 invited him to continue his studies in Rome through the Bourbon boarding school at Palazzo Farnese. Before leaving he executed some works in Naples and Ischia, but it was in the capital that he consolidated his training and became one of the most important interpreters of Purism.
He nevertheless maintained relations with his native land and is in fact attested to have been present at two Fine Arts exhibitions of the Royal Bourbon Museum held in Naples: in 1841 he participated with three canvases, two Studies of a Head of an Old Man and Moses with the Tables of the Law; and at the next edition in 1843 he was present with two paintings Costume of a Boy and Christ in the Garden Comforted by the Angel.

Conservatism and papal commissions

His political views were very conservative and he was therefore opposed during the Roman Republic, not getting new works. He returned to receive commissions with the return of Pope Pius IX to Rome, who appreciated him enormously and entrusted him with the decoration of important churches such as Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, San Paolo fuori le Mura, and Santa Maria degli Angeli.
A very special work in the painter’s output is Anatomical Head, an apparent human face that is actually composed of many men in miniature. The painting dates from 1854 and was sent to the Universal Exhibition in Paris the following year. The original work is currently in the Museum of the History of Medicine at La Sapienza in Rome, while the copy is in the Pharmacy of the Certosa di Trisulti.

The decoration of the Certosa di Trisulti

The artist went to the latter place beginning in 1859, following the last commission he received in the capital, namely the decoration of the Tasso Chapel of the Church of Sant’Onofrio. At the end of the 1950s, in fact, he lost the pontiff’s favor and thus agreed to move to Trisulti. The painter had already gone to the Carthusian Monastery in 1854 for some restoration work on the vault of the monastery, but it was from the early 1960s that he resided there permanently.
Here he produced the fresco Madonna handing bread to a monk; large paintings for the Church of St. Bartholomew such as The Massacre of the Innocents; and he frescoed the Pharmacy, in particular a Pompeii-inspired trompe-l’oeil waiting room, paying attention to all the details, so much so that he even painted the labels of medical substances.

The move to Alatri and his later years

Filippo Balbi, given his political attitudes, was a supporter of the Bourbon Kingdom and from 1861 collaborated with the proponents of the Restoration, but after the initial period of hope he was forced to accept the new reality.
From 1863 he moved from Certosa to nearby Alatri, and here in 1869 he painted a canvas for Santa Maria Maggiore depicting St. Francis of Paola and Blessed Andrea Conti. He continued working for Trisulti, however, despite his move, producing the Immaculate Conception in 1874 intended for the Pharmacy. He also executed a canvas with the same subject for the Consolation Church in Collepardo in 1877. The artist died in Alatri in 1890, at the age of eighty-four.

Emanuela Di Vivona