The Refugees of Parga

historical

Hayez is a representative of the many other artists who brought the transition in Italian painting to the second half of the 19th century. He was the most celebrated during his lifetime, and his long career enabled him to play a formative role in Italian painting almost the entire second half of the 19th century. His early work still shows the influence of Ingres in its delicate painting and severity of line, but he soon adopted the Romantic approach.

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About the Artist

Francesco Hayez

1791 – 1882

Italian painter, active mainly in Milan. Hayez was the most important figure in the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism in Italian painting, but his Romantic leanings come out mainly in subject-matter rather than in technique, the clear outlines he favoured revealing his training in Rome in the circle of Canova and Ingres. He painted religious, historical, and mythological works in a vein owing something to Delacroix and Delaroche, and portraits that are sometimes thought worthy of comparison with those of Ingres. Many of the most eminent Italians of the day sat for him. For many years he taught at the Brera in Milan (he became Director in 1860) and he exercised great influence on his pupils. The Brera has an outstanding collection of his work.

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