Claudio Francesco Beaumont

1694 – 1766

Italian painter of French descent. After a visit to Bologna in 1716, he was sent by Vittorio Amadeo II of Savoy, King of Sicily, to study in Rome (1716-19), where he trained with Francesco Trevisani. Between 1719 and 1723 Beaumont was given various important commissions in Turin, including that for the ceiling painting of Aurora's Chariot (1720) on the second floor of the Palazzo Reale. Around this time he was elected prior of the Confraternità di San Luca, and between 1723 and 1731 he was again in Rome. Vittorio Amadeo II recommended him to Nicolas Vleughels, the director of the Académie de France in Rome, and Beaumont was much influenced by the Roman-French style of Trevisani, Carle van Loo and Charles-Joseph Natoire. In 1731 Carlo Emanuele III named him "primo pittore di gabinetto", and for the next two decades he was responsible for all the painting in the Palazzo Reale. In his mythological ceiling paintings he convincingly blended the elegance and lightness of Rococo with the principles of academic precision. He was knighted in the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus in 1736.

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