Bernardino Capitelli

Portrait of Rinaldo Orsino, Archbishop of Florence (1474-1508), pen and ink, wash, gouache and chalk on green paper

Bernardino Capitelli (1589–1639) was an Italian painter and etcher of the Baroque period.

He was born in Siena. He became a pupil of Alessandro Casolani, and then of Rutilio Manetti, and between the years 1622 and 1637 was active in both at Rome and at Siena. Among his etchings are a Portrait of Alessandro Casolani, a St. Anthony of Padua (1637), a Marriage of St. Catharine after Correggio, a nocturnal Repose in Egypt after Rutilio Manetti, a Lot and his Daughters after Manetti. He also made a Ceres drinking in the Cottage of the old and a set of twelve plates of the Life of St. Bernard of Siena. He also etched a set of friezes and basso-relievi, among them, the Aldobrandini Marriage from an antique painting.

Capitelli overcame his shortcomings as a draughtsman and achieved the unique position of virtually the only tenebrist etcher in Italy. The use of abrupt contrasts of light and dark is characteristic of Capitelli's work.

References

• Bryan, Michael (1886). Robert Edmund Graves (ed.). Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical. Vol. I: A-K. London: George Bell and Sons. p. 228.
• Internet Archive I carri delle sei contrade, che comparuero splendidamente in teatro alla luce di ser.o Sole, ue[n]gono hora p[er] lor disauentura oscuramente delineati nell'ombre confuse de miei debili intagli ... Siena il dì marzo 1632, deuotiss.o ser.e Bernardino Capitelli, 1632.