(Enna 1855 - Naples 1937)
SANTA LUCIA
Etching. Signed, titled and numbered in pencil bottom margin Paolo Vetri inc. e inv. / S. Lucia / 5a pr. To the platemark 236 x 155 mm, the full sheet 396 x 273.
Paolo Vetri's activity as a printmaker was certainly limited and has never been studied.
One etching by him is in the Davoli collection, in Reggio Emilia.
Another was auctioned in Naples in 2010.
A couple of lithographs are also known, from inventions by his master, Domenico Morelli.
Our specimen is therefore very rare. The etching reproduces the painting by Vetri himself in the Church of Santa Brigida, in Naples.
Showing a talent for drawing at an early age, Paolo Vetri moved to Naples in 1867. He became a pupil of Domenico Morelli and married Morelli's daughter, Eleonora. Vetri left suggestive frescos in many churches of Sicily and of the continent. He teached for 30 years in the Institute of the Belle Arti in Naples and he wrote on the theory of the vision and of the perspective.
