BONECHI, Matteo

Italian painter and draftsman. He was a prolific artist, most successful as a frescoGLOSSARYWall painting technique in which pigments are applied to wet (fresh) plaster (intonaco). The pigments bind with the drying plaster to form a very durable image. Only a small area can be painted in a day, and these areas, drying to a slightly different tint, can in time be seen. Small amounts of retouching and detail work could be carried out on the dry plaster, a technique known as a secco fresco. painter, who worked mainly in and around Florence. His early years are undocumented, and it is not clear with whom he trained; perhaps Francesco Botti (1640-1710) or Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani (1660-1731) was his teacher. He was certainly strongly influenced by Sagrestani, from whom he may have found it difficult to free himself. The works of his maturity, however, are highly personal and reflect the carefree mood of 18th-century Florence, which responded to the lighter influences of the French RococoGLOSSARYA style of design, painting, and architecture dominating the 18th century, often considered the last stage of the Baroque. Developing in the Paris townhouses of the French aristocracy at the turn of the 18th century, Rococo was elegant and ornately decorative, its mood lighthearted and witty. Louis XV furniture, richly decorated with organic forms, is a typical product. Leading exponents of the Rococo sryle included the French painters Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) and Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), and the German architect Johann Balthasar Neumann (1687-1753). Rococo gave way to Neo-classicism..

Apart from studies for wall decorations, the only works on canvasGLOSSARYA woven cloth used as a support for painting. The best-quality canvas is made of linen; other materials used are cotton, hemp, and jute. It is now so familiar a material that the word 'canvas' has become almost a synonym for an oil painting, but it was not until around 1500 that it began to rival the wooden panel (which was more expensive and took longer to prepare) as the standard support for movable paintings (the transition came later in Northern Europe than in Italy). Canvas is not suitable for painting on until it has been coated with a ground, which isolates the fabric from the paint; otherwise it will absorb too much paint, only very rough effects will be obtainable, and parts of the fabric may be rotted by the pigments. It must also be made taut on a stretcher or by some other means. for which dates are documented are two tondi for San Jacopo Sopr'Arno, Florence: Abraham with the Three Angels and a scene from the Life of St Francis (both 1718). His documented frescoes are the domeGLOSSARYin architecture, hemispherical structure evolved from the arch, usually forming a ceiling or roof. of San Verdiana (1716) at Castelfiorentino, the domes of San Jacopo Sopr'Arno (1718) and the Conservatorio di Sant'Agnese (1719-20), both in Florence, the trompe l'oeil ceiling in the shape of a sail for the Compagnia di Sant'Agostino (1724) at Legnaia and the mural decoration of Santa Maria del Suffragio al Pellegrino (1734-35), near Florence.