Dominic Finocchio

Paintings by Dominic Finocchio

Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1950, Dominic Finocchio is an American painter who creates narrative figurative works. The son of Sicilian parents who immigrated to the United States in the 1920s, he spent his childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, living with his parents and Italian-speaking grandparents. Interested in art from an early age, Finocchio began in his teens to study art more intensely with frequent visits to the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Central Library’s art department.

Finocchio, although interested in various genres and styles, became particularly influenced by the figurative works of Michelangelo and French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. He also discovered the Mannerist style of the late sixteenth-century Italian High Renaissance, a movement which paid attention to lighting, clarity of line, and color. Finocchio was particularly interested in the works of Mannerist portrait painters Jacopo da Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, and Rosso Florentino, one of the founders of the Fontainebleau School.

Dominic Finocchio, encouraged by his supportive art instructor Father T. Brug, prepared a portfolio of work and submitted a grant request for attendance at Missouri’s Webster University. He studied at the university for two years before enrolling in the art curriculum at Meramec Community College where he studied drawing under department head David Durham. While attending classes, Finocchio began singing in several bands and also working as a display designer, an occupation that would support his life as an artist for the next forty-two years.

During most of the 1970s, Finocchio continued his drawing but did not produce any paintings. Eventually, he began to focus solely on painting during his time away from the display work. Although St. Louis at that time was not an art-centered city, it did have several non-profit support organizations, such as Art Saint Louis and the St. Louis Artists’Guild, which provided exhibition opportunities and association with other artists. With such oppurtunities available, Finocchio retired early from his display work and concentrated on painting. Having gained exposure in the art world through the non-profit organizations, he was contacted in 2021 by contemporary gallery owner and lecturer Duane Reed for a studio visit. In late 2022, Dominic Finocchio had his first solo exhibition at St. Louis’s Duane Reed Gallery, recognized for showcasing innovative established and emerging artists.

Dominic Finocchio’s paintings are tableaus, narratives depicting the modern male set in contemporary social situations that explore aspects of masculinity. The initial combinations of figure, fauna and landscape evolve through a lengthy process of editing before the composition is finalized. Finocchio’s figurative compositions, like many of the early mannerist works, show attention to color and lighting as well as off-center placement of figures. Although aware of each other’s presence, Finocchio’s protagonists present an ambiguous story line that is left for the viewer’s exploration and interpretation.

Finocchio has presented his work in curated, invitational, and juried exhibitions for over thirty years. In 2014, his work was included in edition #17 of the quarterly publication “The Art of Man”, a journal featuring articles on artists whose portfolios contain male figurative works in the classical tradition. Finocchio’s solo exhibitions include the 2017 “Lies Provide” at the Mildred Cox Gallery in Fulton, Missouri; the 2018 “Imaginaria” at the Schmidt Art Center at Southwestern Illinois College; and the 2022 “Desire and Indifference” at the Duane Reed Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri.

Dominic Finocchio’s work has been exhibited regularly at the annual Art St. Louis Exhibition and frequently at such venues as the Springfield Art Museum in Missouri; The Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles, Missouri; The Jones Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri; the Jacoby Arts Center in Alton, Illinois; and the Evansville Museum in Indiana, among others. Finocchio’s paintings are housed in many private collections as well as public institutions, among which are the Evansville Museum of Arts and Science in Indiana, the St. Louis Marriott Renaissance Hotel, Koetting Associates in St. Louis, and the Bristol-Meyers Squibb Corporation in Evansville.

For his work, Finocchio has won the 2021 Mary Jane Twomey Award for Best of Show at the Buchanan Center for the Arts, the 2020 Caroline Karges Merit Award from the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences, the 2006 Phil Desind Award from the Butler Institute of American Art, and both the Elise Strouse Merit Award and Mary McNamee Bower Purchase Award from the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences in 2002-2003.

Dominic Finocchio’s paintings will be on exhibit April 25-28 at the 2024 San Francisco Art Market/Art Fair in the Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Boulevard, Building C, Suite 260, Booth A17

Notes: Dominic Finocchio’s website is located at: https://www.dominicfinocchio.com

Finochio is represented by the Duane Reed Gallery of Saint Louis, Missouri. Inquiries regarding his work and current exhibitions can be directed to: https://www.duanereedgallery.com or info@duanereedgallery.com

Top Insert Image: Dominic Finocchio, “Companionship”, 2022, Oil on Canvas, 61 x 45.7 cm, Courtesy of Duane Reed Gallery, St. Louis, Missouri

Second Insert Image: Dominic Finocchio, “Eight Eyes”, Oil on Canvas, 76.2 x 101.6 cm, Courtesy of Artist

Third Insert Image: Dominic Finocchio, “Worldly”, 2023. 76.2 x 101.6 cm, Courtesy of Artist

Bottom Insert Image: Dominic Finocchio, “Sit, Stand, Walk, Fly”, 2023, Watercolor and Gouache on Paper, 45.5 x 48.3 cm, Courtesy of Artist

Cesare Fracanzano

Cesare Fracanzano, “Two Wrestlers”, 1637, Oil on Canvas, 156 x 128 cm, Museo del Prado

Born in Bisceglie, Apulia in 1605, Cesare Fracanzano was a Mannerist painter who flourished in the seventeenth century. His father, Alessandro Fracanzano, was a nobleman originally from Verona and a late-Mannerist painter. Cesare Fracanzano and his younger brother Francesco learned the art trade from their father; however, they attributed little importance to their father’s style. In 1622, the brothers moved to Naples to study and work.

Cesare Fracanzano returned to the Apulia region in 1626, producing works for the churches and palaces of the nobility. In the period around 1630, he entered the Naples studio of Spanish painter Jusepe de Ribera, a proponent of an especially pronounced chiaroscuro technique which added drama to a work by creating a spotlight effect. Fracanzano’s pictorial style was based on Ribera’s teachings; however, he was also influenced by the boldness and dramatic brushwork of Tintoretto and the more classical Baroque styles of the Carracci brothers and Guido Reni of the Mannerist school.

Fracanzano married Beatrice Covelli, of whom little information is known, and settled in Barletta, the main town of Apulia, in south eastern Italy. Their union produced one son, Michelangelo, who was also a painter. After the death of his wife, it is known that he married a model who had posed for several of his works. Cesare Fracanzano died in 1651.

Fracanzano executed many works in his hometown, and only journeyed from town to fulfill commitments for work in Naples, Rome and other cities in Apulia. Works attributed to him include: “Saint John the Baptist”, 1635-40, at the National Museum of Caposimonte in Naples; “Drunken Silenus”, 1630-35, at the Museo del Prado; “Saint Jude Thaddeus” painted circa 1630 and showing the influence of his mentor, the painter Ribera; and the “Immaculate Conception with St. Joseph and St. Nicholas” at the Church of Sant Antonio de Padri Barletta in Apulia.

Cesare Fracanzano’s 1637 “Two Wrestlers” belongs to a group of paintings entitled “History of Rome” which was commissioned for Madrid’s Buen Retiro Palace, a large palace complex built on the orders of Philip IV of Spain and designed for the leisure of the monarchy . Dedicated to depictions of Roman public pastimes, the group includes athletes, gladiators, animal fights, and mock sea battles. As the buildings of the palace complex are no longer extant, the painting is in the collection of Madrid’s Museo del Prado.

Insert Image: Cesare Fracanzano, “Saint Jude Thaddeus”, circa 1630, Oil on Canvas, 91.5 x 79.3 cm, Private Collection

Agnolo Di Cosimo

Agnolo Di Cosimo (Agnolo Bronzino), “Saint Sebastian”, 1533, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain

Agnolo Di Cosimo, known as Agnolo Bronzino, was a prominent artist of the second-wave of Italian Mannerism in the middle of the sixteenth century. Born to a poor Florentine family in 1503, he started his art education at the age of eleven as a pupil of Raffaelino del Garbo, a Renaissance painter from Florence. In 1515 Bronzino undertook an apprenticeship in Florence with the man who would become his biggest artistic influence and, some say, adopted father: Jacopo Carucci, better known as Pontormo.

In 1525, Pontormo called upon his pupil Agnolo Di Cosimo to help with what would be Pontormo’s masterpiece, the “Deposition from the Cross”. This altarpiece was painted in the Florentine church of Santa Felicità. Pontormo was commissioned to decorate the entire church with frescoes; in a testament to Pontormo’s trust in and affection for his pupil, Pontormo enlisted Di Cosimo to assist in the work.

After the Siege of Florence in 1530 which reinstalled the Medici family as rulers, Agnolo Di Cosimo fled to Urbino. There he was commissioned by the Duke of Urbino to paint a nude Cupid above an arch of the Imperiale vault. He was also commissioned by a prince of Urbino to paint his portrait. As Di Cosimo became known for his portraits, he became the official portraitist for the Medici family members. Di Cosimo is known mostly for these portraits, perhaps his greatest contribution to Italian Mannerism.

Agnolo Di Cosimo’s painting technicus is extremely controlled and meticulous, with immaculate attention to detail..His brushstrokes appear non-existent, which give his works, particularly his portraits, an extremely realistic, almost life-like appearance. Di Cosimo used the tehnique of chiaroscuro to bring attnetion to the light-colored figures in the painting, pushing them forward against the dark background. Chiaroscuro is an effect of contrasted light and shadow created by light falling unevenly or from a particular direction on the subject of the painting.

John Tarahteeff

John Tarahteeff, “The Grand Canal”, Date Unknown, Acrylic on Canvas, Private Collection

An enigmatic figurative painter, Tarahteef combines Realism with a sort of contemporary Mannerism. His paintings of elongated, almost unnatural-looking characters can be humorous and unsettling, striking emotional chords in the viewer of amusement and sometimes disorientation. His acrylic paintings use tight composition, pale lighting, and plays of scale to hint to a deep and compelling narrative that remains slightly elusive.