Resumen de Francesco de Mura in San Nicola alla Carità (e in Donnaromita) a Napoli: dalla bottega di Solimena as "far da sé"
The paper is dedicated to specific moments in the youth of Francesco de Mura and in particular to the emancipation from his master Francesco Solimena and the first phase of his professional maturity. It explores the painter's contribution to San Nicola alla Carità in Naples, a church of the Pii Operai, where De Mura worked to the chapel of San Nicola by creating the paintings for the archway first and then in 1729, the frescoes for the small cupola in front of it. Gathering from new archive material, we learn that he got the commission for the frescoes to test his skills before the paintng of the dome (1733-1734), a much more demanding task that Solimena should undertaken. Then, the paper focuses on Santa Maria Donnaromita in Naples where in 1727-1728 De Mura worked on his own and independently from Solimena for the first time documented by payment records. In this same church, there is an attempt to an iconographic interpretation of the ten "Allegories of Virtues" based on Cesare Ripa's famous repertoire.
