LOCATELLI, Andrea
Italian painter. He received his first artistic training from his father, Giovanni Francesco Locatelli (c. 1660-1741), a little-known painter who settled in the district of Trastevere in Rome c. 1699. He then studied with Monsu Alto (d c. 1712), a painter of coastal views, few of whose works are known. After Alto’s death he moved to the studio of Bernardino Fergioni (1674-c. 1738) and, lastly, to that of Biagio Puccini. His study of the human figure in the latter’s studio laid the foundations of his later success as a painter of bambocciate. In 1715 he was commissioned to decorate a room in the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome with marine scenes in gouache; he apparently painted only the figures himself and was already being paid at the rate customary for a master painter. He also decorated Prince Antonio Ottoboni’s apartments in the Palazzo della Cancelleria, Rome, with landscapes (untraced), which were highly praised by Pio (1724).
His most distinguished commissions were from Filippo Juvarra on behalf of Victor-Amadeus II of Savoy for two views of the unfinished castello of Rivoli in Turin, in which Locatelli interpreted Juvarra’s plans and designs (1723-25; Racconigi, Castello). In 1735, again through Juvarra, he received a commission from King Philip V of Spain for two overdoors for La Granja, which show Christ in the Desert and Christ and the Woman of Samaria (both in situ). In 1738 he decorated two doors in the Palazzo Corsini, Rome (both in situ), each with four decorative panels of landscapes.
