Amorosi, Antonio (Mercurio)
(b Comunanza, nr Ascoli Piceno, 1660; d 5 Oct 1738). Italian
painter. He received public commissions and painted altarpieces for
Roman churches, but he was primarily a genre painter, who
specialized in paintings of youths and children. He was a pupil of
Giuseppe Ghezzi, in whose workshop in Rome, alongside Pier Leone
Ghezzi, he received a traditionally academic training between 1676
and 1687. The earliest work attributed to Amorosi is the signed
portrait of a child, Filippo Ricci (c. 1690; New York, Weitzner
priv. col.), and such portraits became a favourite theme. He
collaborated with Pier Leone Ghezzi on the Virgin of Loreto for S
Caterina at Comunanza, the confused composition of which, despite
its poor conservation, reveals the artist’s immaturity. In 1699 he
frescoed the Palazzo Comunale at Civitavecchia with Innocent XII
Receiving the City Fathers and, opposite, the Virgin with St Ferma
(both untraced), St Ferma being the patron saint of the city. In
1702 he painted St Gregory and the Souls in Purgatory
(Civitavecchia, S Maria della Morte), distinguished by the crowding
of the figures and by the vortex-like composition; the angel at the
centre is indebted to Carlo Maratti. After this date his official
commissions became scarce: they include St Francis of Paola (1719;
Rome, S Rocco) and the altarpiece (1736–8) in S Bernardino, Rome,
both undistinguished works.
