Calcedonio Reina
Calcedonio Reina was an Italian painter and poet. He is described as having a melancholic and neurasthenic temperament in life and art.
Biography
His father was a prominent surgeon in Sicily who wanted his son to follow him into a medical career. However, Calcedonio moved to Naples in 1864 and soon found himself making copies of the classic sculptures in the Capodimonte Museum. He was accepted as a pupil by the Institute of Fine Arts under Domenico Morelli. Soon afterwards he travelled to Florence and Rome, prolifically painting interiors and vedute of ruins and making drawings of statues and busts. His paintings include Il Cieco pompeiano ; Suor Clara sedotta dal demonio ; and Una scena dell'89.At the 1877 National Fine Arts Exhibition in Naples, he exhibited Accaduto nel coretto ; Miserere; Exagitatio ; and Ada. In 1881 at Turin, and the next year at Milan, he exhibited Amore e morte - showing a couple having a loving kiss in front of the rows of mummified corpses in Palermo's Catacombs of Cappuccini, it is a morbid, almost ghoulish, variation on Hayez's The Kiss. In 1883 at Rome, he exhibited Per Montecarlo ; and È lui... In Berlin in 1883 and London in 1888, he exhibited paintings titled Temptation. At Palermo in 1891-1892 he exhibited Campagne d'una volta and Expiation. He entered a painting entitled Vendetta for the 1897 Brera Triennale in Milan. In 1898 he sent Nyosoumba to be exhibited in Turin and Ti aspetto to St Petersburg in Russia.
His book of poetry Canti della Patria was warmly received by contemporaries such as Victor Hugo, Guerrazzi, and Tommasèo. Calcedonio was a friend of the famed Sicilian poet Mario Rapisardi.
The house where he lived and died in Catania has a plaque on its exterior calling him a poet in painting, and a painter in poetry - in full it reads: