Painter mostly active in the area surrounding Acreage (Catania) from 1732 to 1755. He is considered one of the major Sicilian artists of the eighteenth century.
Vasta began as an apprentice in the construction site of the painter Antonio Filocamo who in 1711, together with the brothers Paolo and Gaetano, frescoed the choir and the chapel of Santa Venera in the Cathedral of Acireale. Once he turned seventeen, he moved to Rome where he married, in 1726, Isabella Adami, with whom he had seven children. Of his Roman period is left only a sketch on paper depicting the statue of the Hercules Farnese.
Seventeen years later Vista returned to Acireale 1731 in the midst of reconstruction after the earthquake of the Val di Noto (1693). In 1732 he will get the commission to paint the frescoes of the new temple in Acireale for San Sebastian and will therefore continue to work in the territory of Acreage. In 1734 he opened an art workshop, well known in Sicily, which will foster apprentices like Vito D’Anna, Michele Vecchio, Giuseppe Grasso Nose, his son Alessandro and other more.
He then produced large frescoes for the Cathedral Church, the churches of St. Camillus and St. Mary of Suffrage. In 1755, while he was performing a series of frescoes in the small church of St. Anthony of Padua, also in Acireale, he suffered a stroke, fell from a scaffold, and remained paralyzed. He spent the rest of his life afflicted by paralysis sand pressed by creditors.
Read More:
Wikipedia, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Paolo_Vasta
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