Ricciardo Meacci

 ( 1856 Births ) 

A.R. Willard, noting that Mussini impressed his Pre-Raphaelite tendencies upon his students (including Franchi), saw in Meacci's work an "almost literal reproduction" of the style of Edward Burne-Jones.A.R. Willard, History of Modern Italian Art, Second Edition (Longmans, Green, and Co., London 1902), pp. 429-30 (Internet Archive). The Magazine of Art (1899), however, singled out this statement as showing a complete misunderstanding of Burne-Jones's style.'Review: History of Modern Italian Art by Willard', The Magazine of Art (Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1899), p. 286 (Internet Archive). Meacci told Helen Zimmern that his intense interest in the quattrocento artists, and his attempts to master their techniques, was fostered after he left Mussini, by Charles Fairfax Murray. Murray, in fact, had been studio assistant to Burne-Jones in 1867, was a friend and associate of William Morris, and lived in Florence studying north Italian art, working as a copyist for John Ruskin, between 1872 and 1882.D.B. Elliott, Charles Fairfax Murray: the Unknown Pre-Raphaelite (Lewes, Sussex: Book Guild, Ltd., 2000); D.B. Elliott, 'Charles Fairfax Murray: Keeper of the Pre-Raphaelite Flame', in S. Wildman (ed.), Waking Dreams: The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites from the Delaware Art Museum (Alexandria, VA: Art Services, 2004), pp. 42-51.

The greater part of Meacci's work is to be found in the churches and mansions of Siena, where it may be seen in the context of the artists from whom he drew inspiration, such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Perugino or Pinturicchio. His work appealed to English taste, and to royal and aristocratic patrons. First among them was Queen Victoria, for whom he painted at her request "The Marriage", a symbolic representation of the marriage (1894) of the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, for a bridal gift: he afterwards painted a companion-piece, "The Christening", at the commission of the Grand Duke, for the christening of his first child. "Our Queen frequently sends to Meacci some of her poetical artistic fancies for his elaboration", wrote Zimmern. Queen Victoria suggested to Meacci the design of a painting in memory of Prince Henry of Battenberg (died 1896), with figures of the angels of Life and Death. At a certain time each year he used to send a picture to the Queen.

He similarly received commissions from the Duke of Connaught and from the Princesses Louise and Beatrice, from Franz I, Prince of Liechtenstein, and other royal persons.W. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother: The Official Biography (Macmillan, London 2009), p. 40 and note (Google). Despite this, he lived in great simplicity with his art:

"It is impossible to judge this man by the standard applied to modern painters. His work is of another age and atmosphere: it springs from other ideals and plays upon a chord of whose music in these modern days we are wont only to hear the echo... To gaze at his works, to be in his presence, evokes a sense of withdrawal from the daily life of our own century, with its social questions and its vexing problems. Meacci is not married: he says he has too much respect for women to ask any of the sex to bear with his musty and bygone sentiments and his hermit habits."