Piero Dalle Ceste biography

Piero Dalle Ceste was an Italian painter and is considered by critics one of the greatest representatives of sacred art of the 20th century. He was born in 1912 in Refrontolo, province of Treviso. The premature death of his father, which occurred in 1918, forced him, at only six years old, to an odyssey in orphanages, first in Veneto and then in Turin. In Turin, still very young, he showed a very early spontaneous talent in drawing and painting.
In 1933, at just 21 years old, his old parish priest commissioned him a painting capable of replacing the Madonna of the Rosary by Palma il Giovane, damaged by bombings. From that day on, curiae, congregations, and convents in many Italian cities, as well as in Europe and the Americas, entrusted him with large celebratory cycles, apses, domes, altarpieces, stained glass windows, and mosaics.
Among the most important works are the frescoes of the Church of the S.S. Annunziata in Turin, the frescoes of the Shrine of Mary Help of Christians in Turin, the cycle of frescoes in the presbytery and in the apse basin of the Parish Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Caramagna Piemonte in the province of Cuneo, the fresco of the Church of S.M. della Valle in Cunico in the province of Asti, the interior of the Shrine of Saint Rita in Turin, the altarpieces of the Shrine of Saint Joseph Marello in Asti and of Saint Clare in Bra in the province of Cuneo, the Cholera paintings of 1855 and Madonna of the Rosary in the Parish Church of Refrontolo, the frescoes in the apses of the Parish of Mary Queen of Peace in Turin. Following the increase of his fame, he was entrusted with the chair of painting at the Albertina Academy of Turin.
Piero Dalle Ceste alternates an easel painting inspired by a post-impressionist realism with sacred subjects. His favorite subjects are female portraits, children, landscapes, still lifes characterized by golden brightness and tonal softness typical of Venetian artistic production. Piero Dalle Ceste died in Turin in 1974.